The Davros Guide to Child Rearing

You can see them coming for miles.  Their sprawling bulk dominates to streetscape.  Heavy duty tires bite into the ground as though avenging a personal injury.  Dogs, children, pedestrians and even cars scatter to give them room as these modern behemoths thunder down the street.

Exactly when was it decided that prams needed to have the approximate size and manouvreability of aircraft carriers?  I see them on the weekend, frequently at the cafe or rather outside the cafe as the person responsible for its movement attempts to squeeze something that needs a truck bay in through an entrance designed for human beings.  Honestly if you gave one of these to a Gipsy he'd hitch a horse to the front of it and move his family in.

As for the baby, the putative reason why most parents now need a heavy vehicle licence to walk to the shops, well the most I can say is that its probably in there somewhere.  Certainly the prams are festooned with baby accessories (as well as shopping, superfluous clothing, laptops, dry cleaning and occasionally machine parts) but its entirely possible that the proud parents accidentally left the kid at home and just brought the pram.  Alternatively its possible the baby is in the prams basement playing pool with a few mates and growing hydroponic dope.

If anybody wonders at the proliferation of monstrous four wheel drives (or SUVs as they are now known in a pathetic aping of our American cousins) the answer is simple.  Nothing smaller will fit the pram in.  A seven seater SUV (now I'm doing it) will comfortably carry two adults, one infant and a monster pram to help the first three make that arduous journey from the car door to the entranceway of a shop.

At this point some people might review my own childless status and suggest that I have little sympathy with parents and am harbouring a secret inner resentment.  This is absolutely untrue.  I am harbouring a very public outer resentment.  I am five feet, seven inches tall and it irritates me that someone who would barely come up to my knee if they could stand upright at all somehow contrives to occupy ten times as much space as I do.

Still progress progresses I suppose.  The next step will be to motorise the pram so the parents are spared the chore of pushing.  After that we can rig up some sort of mental control so that the babies can steer themselves about the place allowing their parents to retire to a cafe in peace.  From there its just a small step to adding some extra protection and a weapon for self defence.  Holy shit!  We just created Daleks!  At least the parents will be able to relax and have a latte while their infants are out conquering the galaxy.