Friday, July 29
slip slidin' awayAlthough she's otherwise in rude health, Rebecca's skin continues sensitive and prone to flare-ups; having run the gamut of treatments we've come full circle to that time-honoured standby: liquid paraffin. Which, while it stops her scratching (or at least stops her scratching from making much impression) it also holds some alarming potential side effects. For, as any parent will tell you, when you have a zippy toddler with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and no sense of self-preservation, the last thing you want to do is grease them.
Thursday, July 28
i am a bad, bad personAnother thing my lovely Health Visitor and I have agreed on is that I don't have to drag Rebecca to chav-infested baby groups out of liberal guilt. So that's OK then.
Wednesday, July 27
eighty centimetres of wriggleHealth Visitor came yesterday and Becca's vital statistics were recorded: having put on no weight in the two months since the last weigh-in, she's now on the 50th centile, but has shot up to the 75th centile for height. In other words I have inadvertently given birth to a tall, slim, blond person. Probably just as well for her she doesn't appear to take after the distaff side, in terms of looks at least.
Tuesday, July 26
crèche courseRebecca's first few crèche experiences were positive - at the sight of all the fantastic toys and other children and a different set of grownups to fuss her, she marauded forth without so much as a backwards glance. A few weeks on, separation anxiety, so long dreaded, has set in at last. Nipped to the loo the other day during Busy Babies and Young Explorers and returned to the sound of familiar howls and the sight of Rebecca alone in the centre of the room, her mouth rectangular with anguish. So that's that then. Wonder when it stops.
Yesterday at the park, Rebecca gazed at the virulent red berries at the top of a tall tree and said hopefully 'Bawbree?'
Monday, July 25
why i 'm going to miss radio fourOh my word - I would not have thought it possible, but on some lunchtime music quiz on Radio Four, I've just heard a William Shatner version of Pulp's 'Common People'. Am just having a little sit down.
Yesterday I cycled from London to Cambridge in under four hours despite (or possibly because of) pissing rain from mile 18 onwards. I rule! And to the many lovely people who made it all worthwhile with their generous sponsorship - have made almost 300 squid - you rule too! And so do Jack and Rebecca, who despite the vile weather came to meet me on Midsummer Common - Becca waving a little sign reading 'Go Mum!'. Pictures to follow. Back to work...
Saturday, July 23
a week of itTo those many charitable folk who have sponsored me for tomorrow's London to Cambridge, we salute you! To those who haven't, but would like to, there's still time, even for a few days after the event: you can donate online with a credit card easily and safely by going here.
Most of the last week has been spent either preparing for the big event - did 55 miles on Monday and regained the use of my legs mere hours afterwards - or sewing sequins in a sort of dual displacement activity covering both the ride and the trip home. (It's a telling fact that even my displacement activities involve multi-tasking. What's more, now that we're within weeks of packing up all our household effects and sending them across the oceans, my head's suddenly abuzz with elaborate craft projects, when generally all that fiddly crafty stuff makes me feel hot and sick - something like the opposite of motion sickness.)
Becca, meantime, has entered a climbing phase, scaling tables, chairs, retaining walls, shelves, play equipment and the sides of the bath, and forcing Mummy to dash about with her arms outstretched in perpetual readiness for the next plummet, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The language acquisition's coming along nicely too: having mastered 'shee-eese' (and even managed to narrow the semantic field slightly) she's recently added 'bawbree' [strawberry, but some consonant clusters are difficult when you're 16 months old] and 'duck' - all of which, as a friend pointed out, would be the makings of a balanced meal if we lived in France. The exotic food theme also extends into her musical repertoire - her favourite song at the moment being 'Shee-shaw, bhaji-daw', which she croons, quite tunefully, for most of the day and especially during walks.
'Sheese', incidentally, is not to be confused with 'sheesh', which designates the fish mobile in her bedroom (friccatives are confusing too) and by a quite prodigious feat of pictorial association, the arty diving photos on our living room wall. And I'm skating dangerously close to becoming one of those 'my-child-is-a-total-genius-much-smarter-than-your-dribbling-underachiever' mothers, so maybe I'll shut up and go and do my cycling Pilate while Jack and Becca are out buying me malt loaf and chocolate for tomorrow. Wish me luck and send hard currency and/or happy hill-climbing, no-rain, no-mechanicals vibes. I thank you.
Thursday, July 21
mantraSufficient unto the day is the Getting Stuff Done thereof. And all that jazz.
Thursday, July 14
finally!remembered the greatest ever One Song To The Tune Of Another: 'Girlfriend in a Coma', to the tune of 'Tiptoe Through The Tulips'. I get all happy just thinking about it... fourteen ounces
This morning at Busy Babies and Young Explorers I met a baby who looked exactly like a tiny William Hague. His name, it turned out, was Huxley. 'After Aldous or T.H.? Or Julian?' I asked his mother. 'I dunno, really,' she replied, edging away slightly.
