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.

Piglet vs the World

Ladies and gentlemen, I no longer live in Wembers.

Well, it's not official.  I haven't even notified the bank I've changed addresses yet, let alone actually sold the flat.  However, Piglet and I are currently residing with my mother and are now the occupants of a room I previously shared with my brother in 1985.  It's great being 35.

The journey here was relatively uneventful, except for a few awkward moments conversing with someone I met once at a job interview who sat on the table next to us at Reading Services while I was trying to feed Piglet an appetising combination of Heinz baby biscuits and a jar of "cheesy fish pie," which was the only offering for babies (for some reason the only food available at the services seems to be chips, and I am convinced that once Piglet is introduced to chips, it will be the beginning of a long descent into morbid obesity that will end with him being lifted out of a hole in the side of the house by crane, while a finger-wagging Jeremy Kyle stands alongside narrating a TV documentary warning of the dangers of fast food).

Speaking of food, Mother and I are probably now barred from one of the local cafes after Piglet kicked a table over whilst remonstrating with his grandmother about not being allowed to crawl around on the floor of said cafe and pull himself up on all the other diners' tables and steal their food (which is undoubtedly what he would have been doing, had he been allowed to crawl around at will).  It would be an understatement to say that Piglet does not like being told that he cannot crawl around, especially in restaurants, pubs and train stations.  However, at least Granny is in possession of a highchair, so I no longer have to try to convince him to remain in his Bumbo seat for the duration of a meal, instead of climbing out, smearing food on every available surface, taking all the books off the shelf, pouring water over them, and then trying to push large pieces of furniture around the room as though they were toy cars.

I am pretty convinced that he is lying next to me now, having sweet dreams about which bits of Granny's house he is going to destroy first.  That is, if the house doesn't get him first.  There is quite a lot more babyproofing that needs to be done in a house than in a flat.  We should probably just line the whole place with crash mats.

Partying it Up In Wembers

I will miss Wembley.  Where else, with the possible exception of One Direction's house (do they all live in the same house?  I sort of imagine they do, except the one who left, obvs.) can you walk out of your flat, take the baby for a walk and find yourself in the middle of a crowd of excitable teenage girls all waiting around hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of someone famous?

At least, I presume that was what they were all doing outside Wembley Arena today watching the X Factor being filmed.  Unless there was just a really, really long queue to get in.

Piglet was asleep, so I waited for a few minutes, noting that something must be about to happen as not only was there an expectant waiting crowd, but a paparazzi photographer was stationed on the roof like a sniper.

Of course she may actually have been a sniper.  Watching X Factor sometimes has that effect on me, too, especially when Cheryl rocks up wearing two dustbin lids and shaming a teenage girl on national television for being "a bit of a bully" and everyone swoons and says she's the nation's sweetheart.  Or when they cue the Sad Music and start talking about a contestant's "journey," and how every minute of their existence up until now has been utterly meaningless because all they have ever done with their life is have a normal job like everyone else that doesn't involve singing terrible dated covers to the nation on a glittery plinth every week, and also their gran died last year at the age of a hundred and three and it was all terribly tragic and unexpected, and now she must be watching over their moment of televisual glory from that great big living room in the sky, probably wearing a T-shirt with a picture of them on it.  Anyway, I digress.  Piglet let out a squawk of displeasure at the pushchair being stationary, and I moved on, noting with interest that the real action was not in front of the Arena, but along the side street on the way back to my flat, where Olly Murs was being filmed getting out of a car.  Yes, OLLY MURS.  GETTING OUT OF A CAR.  Take that, waiting public, you missed it.

After all this excitement, (please note I also saw Caroline Flack.  CAROLINE FLACK!  She was only, like, FIFTY METRES AWAY!  And also some other presenter who I didn't recognise, who was interviewing some people whom I can only assume were PROBABLY X FACTOR CONTESTANTS!) I had to calm myself down with smelling salts, and very nearly missed the yearly extravaganza that is the Forum House Residents' Party.

