As I haul the brain out of the Valley of Torpor where it has spent the night the last thing I require is a gaggle of screaming Starlings having breakfast outside my window. Worse indeed is the result of their breeding experiments in that now they are accompanied by a large brood desperate to eat! The birds spend their time screeching and fighting and flapping wings at the best of times so it is easy to imagine them when several young are attempting to join in. One or two of these can feed themselves , others require attention from parent but all have breakfast as loudly as possible. The fact remains that feeding children is never fun at any time.
There are those who have the recurring ideal of the family sitting around the dinner table for foodstuffs and claim this reflects a happy family. I fail to see this myself. This is an adults dream, a child just wants fed when hungry and then wishes to play or indulge their own activities. The 'happy family' ideal has always been a dream. Some claim technology spoils this but they are wrong. It used to be TV that got the blame and now it is social media, both wrong, it is merely human nature, kids are not adults and do not share adults perceptions of what matters.
3 comments:
Oh yes, the photos of happy beaming faces around the family board...with mother tired after a long day of housework and cooking, father tetchy with what had happened at work that day and me trying to feed the cabbage to the dog...and that was before T.V. entered the house.
Holidays were different - depending on which relative was in charge. Aunt Ellen and you were dividing a boiled egg among the multitudes...Uncle Andra, where morning rolls and Arbroath smokies made a heaven of breakfast....Cousin Shug who gave money to the eldest to buy up the bakers the whiles he recovered from the night before (chew quietly now, boys...)....
There you saw happy faces....except when it was Aunt Ellen...
We always sat at the table to eat our meals...and loved doing so. We behaved ourselves at the table because we were taught good manners and respected those who taught us those manners...our Nana and our mother.
There are many far worse sounds than the sounds of birds.
Fly, Good old Aunt Ellen....
Lee, We couldn't afford a table.
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