Earlier today I was sitting in Starbucks (shit coffee outweighed by free wifi) on the last day of my five day weekend. And for many, many minutes a baby stared at me. I’ve trained myself to automatically tune out children (they go in the same category as drunks and Jehovah’s witnesses) but babies and small children stare at me all the time. It’s like they know how intimidating I find their presence and they hone in to try and exploit my hardened shell. So it was with this small person in one of those ridiculous three wheeled mini-SUVs, wearing a stripy knitted hat in the shape of a slug, complete with antenna, that I seriously considered mugging him for.

Usually when babies stare it’s a bit ‘chromosome possibly missing’, but this little fellow was properly looking at me, with narrowed eyes and a curled lip that said ‘I simply cannot imagine that you ever thought that top went with those trousers’. I regrouped and came back with a sneer to match. He looked me up and down. I poked out my tongue. He furrowed his eyebrows in pity. Refusing to be beaten by a baby in a good hat, I began to plunder my stock of previously-expressed faces. I gave him the mad staring eyes. He seemed to sigh deeply. I wiggled my ears with my hands. He rolled his eyes. I made like an Egyptian. He started to examine his nails. I returned to my mac, defeated.

But then his mother rose from her chair, holding the baby over one shoulder as she tried to manoeuvre the monstrous buggy out of Starbucks, I had a last gasp flash of inspiration and gave him a big raspberry. He threw up all down the back of her linen shirt.

Result.

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