This was, in fact, a welcome break from trying to get Piglet to eat his dinner, an ordeal that basically consists of me repeatedly putting him in his Bumbo seat and him repeatedly climbing out and crawling away, although not before giving his sippy cup a nice big shake so that all the water comes out, soaking at least one book in the process.

Piglet seemed to enjoy the party, and it did have the desired effect of tiring him out before bed, as he spent a glorious hour exploring the courtyard of the building, being trailed by yours truly.  I was trying to strike the right balance between being a relaxed parent who lets my child explore his surroundings, thus meeting his development potential as encouraged by the likes of Penelope Leach, et al, and being suitably firm about boundaries at crucial points such as when Piglet decided to pick up some stones from the ground and attempt to eat them.

The main difficulty in gauging where exactly the appropriate limits might be, is that there is no one else to tell you.  Well, maybe Gina Ford, but like, facepalm.  Or my mother, but is it really necessary to avoid all grass just in case a dog might have once relieved itself on that patch at some point in history?  There is no rehearsal and no going back and putting it right if you get it wrong.  Let's just say that this evening, in the courtyard, no one else's baby seemed to be crawling around.  They were all either old enough to walk, or too young to do much more than sit contentedly in their parents' arms.  And not one of the assorted children of my neighbours were in any way covered in mud and grass, as Piglet very quickly was.  Eventually I gave up and took him back inside.  He crawled most of the way back to the flat, which is probably regarded in some quarters as unacceptable, but hey, we don't have a block party every week.

Piglet Vs. Literature: Part 2

Piglet seems to have developed a rather disturbing new habit.  Several times this week I have caught him banging his head-apparently deliberately-on his cot or my bed.  Upon consulting Dr Google about this distressing new hobby I have learned the following:
Piglet has above average intelligence
Head banging is totally normal
Piglet must be autistic
Piglet is a Romanian orphan

Obviously some of these possibilities are more appealing than others.

Anyway, in an attempt to stimulate the first of these options, today I took Piglet to the library.  Now I must admit that Piglet does not seem to be overly keen on books at this present time.  In fact, whenever I try to read to him he either a) tries to grab the book and throw it around or b) crawls as quickly as possible in the opposite direction, usually right off the side of the bed (I basically have to cling on to him at all times whilst on the bed.  The other night I was woken up by an almighty crash and the sound of hysterical crying, only to find that he had rolled right off in his sleep.  This did not go down well in light conversation at work, where I suddenly felt the eyebrows of all present company rise slightly as I regaled this witty oh-aren't-children-funny anecdote, as though I had just casually admitted to waterboarding my son during his evening bath).  Today, however, there was a Netmums meet-up at the library, during which they were going to be talking about some stuff that doesn't apply to me, such as flexible working (ha ha ha) and starting your own business (I once sold some stuff on Ebay and made an actual loss).

Now one friend of mine, a devotee of Mumsnet, once told me that she preferred Mumsnet to Netmums because the latter was "a bit working class," so I was expecting to feel right at home the place to be populated by people with Croydon facelifts and children called Chardonnay, but it turned out that in fact the Netmums posse consisted of nice well-spoken ladies with well-behaved children who sat still and looked on magnanimously as Piglet crawled around crazily trying to steal their scooters, pushchairs and any shoes they happened to have removed from their feet.  This meant that I ended up somewhat disengaged from the conversation as I was continuously having to run across the library and stop Piglet from emptying entire bookshelves and throwing the contents across the floor, in much the same manner to how he rolls at home with my own book collection, now sadly mostly ripped to shreds or soaked with water on a daily basis.  To be honest though, I pretty much switched off and decided to leave at the point when the speaker, who was talking about setting up a business when her children were small, decisively proclaimed that if you were always working when your child was young, by the time they turned ten you would have lost them forever, and due to your failure as a mother by not putting the effort in during the early years and being there to wipe away their every tear and change their every nappy, you were setting yourself up for a lifetime of emotional distance, bad behaviour, and basically having you and your child physically enact all the lyrics from Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin.

