Following my earlier musing, I found this article in the Telegraph which imparts the not particularly mind blowing news that having babies impacts negatively upon women's social lives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/18/nbabies118.xml
Its an interesting subject. I do feel, as I mentioned in my earlier post, that I am in the privileged position of having friends who find babies fascinating, simply because the world of poo talk and repetetive nursery rhymes is so far away from their own realities. But the other day, walking alone in Primrose Hill, I did feel a pang when I saw two women, pushing along their respective travel systems and chatting. Most of the few friends I have with children live far away enough only to be able to offer friendly advice via facebook. There are a handful of women I would describe as acquaintances, whom I met at Baby Massage at the Sure Start centre. Just as everyone was getting familiar and comfortable with each other, the course ended. I have their email addresses but I wouldn't yet quite feel comfortable organising a coffee date. I have been once to the local NCT group, and had some nice conversations with women who were planning their move either to the suburbs or back to Austrailia.
The article mentions social networking sites. Recently when I was on babycentre my curiosity was aroused by the inviting link entitled 'Make Friends.' After clicking on it I did browse a few discussion boards and even contributed on matters such as chronic wind and baby swimming. But at the bottom of so many posts, you encounter large amounts of space taken up 'tickers', and other glittery litter. It seems cute enough at first, but when 15 posters each have 3 children and are pregnant again and really think you care that 'little Mia is 4 months, 3 days and 10 seconds old' or that 'baby Johnson will be born (maybe) in 6 weeks, 2 days and 5 hours' it gets wearing and you start to understand why people with children might lose all their friends.
Monday, 31 March 2008
Eastending; Columbia Road Flower Market, City Farm etc.
As you can see from the poem I posted yesterday, my trip out to East London to catch up with some friends had an annoying yet predictable start, another altercation with a bus driver. I remember fondly the pre-baby/ buggy days when I adored travelling on buses, sitting on the top deck, by the front window, with a good book or a free newspaper.
But having to fold up the buggy and struggle to balance it on the baggage rack didn't blemish my enjoyment of the day, simply providing lines to the first poem I have written and finished for a little while. The journey was long enough to make J fall asleep and to enjoy buttoning into my phone some indignant rhyming lines, and when I arrived at Liverpool Street I found my friend L, looking typically perky in her tiny purple t-shirt dress, tights, plimsolls and massive red scarf. L is great because I can tell her that sometimes it feels like shit being a mother and she remains non-judgemental, at the same time understanding that this doesn't contradict my general feeling that having J is fantastic and probably the best unexpected thing that has ever happened to me.
She is also great because she is so far removed from the life of motherhood, and so can connect me to another life, the life of a conscientious post grad, living in a shared house in Whitechapel, working hard on her LPC, while managing to frequent house parties, shop for vintage clothes, suffer from hang-overs, wear fantastic earrings, draw pictures, meet people for lunch... As we stroll down Bishopsgate, she switches between extolling the joys of wearing leggings; to bitching about an untidy flatmates; to talking about her mum having post natal depression after four kids but managing to qualify as a solicitor; to the sub-prime mortgage crisis; to the theatre project her boyfriend is working on; to the new job she has as a tutor with teenagers; to what she heard on Desert Island Disks, this actress who thought she had a gorgeous baby, and hung around Boots waiting for compliments, only to receive nothing as her baby was small and shrivelled and in fact very ugly.
So after a short walk and good talk, we arrive at Columbia road, walking past that coveted terrace of balconied houses, and let ourselves drift into the scented chaos; the mass of bodies shuffling from one stall to another; weaving out of the way of the clutched bunches of lilies, daffodils, tulips, sunflowers, gerbias, azaleas, and other blooms I can't name and normally can't afford; being met in the face with pot plants heavy with tomatoes, chillies, orchids, jasmine flowers or oranges that everyone secretly knows won't grow in this country. We have arrived at the time when the already affordable flowers are being sold off even more cheaply, the cockney and mockney market traders urging us to buy off their cacti, their three-for-a fiver bunches, their bargain window box plants. I had been wondering if attempting to push a buggy through the pedestrian gridlock was naive, but in fact having a buggy made no difference, it was just as crazy busy and difficult to navigate through as it normally was, and J slept right through, undisturbed. I managed to spend only £6, on three azalea stems and 3 bunches of daffodils for N's mother.
