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Phoebe was going to a birthday party in Stevenage, so I dropped her off and took Ernie to play crazy golf at Mr Mulligans.
It wasn't very busy but we found ourselves stuck between two birthday parties: in front of us about twelve boys of around 12 and behind us maybe seven girls of about the same age. They were all well behaved and polite, but we spent a lot of time waiting for the boys and making the girls wait for us. There wasn't really any way out of this trap, except to skip some holes. And it was good to be a buffer between these two groups who might have started acting silly and lovey-dovey if they could get closer to each other.
Ernie has got adept enough to play crazy golf properly now, though his swing is rather elaborate and dangerous. He is also a terrible cheat and kept saying he had to retake a shot so that he completed most holes in 2 or 3, despite having sometimes taken about 20 shots. I played with honesty. And lost.
I didn't mind losing (very much) and it was fun to spend some time alone with my crazy and lovely boy, attempting and failing to stop him climbing on the various dinosaurs and tigers around the holes. He wanted a slushy afterwards so I ordered a Heineken Zero and we sat in the bar area, where the girls were now having their birthday dinner and where the detritus of previous birthday bashes remained.
Ernie decided he didn't want his slushy after all and I had to neck my beer. It was a grim warning of what life would be like if I ever became a weekend dad.
To add to the grimness, Ernie wanted a Macdonalds for his dinner. He loves Macdonalds, but we don't let him go very often. Again what a bleak place to visit. As we waited for his sad little Happy Meal, I watched the staff working away and realised this was much worse for them. What a gruesome and depressing place this is. What thankless underpaid, greasy, hot and ultimately worthless work they are doing. I saw someone cleaning some internal bit of one of the fryers and I felt overwhelmed by the grot and the heat and the oil and I wasn't even doing it.
Surely the people of the future will look back at these places like we now look back at Victorian chimney sweeps forcing boys up chimneys. At least they cleaned chimneys which was useful. In the early 21st century, people earned the lowest possible wage allowed by law to continually churn out meals made out of slaughtered animals (whose farts destroyed the environment) which was then fried in grease and served to children, who if they ate enough of it would have their quality and length of life severely decreased. And these purveyors of death were legal and everywhere and people took their kids there for a treat.
Maybe I was just in a bad mood.