That song always made my dad cry.  Not sure why, as it seems that in real life it's generally only mothers who come in for the sort of criticism that blames every one of an individual's personal failings/murderous tendencies/despotic dictatorships on the failure of their female parent to be a cookie-baking, treasure hunt-organising, dedicated to home and hearth Perfect Mother.  The dads can work all they want and no one ever implies that they are neglecting their true vocation and ruining the next generation for all of humanity.

Anyway, my lack of motherly skills evident, I skulked off, only returning when I saw that the queue in Starbucks was a bit long, and I stealthily snuck back into the library to use the coffee shop, hoping not to be seen by any of the Net Mums.  Sometimes I think when Piglet is older he will turn on me and accuse me of loving coffee more than him.  The boy is basically being raised in the highchairs of Cafe Nero, Costa and Starbucks.  The Starbucks staff don't even have to ask me my name anymore. Some of them can even spell it.

And I made him play on his own while I watched an episode of Mad Men this evening.  I'm going to Hell in a Handcart.

Newsflash-Mother has time to paint own toenails!

Piglet is asleep and I have just managed to snatch a few moments to afford myself the liberty of painting my toenails.

I now look, with my lurid red toenails, like a woman who never wears anything but trousers and a woolly hiking fleece, who has suddenly put on a dress for the first time in ten years, to the astonishment of all her friends and colleagues: in other words, out of place.  And clearly I should be sleeping.  I mean, last night Piglet barely slept a wink.  He just kept waking up, wailing and reaching for the boob, coming off, rolling over and then starting the whole process over again an infinite number of times, until the sun was literally coming up and I couldn't bear to look at the time, knowing that it was bound to be ten minutes before the alarm was due to go off.

The weird thing is, I'm not remotely bothered.

In the past, when circumstances conspired to make me lose large chunks of sleep, either by long flights or long nights drinking inadvisable alcohol/energy drink combinations, I was like a crazed wild animal, attacking anything and anyone who stood in the way of a nice comfy bed.  But now, even when the alarm goes off and I have to drag my barely living carcass out of bed and make breakfast, heaving the still sleeping Piglet into his Bumbo seat as he bleats in protest and remonstrates with me about my being the Worst Mother Ever by flailing his arms up and down angrily, I am strangely calm and serene, when any other mortal being-or even nearby inanimate object-who behaved this way would have me praying for their imminent violent death.  I blame breastfeeding for turning me into this weirdly placid creature.  It must be the hormones.  Either that or motherhood has turned me into Martin Luther King, but without the bravery.  I am fearful of anything and everything that might cause harm to Piglet.  Except random bits of stale toast on the carpet.  Or the mouthfuls of toilet roll he insists on eating (one has to pick one's battles, otherwise I will shortly turn into my mother, yelling "NO!" and launching herself across the room every other nanosecond to rescue Piglet from the nearest plug socket or library book).

And so it is that at the shocking time of 9.45pm I find myself still awake and wondering whether I should be putting some sleep in the Great Sleep Bank that regrettably doesn't exist (if only I had been able to stock up on sleep during pregnancy.  God knows I tried), or whether I should be making the most of these precious few moments of baby-free time to paint my fingernails as well.  Or like, change the world or something.  Or write a novel and become brilliant at making my own clothes and baking prize-winning cakes.  Or start a multi-million pound business importing cherry-blossom flavoured alcopops from Japan.  You know, all those things you think would be great to do while the baby's asleep.

Or perhaps they would be better done at 4am, when he wakes up.

Catching a Train with a Baby

It seems that it is becoming increasingly impossible to write this blog.  Piglet is either awake, in which case he is trying to grab the laptop and/or one of the many other things he is Not Allowed to Touch (TV remote, plug socket, anything that isn't one of his toys or my collection of books and DVDs, which I have long since sacrificed at the altar of Anything For A Quiet Life) and then shrieking, going all rigid and flinging himself around when they are taken away from him; or he is asleep, and I cannot leave him in case he wakes up and rolls off the bed.