Re-emerging at the end of the street, we had a quick look at one of the shops that line the market. There are so many shops there, enough to take up a Sunday afternoon in themselves, but we limited ourselves to my favourite, a shop that sells strings of beads, buttons, and earrings that are displayed hanging from a tree in the centre of the shop. When N and I had last had a trip to Columbia Road, in October 2007, N bought me a beautiful string of fat felt beads in all the colours of the rainbow. We didn't buy anything yesterday but had fun being tempted by some silver leaf-skeleton earrings and a £100 necklace with beautiful very chunky, cone shaped, clear and frosted glass beads.
We then met up with another couple of friends, M and her ex(ish) girlfriend B, outside a cafe on Hackney Road called The Premises. A friendly proprietor arranged tables outside for us and we sat opposite a guy reading the paper, two gorgeous daschund puppies peeking out of his leather jacket. We had very reasonably priced tuna melts and coffees. although I had a milkshake as I trying to heed the advice (and horror stories) of the guy who did the baby first training, who warned us of the dangers of drinking hot drinks while holding our babies. We talked about all sorts of things, all of them interspersed with a commentary about what J was doing, opening her eyes, looking sleepy, feeding (yes, I breastfed al-fresco)... wriggling, smiling, burping, being tickled, looking cross, and then, when unfortunately M was holding her, bursting into a shrill cry that made it sound like M had been torturing her when no one was looking...
Aside from the wailing, it was great, sitting in the sunshine, talking about our shared friends, their awful boyfriends, our various jobs and aspirations. I am in the lucky positions# of having friends who view having a baby as kind of a job. Of course that should be the way of it, as raising a baby and looking after her all day is just as challenging and exhausting as any position in law, the health service or the City, but many people seem to miss this, and ask understandably mislead questions such as 'So when will you be starting work again?' as baby rearing isn't 'work.' It seems strange but I think that this appreciation relates not only to fact that I am good at choosing friends, but that I am in the positive position of being, to most of them, the first to have a baby. So what I have found myself doing is still seen as something different, exciting, something alien even. So far from finding me talking about J's sleep/feeding/ pooing patterns boring, as people without children are supposed to, a lot of my friends are fascinated because it is something they know very little about.
Next we went to City Farm, to use their baby changing facilities, which were pretty good, as I had expected from such a child friendly place. It was a nice time to go as it was about half an hour before closing time, enough time to take a good look at the pigs (my favourite) and also watch as some of the other animals (the sheep, a goat, the donkey, ducks, an uncharacteristically friendly goose) were rounded up to return to their pens, and so trotted and waddled comically down the cobbled cat walk as we watched.
We then headed back to Liverpool Street, from where we went our separate ways. I had a bus journey back to North West London (I was going over to N's parents) which was refreshingly free from confrontations with aggressive bus drivers.
But having to fold up the buggy and struggle to balance it on the baggage rack didn't blemish my enjoyment of the day, simply providing lines to the first poem I have written and finished for a little while. The journey was long enough to make J fall asleep and to enjoy buttoning into my phone some indignant rhyming lines, and when I arrived at Liverpool Street I found my friend L, looking typically perky in her tiny purple t-shirt dress, tights, plimsolls and massive red scarf. L is great because I can tell her that sometimes it feels like shit being a mother and she remains non-judgemental, at the same time understanding that this doesn't contradict my general feeling that having J is fantastic and probably the best unexpected thing that has ever happened to me.
She is also great because she is so far removed from the life of motherhood, and so can connect me to another life, the life of a conscientious post grad, living in a shared house in Whitechapel, working hard on her LPC, while managing to frequent house parties, shop for vintage clothes, suffer from hang-overs, wear fantastic earrings, draw pictures, meet people for lunch... As we stroll down Bishopsgate, she switches between extolling the joys of wearing leggings; to bitching about an untidy flatmates; to talking about her mum having post natal depression after four kids but managing to qualify as a solicitor; to the sub-prime mortgage crisis; to the theatre project her boyfriend is working on; to the new job she has as a tutor with teenagers; to what she heard on Desert Island Disks, this actress who thought she had a gorgeous baby, and hung around Boots waiting for compliments, only to receive nothing as her baby was small and shrivelled and in fact very ugly.
