These are my peeps part 2: Are these really my peeps?

Part of the joy of moving house is, of course, getting to know the new neighbours, and so today, I took myself to the local cafe (not the one where Piglet previously disgraced himself by kicking a table over.  We're lying low from that one for a while) in an attempt to do just that.

Well, actually it was more of an attempt to distract Piglet from opening all the cupboards in Granny's death-trap kitchen and extracting the contents (so far today I have had to prise ceramic oven dishes, washing powder caps and a bottle of Tabasco sauce from his little hands).

Anyway, off we went to the cafe, and I almost immediately found myself in conversation with a local.  This particular individual was well over eighty, and was presumably suffering from some sort of age-related macular degeneration, as when I happened to mention that I was looking for a place to live, she suggested the flats where she lives.

These flats are known as "Homes for the Aged."

Now I know I am suffering a daily increase in the number of grey hairs on my 35 year old head, but I hadn't considered that this aged me twenty years, but presumably it must do as you have to be over 55 to live in these flats.

OH GOD I AM ONLY TWENTY YEARS AWAY FROM BEING OFFICIALLY AN OAP.

AND APPARENTLY I ALREADY LOOK LIKE ONE.

Luckily at that point it started raining and the cafe was overrun with middle class mothers and their offspring, who had been in the park outside, sheltering from the rain.  Aha, I thought, these are my peeps.  Here is my opportunity to make some new, local friends.  

I mean, I am a Middle Class Mother, right?  I have a Bugaboo.  We go to swimming lessons.  Hell, I even wore a Breton top yesterday.

"Look!" I cried gleefully at Piglet, "look!  Other babies!  Maybe you should invite them to your birthday party tomorrow!"

Piglet examined the other babies with interest.  The other babies sat in their pushchairs and ignored him.  The Mothers came in and ordered lattes in paper cups (I drink lattes!  I am a Middle Class Mother, right?)  They were all wearing sensible hiking jackets and flat shoes.  I was wearing these leggings.

And I looked 55 years old.  In THESE LEGGINGS.  Just let that sink in for a moment.  After five minutes, the Middle Class Mothers departed, once all their babies had started crying, and I was left thinking two things.

1.) This area must have undergone a degree of gentrification since the 1980s, when my dad once had to lead a local boy home by his ear after he karate kicked me in the street, and
2.) Are those really my peeps?

I mean, those women almost certainly have husbands.  And they almost certainly have cars, and don't have to take the bus everywhere.  And those women almost certainly never wear Black Milk leggings.  This is possibly because Black Milk leggings are designed for teenagers and not 55 year old women like me, but I am convinced that I will not be welcomed into the Middle Class Mother fold unless I wear sensible shoes and hiking jackets AT ALL TIMES.

I will continue in my efforts to find some friends.  For Piglet's sake, at least.

Haters Gonna Hate

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been well and truly JUDGED.

And I say to thee, Ye Olde Judgey McJudgeys of Wembley, if you are thinking that someone has made a terrible parenting faux pas, unless it is quite clear that the parenting in question constitutes actual child abuse, please keep your thoughts to yourself.

Yesterday Piglet had his latest settling in session with the childminder, and we had to get up at the ungodly hour of 7.30am to ensure that we had two hours to get out of bed and present ourselves in some sort of reasonable condition at the station in time for the 9.34 train.  Gone are the days when I could roll out of bed and spend twenty minutes slowly waking myself up with a cup of tea in front of BBC Breakfast.  Nowadays, those precious twenty minutes are spent watching Piglet fling a spoon around, sending gloopy porridge spurting over the cowhide rug, and furiously pumping milk like a frustrated dairy cow after realising that I failed to defrost today's expressed milk from the freezer the previous night and it is still rock solid.  The knock-on effect of having to spend breakfast pumping milk is that unnecessary activities like having a shower and putting on make up go out of the window, meaning I basically had to go out looking like this.

It was a good look.

Piglet, for his part, was in the sling following the Stair Based Pram Disaster which led to my beloved Bugaboo being bent to one side after being lugged up some steps in a tube station which shall not be named (thank you, South Ruislip).