Wednesday, July 13
waiting to be introducedSince the 'SOLD' sign went up, I've been accosted with cheery enquiries of 'So, you're on the move then?' from neighbours* who, for the past five years, have accorded me little more than suspicious glowers in response to my watery attempts at friendliness. If you smile at people in the the UK, especially in the south, they think you're a religious loony. (Which is by and large true so you can hardly blame them I guess). What's more, I've gone native to the extent that on our infrequent trips home I've been faintly alarmed by the friendliness of shop assistants, service personnel or indeed random members of the public: churlishness and incivility, on the other hand, make me feel on firmer ground.
*Not our lovely next-door neighbours: we're having them shipped over.
Tuesday, July 12
this metaphor has joined the choir invisibleOn Radio Four this morning, an Anglican bishop on the controversy over ordaining women as bishops:
'I rejoice in their ministry, but I won't go that extra mile and ordain them myself.'
Italics mine, for, I would have thought, fairly bloody obvious reasons. the undiscovered country
On the other hand, it would appear that the word 'cheese' has a wider semantic field than had been hitherto appreciated.
Monday, July 11
microbugologyRebecca does not have chickenpox, apparently, but whatever she does have is cranking up her temperature and flaring up her skin: she's off her grub, so although she can now say 'Cheese' if you eagerly produce some she flashes you a look that says 'Exactly what do you expect me to do with that, dense parent?' She even ignores the ferris-sized wheel of pasteurized Brie I bought her at the French market on Sunday (the folk fiddling gig having been cancelled at the last minute: at least that's what the folk folk were at pains to tell me on Saturday - they may, of course, just have decided my playing was too atrocious even to inflict on the Cambridgeshire-Kreis Viersen twinning society). Rebecca's squawking again so I have no time to make sense of this, nor to relate more of the weekend's diverse happenings...
Thursday, July 7
Jesus Christ. Fervently hoping none of my London friends is involved.And selfishly incredibly thankful that we're moving home. heresy of the day
Motherhood, like marriage, is a relationship. Not a profession, nor a vocation, but a relationship. Just as being a wife, a husband, a father, son, daughter, great-aunt - all of these are relationships, all describe a specific type of connection to another human, or humans, and not a divine calling.
Wednesday, July 6
double-edged swordLast night I danced with a sword on my head. (Balanced on its edge, not the pointy end. The sword, that is.) It was the last Egyptian dance class of the term, and for me, regrettably, the last ever in Cambridge. Accordingly am adding lovely dance teacher to our entourage for the trip back to NZ, along with the lass who cuts my hair just how I like it, our amiable, non-noisy and just-on-the-friendly-side-of-nosy neighbours and Anna the librarian who runs Rhyme Time.
Tuesday, July 5
a mighty windActive few days: over the weekend managed to cram in two second birthday parties, a Canada Day barbecue, a 35 mile training ride and even fitted in a half day's woggling with some new music Shareware I'm trialling. And saw the breath-bating first stage of the Tour (yeah, like Lance is going to let popping out of a pedal at the starting ramp faze him). Mercifully, we managed to miss most of Live 8 - afflicting the comfortable all very well but five mins of Madonna being sung off the stage by her backing singer was quite enough affliction for this cringing liberal. Bono and Sir Paul use the same shade of Grecian 2000, I noticed, and the pairing of angstmeisters Coldplay with the Verve made me speculate on various other double acts from hell that would probably be banned under the Geneva Convention: Chris de Burgh and Michael Bolton, Dido and Alanis Morrissette spring, regrettably, to mind.
Sunday morning's bike ride actually meant to be a quick twenty, but I managed to wander off the main route into a sort of Hell of the North Lite - corrugated single lane backroad that went on so long I began to fear I'd strayed into another dimension - Truman Show effect further enhanced by three separate appearances of the same canary-yellow VeeBub, driven by the same woman, going in the same direction.
Continuing the surrealism theme into the working week, last night I played in a folk band called Swinging With The Chickens. We're doing a gig on Sunday. I have a dozen songs to learn very, very quickly.
Monday, July 4
monday megalomania momentI'd just like to make it clear that when I rule the universe, people who drop cigarette butts in children's playgrounds will be spending eternity picking them all up, one by one, after which they will be required to eat the fucking things. That is all.
Friday, July 1
ad nauseamHere's a phrase I never wish to hear again in any context: 'Yummy mummy'.
Here's a niche market: for parents who dress their toddlers in T-shirts proclaiming 'I Bite', I'm working on a version for the older sibling: 'I Still Bite, And My Parents Don't Think It's Cute Any More'.