So after a short walk and good talk, we arrive at Columbia road, walking past that coveted terrace of balconied houses, and let ourselves drift into the scented chaos; the mass of bodies shuffling from one stall to another; weaving out of the way of the clutched bunches of lilies, daffodils, tulips, sunflowers, gerbias, azaleas, and other blooms I can't name and normally can't afford; being met in the face with pot plants heavy with tomatoes, chillies, orchids, jasmine flowers or oranges that everyone secretly knows won't grow in this country. We have arrived at the time when the already affordable flowers are being sold off even more cheaply, the cockney and mockney market traders urging us to buy off their cacti, their three-for-a fiver bunches, their bargain window box plants. I had been wondering if attempting to push a buggy through the pedestrian gridlock was naive, but in fact having a buggy made no difference, it was just as crazy busy and difficult to navigate through as it normally was, and J slept right through, undisturbed. I managed to spend only £6, on three azalea stems and 3 bunches of daffodils for N's mother.
Re-emerging at the end of the street, we had a quick look at one of the shops that line the market. There are so many shops there, enough to take up a Sunday afternoon in themselves, but we limited ourselves to my favourite, a shop that sells strings of beads, buttons, and earrings that are displayed hanging from a tree in the centre of the shop. When N and I had last had a trip to Columbia Road, in October 2007, N bought me a beautiful string of fat felt beads in all the colours of the rainbow. We didn't buy anything yesterday but had fun being tempted by some silver leaf-skeleton earrings and a £100 necklace with beautiful very chunky, cone shaped, clear and frosted glass beads.
We then met up with another couple of friends, M and her ex(ish) girlfriend B, outside a cafe on Hackney Road called The Premises. A friendly proprietor arranged tables outside for us and we sat opposite a guy reading the paper, two gorgeous daschund puppies peeking out of his leather jacket. We had very reasonably priced tuna melts and coffees. although I had a milkshake as I trying to heed the advice (and horror stories) of the guy who did the baby first training, who warned us of the dangers of drinking hot drinks while holding our babies. We talked about all sorts of things, all of them interspersed with a commentary about what J was doing, opening her eyes, looking sleepy, feeding (yes, I breastfed al-fresco)... wriggling, smiling, burping, being tickled, looking cross, and then, when unfortunately M was holding her, bursting into a shrill cry that made it sound like M had been torturing her when no one was looking...
Aside from the wailing, it was great, sitting in the sunshine, talking about our shared friends, their awful boyfriends, our various jobs and aspirations. I am in the lucky positions# of having friends who view having a baby as kind of a job. Of course that should be the way of it, as raising a baby and looking after her all day is just as challenging and exhausting as any position in law, the health service or the City, but many people seem to miss this, and ask understandably mislead questions such as 'So when will you be starting work again?' as baby rearing isn't 'work.' It seems strange but I think that this appreciation relates not only to fact that I am good at choosing friends, but that I am in the positive position of being, to most of them, the first to have a baby. So what I have found myself doing is still seen as something different, exciting, something alien even. So far from finding me talking about J's sleep/feeding/ pooing patterns boring, as people without children are supposed to, a lot of my friends are fascinated because it is something they know very little about.
Next we went to City Farm, to use their baby changing facilities, which were pretty good, as I had expected from such a child friendly place. It was a nice time to go as it was about half an hour before closing time, enough time to take a good look at the pigs (my favourite) and also watch as some of the other animals (the sheep, a goat, the donkey, ducks, an uncharacteristically friendly goose) were rounded up to return to their pens, and so trotted and waddled comically down the cobbled cat walk as we watched.
We then headed back to Liverpool Street, from where we went our separate ways. I had a bus journey back to North West London (I was going over to N's parents) which was refreshingly free from confrontations with aggressive bus drivers.