It should probably also be mentioned that there was an eclipse happening at the time, although it was impossible to see as the sky was completely overcast.  It did, however, mean that it was slightly chillier than I had assumed, it not having occurred to me that with 80-odd per cent of the sun being blocked out, it might get a bit cold.  As I had been expecting a balmy spring day, I had dressed Piglet in his (very warm) jacket, instead of his snowsuit.  He also had a felted cardigan underneath, and a woolly hat on, and he was snuggled close to me in his sling, so he would have been perfectly warm.  I was a bit worried about his feet as he just had trousers and socks on his bottom half, so I was rubbing them periodically to make sure he was warm.  He was perfectly content however, so I assumed-not unreasonably-that he was fine.

And then some random woman approached me and asked if Piglet was "OK in there, or do you need to pull your coat round him a bit?"

Like I was actually Jimmy Savile or something.  This woman, in her infinite wisdom, thought I was some sort of monstrous neglectful child abuser.  In years to come, Piglet will probably end up writing a harrowing book called A Child Called Piglet, where he describes how his neglectful mother used to parade him around the train station during eclipses in just his socks.  Well, and his nappy.  And his trousers.  And garters to keep his socks on.  And a vest.  And a felted cardigan.  And a frigging COAT.  And a very cosy sling.

Wembley Stadium Station: the scene of the crime






Of course, with some people you just can't win.  I spent the rest of the day in abject fear of what people might be thinking about my parenting skills, especially when I picked Piglet up from the childminder and he CRIED.  Like he was thinking, "please don't let me go back to that horrible, mean Mummy who took me out this morning without a snowsuit like I was Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol."

And then the weather changed.  The weather changed so dramatically that on the way home, as we basked in the spring sunshine on the sun-baked train platform where we waited for AN HOUR for the train, I actually thought Piglet was going to get sunburnt.  The poor mite had to wear his woolly hat and coat to protect against the sun's blistering rays.  I debated taking him into the shelter of the concrete steps leading up to the train platform, but WHAT IF HE FELL DOWN THE STEPS?  The same steps, I might add, which had the audacity to bend a pram out of shape.  Goodness knows what horrors they could inflict on a baby.  And am I allowed to put the baby on the seat next to me, even if I hold him there?  He might bang his head, for God's sake, and the seat is made of metal!

Parenting.  A minefield, eh?

No, not an actual minefield.  I didn't take Piglet to Cambodia to look at landmines!  Put your phones down, people!

More Hair-Raising Adventures on the London Underground

Travelling anywhere with a baby has begun to resemble a particularly farcical episode of Miranda.

Today, for example, Piglet and I (plus my mother) travelled from Bristol to London on the train (Piglet's first trip on the "big train."  He was fairly non-plussed, despite my mother's running commentary on the journey with all vehicles played by characters from Thomas the Tank Engine). All started well, although there was a brief moment of panic when we got the pram out of the boot of my mother's friend's car at the station only to discover that whoever had packed the pram in the car had disassembled it completely.  The last time the pram was taken apart Mother and I spent twenty minutes shrieking in the kitchen and cursing the makers of Bugaboo, watching Youtube videos on "how to assemble your pram" and yelling "it wasn't like this in my day!  I used to be able to fold a double buggy in seconds whilst running for the bus!" whilst unsuccessfully trying to fit all the bits back together, before giving up and taking Piglet out in the sling.  This time however, due in no small part to the somewhat calmer influence of my mother's friend, we managed to put the pram back together, and the journey to London passed uneventfully.

Until we got to Paddington.

"Look!" said my mother smugly as we wandered across the station concourse having successfully folded the pram, stowed it upon the train, removed it from said train and reassembled without incident, "I told you there was a lift!"

One lift.  That doesn't go all the way to the actual tube.  POINTLESS.

Needless to say, before long we found ourselves faced with the prospect of a perilous journey on an escalator; Mother with a large suitcase, and me with an empty pram and Piglet in the sling.

Mother panics.  "You're not allowed to take buggies on the escalator!  It's not allowed!  It's too dangerous!"  It'll be fine, I thought.  I've been on an escalator with the pram before, admittedly not without help, but IT'LL BE FINE.  Anyway, there is no other way of getting to the tube, unless buggies are suddenly banned from that too, which is entirely possible.

