subscribe
/ Sign Out

Ten-year-old leaping on and off benches in shopping centre is 'doing parkour'

A YOUNG boy jumping erratically around a shopping centre has explained he is a highly trained parkour expert. 

Josh Gardner is performing moves like running along the edge of a bench and leaping down three steps at once because he is traversing urban areas like a ninja in school trainers.

He said: “I make it look easy. But leaping off a large concrete flower bin and going straight into an alert crouch then running off to the left is incredibly difficult.

“I got into parkour when I was eight. The buzz of jumping on a bench is unreal, and then to jump off it literally seconds later is mind-blowing. All these adults walking along at ground level. I pity them.

“Running along walls, swinging on lamposts, sliding under cycle racks, and I once did two benches in a row without touching the ground between. Sounds like I’m making it up, but my peep got it on TikTok.

“Parkour is life. It is freedom. I could totally outrun the feds if they followed me by this one specific route where I vault the bollards.”

Shopper Margaret Gerving, aged 78, said: “Parkour. That’s what’s wrong with him, is it?”

Middle-class child's tantrums acceptable because he's wearing Boden

AN odious terror of a toddler is allowed to scream and thrash about in museum cafes because he looks darling in his Boden dungarees, his parents have explained. 

Three-year-old Oliver O’Connor transforms every Costa, Pizza Express, soft play centre or shop he enters into a nightmare of howling, thrown objects and high-speed running, but rarely receives tuts or scowls because he dresses as a little country gentleman.

Mother Eleanor said: “We don’t like to discipline Oliver in public, because it’s easier to say you do it in private, so we’ve gone for Boden instead.

“Your child can get away with so much when he’s wearing a Fair Isle knit covered in adorable little foxes! Even when he steals marshmallows from a stranger’s saucer, they look at us and realise we’re the right kind of family.

“His behaviour’s likely because he’s so creative and intelligent, which can interpreted as bratty or spoilt in public places, but dressed in head-to-toe Boden he still gets given a free babychino.

“The doctor says it’s not ADHD and have I tried telling him off now and again. But how can I when he looks so cute in his Breton shirt and corduroy trousers?”

Next story ›