Sunday, 30 March 2008
Brim Full of Anger on the 205
Seeing me they hold up their palms
to my buggy struggling,
tell me I musn't board their bus
I'll just have to wait for another...
little do they know that on this cold day
they have chosen to fuss with the wrong mother;
for even at only five four feet
and three hours sleep,
I'm not about to alight
without putting up something of a flight.
So despite there being already on board two bugaboos,
these head-a-shaking money takers are set to lose
Because though I may not possess a cradle full
of common sense or wisdom
I think its just about within me
to beable to fold up a Mo**ercare Travel System
to my buggy struggling,
tell me I musn't board their bus
I'll just have to wait for another...
little do they know that on this cold day
they have chosen to fuss with the wrong mother;
for even at only five four feet
and three hours sleep,
I'm not about to alight
without putting up something of a flight.
So despite there being already on board two bugaboos,
these head-a-shaking money takers are set to lose
Because though I may not possess a cradle full
of common sense or wisdom
I think its just about within me
to beable to fold up a Mo**ercare Travel System
Saturday, 29 March 2008
The St*rbucks Toilet Debacle
Today, after sheltering in the rain and feeding J in a lovely cafe in Lambs Conduit Street, I went to St*rbucks to use the baby changer and have a wee in their disabled toilet. As they have only one toilet of course I queued for a while, treating the customers to a little need-a-pee dance. I smiled a knowing parent-to-parent smile at the guy who came out carrying his tear-faced toddler, who had been heard screaming from inside the loos as she endured having her nappy changed.
It was then my turn and I wheeled in the pushchair happily. J was still asleep so I took my pee, writing a text-poem to my boyfriend about leaving the toilet search to the last minute and having do the need-a-pee boogie. Midflow J woke up and commenced the screaming. I hurried to re-dress myself, cursing at my choice to put on a belt this morning, and got the changing stuff out of the bag. J as well as screaming opted to perform her trick of timing her own wee to that split second when I had whipped off one nappy and was reaching for the next. So I had to dig around for spare clothes, undress her, wipe everywhere, put on clean nappy, redress her, etc, all the while to a chorus of screams from my daughter who was as keen to get out of there as I was. Just as I was strapping her into her buggy, I heard a rap on the door. I ignored it at first, just as I had ignored it when the door handled shifted upwards, being tried from the outside.
The knock came again, louder, this time with a hello? I opened the door, thinking that my flustered face and the pushchair visable from the doorway would embarrass this voice into silence. It didn't, and I was met by the face of a woman in her sixties, a smart woman with a good haircut and rimless glasses, who informed me that I had been in there for a long time. I said, yes, I was sorry (I was sorry, though not apologising) but I was changing my daughter and I had had to change all her clothes. This I thought would also embarrass her into silence but instead it was met with another helpful reminder that I had been in there for a long time. I shut the door, adjusted the rain cover, put on my coat and pashmina and headed out, feeling embarrassed. I left the cubicle, anticipating shrinking out of the door being stared at in silent pity/contempt by a few pee-needers. In fact what I received was a 'Sorry', but not a real sorry, but a 'sorry-but' afixed with another needle at having taken too long in the toilet.
Zadie Smith in 'White Teeth' employed the device of supplying a choice of endings to her novel. Like all embarrassing social situations, as I wheeled J out of the Brunswick centre towards the bus home, I mulled over clever retorts which I could have shot back at this smug toilet taunter, the alternative endings to switch this uncomfortable scene into a display of clever one-upwardness. I could have reminded the woman that it wasn't my fault that Starbucks had only one toilet. I could have told her that it wasn't my fault that J had a special talent for weeing on her clothes. I could have lied and said it wasn't my fault I had IBS and had to spend painfully long periods in the toilet. In a reworking of the actual events I could have pulled the woman into the toilet mid nappy change, to confront her with a bare bottommed baby and suggest that she sort out J more expediently. There were lots of clever things I probably could have said, so clever I couldn't have even conjured them up on the bus on the way home.
