Dad on a skateboardForget scooters. There’s a new scourge of the pavements round our way: dads on skateboards. And not just 20-something dads: 30, 40 and 50-something dads too. They’re everywhere, and not even during school run hours (which in no way makes the practice legitimate).

Surely I’m not alone in thinking they look absolutely ridiculous. In fact the only dad on a skateboard I’ve seen that didn’t look like a complete idiot is – ironically – 80s one-hit-wonder Chesney Hawkes, who used to skateboard around the Surrey town I lived in at the time wearing a black crash helmet topped with a bright red artificial Mohawk, kids in tow. But let’s face it, it was only the (vaguely cool) crash helmet that redeemed him, and he is, or was, a popstar, so such behaviour is to be expected.

There is absolutely no excusing the pin-striped 50-something I saw sailing down the pavement this week, tie flapping over his shoulder and mid-life crisis snapping at his heels. The things you see when you haven’t got your gun, I found myself thinking in the words of my 91-year-old granny.

I would, quite honestly, shoot.