He is, it goes without saying, never happy with anything, unless it involves ripping books to shreds and eating them, dragging my mobile phone along the floor while I am trying to speak to my mother on it, or physically attacking the television.  He is currently doing the latter.  I'm pretty sure all the guidelines for How to Bring Up an Emotionally Secure and Intellectually Stimulated Youngster say no TV before the age of two, but as my mother would say, it never did me any harm.  At least I don't think it did.  For all I know every single fault in my personality could be directly traced back to time spent watching Playschool in 1982.

Over the weekend I took Piglet to Bristol.  Until now, I had never felt any desire to own a car and drive around in it, but after several journeys to Bristol and back on the train, the prospect of several hours driving down the M4 are beginning to look extremely appealing.  This is because I would then not have to endure any of the following:

Piglet doing a poo on the train.
The dreaded journey down the escalator at Paddington with the pushchair (yesterday I was bold enough to ask a member of TfL staff for help, and practically got shouted at for my trouble-"I'M ON MY OWN HERE!"  I thought I was going to be lynched by angry commuters after being held single-handedly responsible for the next tube workers' strike).
A man walking past while I was breastfeeding Piglet and remarking "aww how sweet," followed by "you're making me hungry now!"
A full scale battle with the pushchair involving several passers by, trying to fold it down and squeeze it into a luggage rack before abandoning the whole idea and leaving it in the buffet car to act as a makeshift table for yokels drinking cider out of cans.

Well, at least it gives me something to write about.

These are my peeps

Sleep.

If I went to bed Right Now, I might get the full eight hours, time spent waking up to soothe a fretful Piglet aside.

But I am not going to go to sleep right now, because I am writing this.  And the glow of the computer screen is going to adjust my hormone levels, apparently, so that everything goes out of sync and I end up wide awake and wired as one of the Happy Mondays at the Hacienda in 1989, unable to sleep for three weeks.

And this is what it has been like every night since I last wrote on here, and that is why I never do.  Sleep wins out every time.

On Saturday Piglet went to his first birthday party. Not his own, obvs, as he is only ten and a half months.  The venue was a thing called a baby cafe.  In Islington.  We don't have such things in Wembley, as no one would be so shamelessly middle class as to actually name their business a baby cafe, instead of something much more sensible, like a soft play centre, or Cafe Nero, even if it ends up as the former due to the preponderance therein of both babies and coffee.

Anyway, you can imagine what it was like walking into this baby cafe.  

In short, it was a peculiarly upper middle class version of Hell.

There were women in Thai fishermen's pants of baggy denim with elasticated waists; there were bespectacled middle class men strapping on special trainers designed specifically so that feet don't slide off the pedals whilst cycling (doubtless with the baby being pulled along behind in one of those little baby-tents): there was eggs benedict being eaten; there were flat whites being drunk out of glass cups with no handles (rather precariously, given the surroundings, clientele and overall theme); there was a selection of tasteful wooden toys strewn across the floor, and with few exceptions, every parent in there, I am delighted to report, at least looked older than me.*

It was like walking in a dazed and confused state out of a mine in which you had been working for the last twenty five years as a pit pony and suddenly seeing the sun, blinking around for a second wondering what had hit you, and then deciding it was all rubbish and going blind.

These are now my peeps, I found myself thinking in wonderment.  THESE ARE MY PEEPS.  I am one of THEM.

I am that woman in the fisherman pants, who just wants to be comfortable whilst lugging a baby around in an organic sling (in my case, they were Topshop leggings.  I do have a shred of dignity).

I am that man on the bike with the baby-tent, regaling a nearby collection of mothers with the triumphant words "I bet you're all wondering what THESE SHOES are for, aren't you?"

I am the one who replied "I already know.  I used to be really into cycling."  And then, with a sigh, "used to," as though life as we know it is now over for all of us.

I am definitely all the women still breastfeeding children old enough to go to secondary school.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my life.  These are my peeps.

*This does not mean they were.  I am of the opinion that I look about seventeen.  The mirror suggests otherwise, and that somewhat alarmingly I may in fact have inherited my father's terrifyingly accelerated rate of ageing, but I'm pretty sure it's lying.