Something more annoying than pushchairs

A while ago I had a rant about the things that annoy me in my role of innocent pedestrian. You may remember? Anyway, yesterday I went into town to post copies of my masterpiece children's novel to ten carefully selected and lucky agents and publishers and discovered something that annoys me even more than those previously mentioned. And that is mothers pushing pushchairs and allowing their small toddler child to push its own dolly pushchair along beside them.

Now, I use the word 'beside' in the manner of France being beside Australia, in that they both occupy the same planet if not the necessarily the same hemisphere. Yomping along the pavement in my usual brisk and straight as an arrow manner I overtook said mother only to find her small child avec her pushchair swerving into my path because small children cannot and do not walk in straight lines. Now, if the mother had the child in the pushchair instead of a pile of shopping from Wilkos,then I would have negotiated my manoeuvre without problem. But no. The woman might as well have given her child eighteen excitable poodles to hang onto for all the control the child was showing with her dolly pushchair (which at least had a dolly strapped in and not another bag of shopping). The toddler was swerving this way and that, varying her speed between very fast and stop, bashing people's ankles, playing in the traffic, sending old ladies on zimmer frames plunging off the pavement into the paths of speeding doubledeckers...okay, the last two points may be a slight exaggeration but you get the idea.

Why? Why wait until the busiest time of the day and unleash a small child with a dangerous weapon into a crowded shopping centre? Tell you what, next time, give 'em a breadknife, set them up with a camping stove and let them run a hot dog stand whilst you go and get your eyebrows plucked to within an inch of their lives. At least if they are standing still they won't be getting under my feet.