Mother Knows Best, Apparently

Across the road from where I sit having my lunch I witness three generations of the same family who are engaged in a psychodrama as they stand forlornly on the pavement. The youngest, a four-year-old girl, is screaming to be let out of her pusher. Her mother, a tough-faced woman in her late-twenties with severely scraped back, bleached hair and a cigarette clenched between her pursed lips, is shaking the child roughly by the arm and screaming back at her.
  "You ain't gettin' aht! You can fuckin' well wait till we get 'ome!"
The grandmother, a short, grizzled woman in her fifties wearing a floral dress and brown sandals, is the spitting image of Sid James, the actor from the Carry On movies. She also has a cigarette stuck in her face and she now barks, "Clout 'er one, Shelley! Juss clout 'er... Iss the only way she'll learn!" Shelley continues her furious shaking of the rag doll toddler, who continues her screaming in return. Grandmother turns, exasperated, holding her hands out to heaven and says, to no one in particular, "Oh, why won't she juss give 'er a fuckin' smack?"

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