Seconds later, Piglet and I are on the escalator.  The pram has toppled over and is veering off to one side (THANK GOD FOR SLINGS), and the escalator has come to some sort of emergency stop.  Piglet is thankfully unharmed, and is gazing at me beatifically from the sling, blissfully oblivious to the fact that his hapless mother has just brought the entire Bakerloo Line to a standstill.  Mother and I tiptoe off the escalator, hanging our heads in shame, and wait for it to be repaired while a long line of fellow travellers gather at the top, looking annoyed.  It is even worse than that time I tried to get the pram-this time complete with Piglet in it-off a crowded London Overground train at Willesden Junction and the front wheels of the pram FELL DOWN THE GAP and had to be rescued by a crowd of quick-thinking commuters.

And there was me thinking the mass exodus of parents out of London had something to do with the house prices.

Why Middle Aged Women Should Rule the World

For the last two days I have managed to get Piglet to bed at *around* the 9pm mark.  This is an immeasurable improvement on midnight, which was his previous bedtime.  It may in fact now be the case that Piglet will grow into a creature of reasonable nocturnal habits, and will not be staying up all night to play on his Playstation (are they still a thing?) all night by the age of two.

To celebrate this irrefutable evidence that I am now an uber-mother, and should definitely be crowned Mother of the Year by Mumsnet, the Pride of Britain Awards and OK! magazine (whichever of those venerable institutions has such an award), I decided to do two things.

1.) Take Piglet to Time for Rhymes at the local children's centre, and
2.) Stand up for mothers everywhere-and the disabled and mobility challenged-by taking both Chiltern Rail and London Underground to task for failing to provide a place to swipe one's oyster card at the step-free entrance at my local station, which for reasons of protecting the guilty, shall remain nameless (Wembley Stadium).

Neither of these were entirely successful.

Time for Rhymes was actually brilliant.  I loved the songs and toys (tambourines! Drums!  Every bit of the percussion section at the back of the hall that we weren't allowed to touch when I was at infants' school!) more than Piglet, who mostly just sat on my lap staring into space while other, bigger babies toddled up and tried to poke him and their parents cooed "ooh, look at that tiny baby!  I'd forgotten how small they were!" I also liked the fact that the staff were so nice and informative.  And then, upon lifting Piglet from my lap as I told a member of staff that I thought he needed changing and asked where the baby change facilities were, I discovered that not only did he need changing, but I did too, as the poo had seeped right through his nappy, covering the stylish dungarees (very Prince George) that I had lovingly dressed him in that morning, thinking that such an occasion merited proper big-boy clothes, rather than the usual daily babygro, and the stylish dress that I had lovingly clothed myself in, thinking that I was going to be a trendy yummy mummy and the envy of all the other mothers at Time for Rhymes, rather than my usual daytime uniform of milk-stained pyjamas.

"This doesn't usually happen!" I squealed at the member of staff, terrified that she was going to think I was an unfit mother and ignoramus who couldn't put a nappy on properly.  I then spent ten minutes running back and forth to the pram, which had been left in the buggy park outside (thankfully hadn't been stolen.  The amount of time I spend worrying that the pram will be stolen is ridiculous. I love that Bugaboo almost as much as the baby) fetching the spare babygro and nappy bags, and dealing with a screaming, poo-covered Piglet.  Sadly, although I had the facilities to clean the baby, my organisation did not stretch to cleaning myself, and I spent the remainder of Time for Rhymes, and the not-inconsiderable journey home, with three huge poo stains on the front of my dress.

Could have been worse I suppose.  At least it wasn't the back.

My second fail of the day came when I ventured into Central London (always a test of endurance) to meet a friend and fellow mother (look at me, drinking coffees in Regent's Park with my fellow mothers and talking about motherhood!).  I had decided to take the train rather than the tube, as the nearest tube station to where I was going (Baker Street) was not step-free, and being a caring, sharing sort, I didn't want to lumber the great British public-who already largely despise me for procreating if the number of people who moved seats to get away from a squawking Piglet and I on the Jubilee Line yesterday is anything to go by-with the headache of feeling obliged to assist me on the stairs with a lumbering pushchair.

This would be fine if it were not for the fact that the train station in question (Wembley Stadium) has no oyster card reader at the step-free entrance which, I might add, is some distance away from the main entrance with the card readers.  This led to a particularly fraught journey with a screaming Piglet last week when I had to walk all the way around from the step-free exit to the main exit just to swipe my oyster card to avoid being charged a million pounds.  Thanks Transport for London.  Thanks a bunch.

