Virginia Blackburn

Virginia Blackburn is a journalist, columnist and author. She has written two novels and more than 20 celebrity biographies including David Beckham: The Great Betrayal, Kylie: Story of a Survivor, and Robbie's Secrets.

Whatever happened to being a grown-up? Pre-school for adults opens in US

HERE’S news of rather a jolly place.

Adult and child playing with paintsGETTY•PIC POSED BY MODELS

An adult pre-school has opened in Brooklyn, New York, with activities such as finger painting

A new pre-school has opened that offers all sorts of fun activities such as finger painting, musical chairs, dress-up, play-doh, show and tell and, of course, nap times for wildly overexcited children.

Just one thing.

This school, which rejoices in the title of Preschool Mastermind, isn’t for children.

It’s for adults, over-18s only, and its founder brightly explains that, “During this one-month adventure, we’ll explore pre-school concepts like sharing and friendship in order to apply and inject play, wonder, self-belief and community into our adult lives.”

As someone once said, Pass the sickbag, Alice.

Has our infantalised society come to this?

Admittedly this esteemed academy of learning is in Brooklyn, New York, but what starts over there tends to come here so prepare for seeing grown men and women trooping up the street in crocodiles, lunch pails in hand, any day now.

But really, you have to ask what possesses these people.

When I was a child I wanted to be an adult because it all looked so grown up and exciting.

Is this what happens when you create the richest and most privileged generation the world has ever seen?

That we are so unable to cope with the stresses and strains of life that we want to pretend we’re still a child?

Our grandparents’ generation, who lived through at least one world war if not two, would have been appalled and rightly so.

And this immaturity permeates every level of society, from “commitment phobia” (a condition that never existed when most men had to get married to have sex) to whining about “hurt feelings” whenever anyone says anything you disagree with.

Once this would have been laughed off but these days people report said offender to the police.

“When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child,” St Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

“When I became a man I gave up childish ways.”

Not these days.

And has it occurred to anyone that children do not like sharing and not only tend to be singularly lacking in self-belief, because they’re children, but that the real people who know themselves and a bit about life tend to be pensioners?

Are we going to start emulating them?

Some hope. 

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THERE have been protests about the fuss surrounding the remains of Richard III on the grounds that we’re glorifying a child murderer.

That misses the point. The hunchbacked one may well have been evil but he’s also one of the most potent names in British history, immortalised by Shakespeare, a Plantagenet no less.

All too often we’re supposed to be embarrassed about this island’s history.

The huge interest in a long dead monarch proves we’re still proud of our past. 

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PROPOSALS have been put forward to make it illegal to tell jokes about fat people on the grounds that it’s as bad as racism, sexism and all the rest of it.

Just how long will it be before it’s illegal to make jokes about anything at all? 

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Wrong to mob Farage

THE baying mob that hounded Nigel Farage and his family out of the Queen’s Head in Downe is one of the ugliest sights I’ve seen in years.

You may not agree with him (though an awful lot of people do) but this is a democracy and the proper place to express your opinion is the ballot box, not terrifying young children by climbing on to their parents’ car.

This says more about the “protesters” than it does about Farage and, as for the men pretending to be breastfeeding, how utterly pathetic.

Grow up. 

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HAVING demonstrated that she is still one of the most sought after women on the planet despite having both breasts removed Angelina Jolie has now openly admitted that she has entered the menopause.

This is the one subject no woman will talk about openly, ever.

Ange most certainly wasn’t a girl’s girl in the past, but now?

The woman’s a living saint. 

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