So this is the story that I decided to open my blog with. N, my boyfriend, commented on that fact that this story wasn't quite interesting or funny enough to deserve such a grand, wordy retelling. But it is these small encounters, the network of micro disasters where I just don't quite get it right, that characterise the life of my new alter-ego, the impromptu mummy. When people ask me how I am or what I have been up to recently, of course I don't reply with 'a woman shouted at me in Starbucks for talking too long in the toilet' or 'I caused an avalanche of handbags in the charity shop' or 'I have left my keys in the front door twice this week.' But these events do stay in my mind, determining my mood and distinguishing a good day from a bad day. Today was almost a bad day, because of the toilet woman, but then it became a good day overall because J smiled a lot this evening and N cooked a nice risotto and we watched the IT crowd on line.
Its a wonder some post natal women are so keen to get back to work.
It was then my turn and I wheeled in the pushchair happily. J was still asleep so I took my pee, writing a text-poem to my boyfriend about leaving the toilet search to the last minute and having do the need-a-pee boogie. Midflow J woke up and commenced the screaming. I hurried to re-dress myself, cursing at my choice to put on a belt this morning, and got the changing stuff out of the bag. J as well as screaming opted to perform her trick of timing her own wee to that split second when I had whipped off one nappy and was reaching for the next. So I had to dig around for spare clothes, undress her, wipe everywhere, put on clean nappy, redress her, etc, all the while to a chorus of screams from my daughter who was as keen to get out of there as I was. Just as I was strapping her into her buggy, I heard a rap on the door. I ignored it at first, just as I had ignored it when the door handled shifted upwards, being tried from the outside.
The knock came again, louder, this time with a hello? I opened the door, thinking that my flustered face and the pushchair visable from the doorway would embarrass this voice into silence. It didn't, and I was met by the face of a woman in her sixties, a smart woman with a good haircut and rimless glasses, who informed me that I had been in there for a long time. I said, yes, I was sorry (I was sorry, though not apologising) but I was changing my daughter and I had had to change all her clothes. This I thought would also embarrass her into silence but instead it was met with another helpful reminder that I had been in there for a long time. I shut the door, adjusted the rain cover, put on my coat and pashmina and headed out, feeling embarrassed. I left the cubicle, anticipating shrinking out of the door being stared at in silent pity/contempt by a few pee-needers. In fact what I received was a 'Sorry', but not a real sorry, but a 'sorry-but' afixed with another needle at having taken too long in the toilet.
Zadie Smith in 'White Teeth' employed the device of supplying a choice of endings to her novel. Like all embarrassing social situations, as I wheeled J out of the Brunswick centre towards the bus home, I mulled over clever retorts which I could have shot back at this smug toilet taunter, the alternative endings to switch this uncomfortable scene into a display of clever one-upwardness. I could have reminded the woman that it wasn't my fault that Starbucks had only one toilet. I could have told her that it wasn't my fault that J had a special talent for weeing on her clothes. I could have lied and said it wasn't my fault I had IBS and had to spend painfully long periods in the toilet. In a reworking of the actual events I could have pulled the woman into the toilet mid nappy change, to confront her with a bare bottommed baby and suggest that she sort out J more expediently. There were lots of clever things I probably could have said, so clever I couldn't have even conjured them up on the bus on the way home.
So this is the story that I decided to open my blog with. N, my boyfriend, commented on that fact that this story wasn't quite interesting or funny enough to deserve such a grand, wordy retelling. But it is these small encounters, the network of micro disasters where I just don't quite get it right, that characterise the life of my new alter-ego, the impromptu mummy. When people ask me how I am or what I have been up to recently, of course I don't reply with 'a woman shouted at me in Starbucks for talking too long in the toilet' or 'I caused an avalanche of handbags in the charity shop' or 'I have left my keys in the front door twice this week.' But these events do stay in my mind, determining my mood and distinguishing a good day from a bad day. Today was almost a bad day, because of the toilet woman, but then it became a good day overall because J smiled a lot this evening and N cooked a nice risotto and we watched the IT crowd on line.
Its a wonder some post natal women are so keen to get back to work.
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