I’ve told off other kids for swearing – but I’d give the ice cream girl a free pass

Telling kids off for using bad language is all very well, says Will Gore – but sometimes a youthful expletive should be forgiven

X/Twitter was sent into near meltdown by a video of a young girl who had worked herself into a fit of incandescence over the prices being charged by a nearby ice cream van (Getty)

There are times – many times these days – when you wonder whether there is any point persisting with social media. But then, every so often, along comes a sweary child, putting the world to rights, and all the desultory scrolling becomes worth it.

On Thursday and Friday, X/Twitter was sent into near meltdown by a video of a young girl – perhaps eight or nine years old – who had worked herself into a fit of incandescence over the prices being charged by a nearby ice cream van.

With eyes burning, she raged to a handy phone camera at the idea of selling “just two ice creams... for bloody nine pounds!” Not that she was going to be sucked into a purchase – and would anyone else? The kid plainly doubted it. “He’s gonna get nowhere with that!” she railed in a broad Burnley drawl, to a woman we presumed to be her mother. And if the cost was one problem, another was that the ice cream seller “only does bloody cards. And I’m stood there with me cash! Bloody hell.”