I'd just like to take a moment to point out to my fellow Londoners here that if Transport for London do cut the vast numbers of jobs they've been threatening, other stations will go the way of the wretched Wembley Stadium, as being an unmanned station there is a) never anybody there who can help you with anything and b) nobody at any other stations ever understands why you were unable to swipe your oyster card/purchase a ticket as they just assume it's a normal station, with a kiosk and turnstiles and everything, instead of just a random unmanned and un-gated platform which happens to have a few trains stop there occasionally, and have a go at you and imply you are a moron for being unable to see where to swipe oyster card/purchase ticket despite the fact the ticket machine is not working and there is nowhere to swipe oyster card.  Angry point made.  I shall continue.

Anyway, last time I used this station I had to leave Piglet with a random middle aged woman (risk assessed as being of the demographic least likely to kidnap Piglet or allow him to have some terrible accident in my absence) so that I could run up a huge flight of stairs to swipe my oyster card.  Today, however, the only other people at the station were middle aged men, which I considered a less favourable demographic and so decided to press the little button on the platform for information.  This led to a long conversation where it took ten minutes to explain what the exact issue was and then the man on the other end of the line had to go and speak to his supervisor to see if he could find out if anyone knew if there was somewhere to swipe the oyster card that did not involve walking up a flight of stairs.  At that point, the train came.

I then had to explain to someone at Marylebone why I had not swiped said oyster card, which met with the inspired response "you need to swipe your oyster card.  Now you're going to be charged loads when you swipe your card here", although he did at least let me through the barrier, saying I should speak to someone in the tube station about it as oyster card readers were Transport for London's business and not theirs.  I then went to the tube station to explain the situation and to politely request that they install a card reader at the step-free entrance at Wembley Stadium, only to be told again that I should have swiped my oyster card, despite the fact that I'd already explained multiple times why I was unable to do this, and that this was Chiltern Rail's problem and not theirs (why was the rail service ever privatised?  WHY?  Not only this, but the logo was much better in the old days) When I explained that I had already spoken to Chiltern Rail and been told to speak to London Underground as they are the ones with the oyster card readers, I was accused of being, and I quote, "ignorant."

On the way home, I was still so angry that I couldn't face Marylebone or Wembley Stadium or the whole situation, and got on the tube at Baker Street instead-the station I had been trying to avoid due to its many steps.  I was immediately asked by a middle aged woman who reminisced about when she used to have a double buggy and couldn't go anywhere if I needed assistance with the pram.  Moral of the story: middle aged women rule.  Men who work at stations do not.

Missing Work Already....

I'm writing this on my mother's home computer.

This means two things:
1.) I may be discovered and
2.) I'm not sure if that is good or bad.

I mean, it's not like anyone reads this blog due to the extreme veil of secrecy surrounding it.

Oh well.  Today is my first official day of maternity leave, and with the emails coming thick and fast from work, with content such as "Milly burst into my classroom as I was speaking to another student, shouting "English is rubbish at Key Stage Three anyway!"" and "Lionel kept saying repeatedly "I ain't doin' no detention for this," as I wrote the detention in his diary"* I have to say I'm missing it terribly.  About as much as one misses the proverbial hole in the head.

Meanwhile, I have been concerning myself with annoying beaurocracy that would put the European Union to shame, courtesy of the NHS (apparently it's not the done thing to be changing hospitals at 38 weeks, and everyone from hospital porters to the Health Minister is up in arms).  It's enough to make one want to dispense with hospitals entirely and give birth on their own, on a barge (I once read an article in the Guardian about a woman who had done exactly this.  I think she lived on the barge though.  In my case it might be a nightmare scrabbbling around at the last minute trying to find a canal and then an unlocked, unattended barge to sneak onto.  To be honest it might actually be easier to stick with the original plan, i.e., hospital.  Plus now I have a car seat they might let me out again).  Yes, I have an actual car seat and, despite my pronouncements of frugality and enhortation to my family to purchase-and I quote-"the cheapest one that is actually safe"-as though car seats in baby shops might be divided into two sections marked "safe" and "unsafe" and then priced accordingly so that you would pay considerably less for the ones that would be completely ineffective in an accident scenario, my mother bought the most expensive one, i.e. the one I actually like.  My brother has since been engaged in merry japes such as attaching it to the car, admiring it, taking it out of the car (my mother and I thought it might get stolen.  My brother seemed to think that such things only happen "up North" for some reason, as though "Up North" was some sort of lawless rogue state, while Down South exists in a constant state of utopia) and attaching it to the pushchair, the latter of which took about two hours.  I can now pretty much categorically guarantee that unlike my own mother in the eighties, I will not be a dab hand at running for the bus, tucking a toddler under one arm and folding a double buggy simultaneously.  To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I'll even be able to remove the rain cover without assistance.  Still, I have been told that these things are instinctive, right?

