99 Problems. Or not.

It is the Easter holidays and our house is ringing with phrases such as 'it's so unfair!' and 'you never let me'.  The joys of pre-teens.  God help me when they are another couple of years down the line.

This morning's major battle centred on how to spend the rather generous amount of Easter cash which has come their way from grandparents.  One, to be fair, was already saving for something and so has achieved his heart's desire far more quickly than we had anticipated.  The other, generally the easier to please, now has the money burning a hole.  Because the other has something due to arrive from good old Amazon so surely their cash needs to be spend ASAP as well.  This has entailed an ever more ridiculous list of items costing just about the right amount.  Items she never knew she needed.

So go the 'problems' for children in comfortable situations.  It was on the tip of my tongue to begin a lecture on the friends who recently lost their mother.  Or children at their schools who have much less than they do.  Or the many children in our city whose homes were flooded.  Or the children who are abused and beaten.  The child killed by a bouncy castle at the weekend. To say nothing of the millions of children caught in the increasingly widespread wars/famines/disasters.  But I did not because once I had started I would not have stopped and I probably would have cried and scared them.

Then when I came downstairs from dealing with my children's oh-so-awful problems, I found a programme called Man v Food on television (no idea what channel or why it was gracing our TV).  Apparently watching a person overeat is now legitimate entertainment.  We live in a world where millions are starving but it is perfectly the acceptable for the lucky minority to sit and watch other people stuffing their faces.  No doubt shovelling in snacks as they watch.

I cannot help but fear for the future.  I am counting on genealogy continuing as a hobby but I believe there is every chance it may start to be used Nazi-style.  And I fear our descendants will be doing their family trees and looking at things like 'when our family moved to that [Hunger Games type place].  Or 'look, that was the year when the massive wall was built in the Med.  So glad our ancestors were on this side of it.'  Whether there will be many humans on this planet in two centuries time remains to be seen though.