Greta Thunberg is in Paris. Yes, as if the French haven’t got enough on their assiettes with ‘youths’ and ‘students’ reducing the cradle of European civilisation to smoking ruins, the overgrown Shirley Temple of Stockholm rocked up this morning outside a school in Saint-Denis. She told the crowd, ‘Young people are not being included in the conversation. Our future is being robbed away from us!’

The clumsy structure of the latter sentence gave me an eerie sensation of an Armageddon-themed ABBA lyric. I can picture a mournful Frida singing it over flickering firelight.

Few are the child stars, like Roddy McDowall or Bonnie Langford, who can sustain an adult career

Few are the child stars, like Roddy McDowall or Bonnie Langford, who can sustain an adult career

Greta certainly gets around, doesn’t she? Her passport must be like a tattered old dollar bill. When I was a youngster, my mum was always urging me to get out of the house and ‘join in.’ I wish Greta had been around back then, so I could have pointed to her antics and shouted ‘REALLY?’   

But then, Greta is now beyond her pigtail years, and the ethereal vibes of the Wise Child are gone; her green gables are showing........

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