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty

Suddenly inhabiting weird parallel universe consisting entirely of Bugaboo Bees

Well the World Cup has now started and I missed my first England World Cup game since about 1982 simply because I was too tired to stay up and watch it.  Now watching France vs Honduras and although it's only 9pm and I had a nap earlier I am already yawning profusely.

Ooh France have just scored.  Looks like they have finally introduced goal-line technology.

Anyway, I am beginning to feel increasingly like an invalid.  A huge, bloated whale of an invalid at that.  Today I was wearing one of the few dresses that still fit-a floor-length blue vintage number-with flip flops, and had the sudden realisation that I looked like the Virgin Mary, escaped from the nativity play and roaming the streets, sans donkey, looking for some room at the inn.  As my brother quite rightly pointed out, I even had the immaculate conception to match.

Speaking of clothes that don't fit, yesterday my mother and I went to Westfield and I am now the proud owner of two nursing bras, which I think I am going to be wearing from now on as I have actual scars on my breasts from trying to squeeze into my normal ones.  We also bought breast pads (eugh), disposable knickers (EUGH) and worst of all, giant maternity pads (EEUUUGGHH), which are all apparently things I am going to need.  I very much doubt I will ever have sex ever again.  With all the waddling around, I started getting pains that felt like severe period pains in my back and front and at one point (round about the stage I was doubled over in Boots, buying the breast pads thinking this is definitely the end of my life as a style icon and woman about town) I actually thought I was going into labour.  Today my mother was so worried this was going to happen she wouldn't even let me salsa dance at the Marylebone Summer Fayre-probably the world's most middle class event, which we had accidentally stumbled into and which became something of an ordeal for my brother as my mother and I spent literally every moment exclaiming "look, ANOTHER Bugaboo Bee!  I've never seen so many Bugaboo Bees in my life!  It's like a Bugaboo Bee conference!" to each other repeatedly.  Looks like I have the Marylebone It Pushchair.  I either have very middle class tastes, or I am a total trend-follower. Or both.

Anyway, I am going to have to go now as I literally cannot stay awake any longer.  I'm off to dream crazy pregnant dreams about the baby kicking a hole in my stomach again.

The Perils of Buying Baby Stuff

The shopping is getting serious.

AARRGH.

I never thought there would be a type of shopping I failed to enjoy on any level.  And then I came across Baby Shopping.

To be honest, the pram and pushchair aspect of it is quite enjoyable (as long as you don't look too closely at the prices) and I have spent many happy minutes posing in front of the mirror whilst accessorising with a Bugaboo (cue Destiny's Child circa 1999 appear, tossing a now-obsolete item once known as a "pager" out of the window) and wondering how I might look as a mother (most mothers with pushchairs look at best what can only be described as "harassed," but I will obviously be different).  However, the car seat aspect is awful.  First of all, I feel personally bullied by the NHS into buying one, as apparently I will not be allowed to leave hospital without it, and will presumably have to stay there forever like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, but in a hospital so therefore worse as no duty free and full of sick people in unattractive backless gowns hanging around outside with their drips smoking fags (truly the sight that sums up all the worst things about hospitals).  Also secondly, they are extremely heavy.  Now I can sort of understand why, as no one wants their baby flying around the car in the event of an accident, which I imagine is what might happen to something very light, but is quite disconcerting when you pick one up expecting it to be roughly the weight of a baby.

Then, if the car seat dilemma (they don't all fit your pram, they don't all fit your-or in my case, my brother's-car.  Unless they happen to be the most expensive one in the shop, that is) isn't enough, most baby shops seem to be crammed full of pink plastic tat (hello, Babies R Us) that you will never, ever use and which will end up living on your balcony for four hundred years as you slowly morph into one of those people who still keeps a ten year old pushchair and a rancid potty on the balcony.  Also known as a parent.  Not a look I was going for as I sit serenely on my sun lounger in a wide-brimmed hat, cradling the baby in my arms and rocking him to sleep as I sip a cold glass of pinot grigio.

Because that's so going to be my life.  Right?