Hair

It’s not true, what they say about the smell of babies, or if it is, it’s a universal illusion perpetuated by a shampoo commercial.

In the dark, I kiss your small, hard, delicate head. I cup it in the palm of my hand and press my lips firmly against your temple, linger longer than is necessary, as though I could sink this message down into the roiling quicksand of your subconscious.

... love ...

I lob these words into your slumber, the sounds reverberating incomprehensibly: I love you, whispered furiously, like force could crack the shell and release their slippery innards, leak them into your dreams.

Your hair does not smell like baked bread, or clean sunshine or talcum powder – it smells of nothing. I inhale the absence of smell, breathing the warmth back into your hair. It contains a slight, melting whiff of the dinner we cooked earlier which, if anything, accentuates the perfect, nothing smell of you.

Love: I’m unlearning the words to every meaning I know.

Hartley: Six Months

Hello little you!

So, how does it feel to have lived half a year already? It must feel pretty good, because these days it’s not difficult to coax a smile out of you, and you’ve already learned to anticipate when something worth smiling for is about to come your way. I have only to touch the top button of my blouse or dress, for instance, before your arms and legs begin their mad cycling and pinwheeling, and you’re curled into position for a feed, slapping your thigh and hyperventilating with wild abandon, your eyes popping out of your head like you’ve just won the boob lottery and – lo and behold! – you have.

You’ve gone through so many changes these past few weeks that it would take me three Saturday mornings of you being out with Daddy in order to record everything, and that’s if I were able to discern some sort of continuity. These letters are some of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write because before you can put something into words, you must first suspend the dizzy, elemental churn of existence in order to peer inside and see what’s there. But every time I hit pause, the organic soup of the experience gains an inaccurate definition that defies description.

What is your mummy banging on about now, hmm? Let’s just start from the beginning, shall we? Any beginning will do.

This month I worked very hard at streamlining our lives in such a way as to eliminate any unnecessary noise that might obscure some of the things you’ve been trying to tell me. A week can seem quite long at the starting point when you’ve got so many hours in a day to fill, and up until recently, I’d been filling them with activities in the hopes that this would provide you with some structure. Rather than let your moods dictate events, as I should have been doing, I went about it the opposite way, sometimes to the detriment of your happiness.

It finally dawned on me that neither of us was benefiting from our strict, weekly lunches with the postnatal group. You’d had your hair pulled, nose tweaked, and head knocked far too often for my liking, and any concern I showed for you was met with derision from certain mummies who believed that I was only inhibiting your learning curve. I came away from these meetings with the impression that not only was I turning you into an oversensitive, socially inept, blubbering mess of a child, but if I didn’t get you to sleep in your cot right now, I’d be sharing a bed with you until you were old enough to grow a full set of sideburns and handlebar mustache. For your part, having to work your feeds and naps into these hours-long sessions made you miserable, and I think you dreaded Friday afternoons nearly as much as me. So one day I told everybody that we were going to stop coming, and that’s just what we did.


Since then, I’ve let you determine the shape of our day. Apart from an hour-long walk, which I’ve instigated for the good of us both, and usually around naptime, you pretty much take the lead from one hour to the next. Your daddy bought himself an iPhone, which gave us enough bargaining power to secure you a walker and a baby gym, both of which have accelerated your development in ways that have surprised all three of us.

One Saturday morning, your daddy took you out so that I could rest and then go out to a class that I take a few times a week. It was a very hot day, and when I got back, daddy was molded to the sofa and you were stripped down to your nappy, standing in your walker and clutching a bottle of water to your chest, watching television and stamping your little feet against the rug like a tiny happy ox. At this moment I had to concede that my helpless, anxious infant had somehow transformed himself into a strong, confident little boy.

We still spend many hours glued together, you and I, and sometimes when you see me leave the room you’ll cry like your heart is breaking because it seems like I might never come back. But there are also times when we’re going about our own business, happily coexisting and unconcerned about what the other is up to. At these times I’m usually eating a meal or tidying the flat while you watch Cbeebies in your walker whilst exercising your legs (stamp three times and then stretch onto your toes, stamp three times and stretch, &etc.) or play in your gym, where you pivot on your belly in order to reach your toys.


Oh yes – the pivoting. You used to hate being on your back, but you were never able to hold yourself up on your front for very long either. The walker provided some relief but this got old very quickly. One day I put you on your back under your gym in order to make the bed, and you started complaining right away so I had to be quick. Before I could make it back to you though, you’d stopped crying. I took that opportunity to hang up some clothes, and when I came back into the room, I saw exactly why you’d stopped crying: you were on your front!

I’d heard about this phenomenon of babies rolling onto their fronts but I never imagined that one day you would do this of your own accord. You hated being on your tummy so much that I always thought you’d be one of those babies that skipped the crawling stage altogether. The next time you rolled onto your front, me and your father were preoccupied with something on the television and so I missed it again. I needn’t have worried though – a few days later I watched you finish a feed, roll onto your front, do two massive farts and then fall asleep with your face buried in the mattress. You woke again a few minutes later, pushed yourself up and grinned at me like you’d just been awarded a gold medal for body surfing.

Now we can’t stop you from rolling over, and we have to be very careful at naptime and bedtime because you don’t always tell us that you’re awake. Instead, we’ll come in and you’ll be in the push-up position in your boo bag (which is what we call your sleeping bag), nodding your head like a sea turtle and stuttering with the effort of it all. The other night you woke up crying, and no wonder – I came in and found you propped up on your hands and thighs, only half awake and facing the opposite direction from where you’d fallen asleep. It seems the impulse to be on your front is beyond even your own control at times.


In terms of your verbal skills, except for when you’re sleepy and patting at my face while droning ‘ahhhhh,’ there is nothing very gentle about your elocutions. One day you stood up straight in your walker, flung your arms over your head and made a strangled roaring noise in your throat like a monster rising from the depths of the sea, or like a zombie getting ready to eat someone’s face off. You did this because something on the television excited you, and when you heard my laughter, you grinned at me and did another massive roar.

Your daddy was away at a conference and I searched fruitlessly for our mini video recorder because I was sure this was something you’d never do again. But a week later, when the three of us had stopped to take a break from some shopping we were doing in town, all of Starbucks turned to see what on earth was going on, as you stood on your daddy’s legs and roared at the posters tacked to the bulletin board above your head.

You’re just as boisterous about your interactions with inanimate objects. There are no half measures with you, and if you can’t fit something into your mouth, you are busy trying to smash it to bits. If there’s nothing to smash to bits, you resort to slapping the floor, the book, the walker tray or whatever is within reach, because the physical world must be subjected to some type of impact by your hand at all times. Nothing and no one is safe, not even your daddy’s prized iPhone.


That’s not to say you’re not incredibly sweet, because you are the sweetest, most engaging little person I have ever met. You match me smile for smile, and that smile still erupts across your whole entire face. Your silly gummy grins are infectious, and you offer them indiscriminately when we’re out together, whether or not mummy wants to have an interaction with a flushed, giggling indie girl on the tube or a hard-bitten clubber shouting into her mobile phone and wearing last night’s dress. You seem to bring out the best in everyone, and I have yet to encounter the face that doesn’t smile back at you and mean it.


I am much more relaxed about things than I used to be, and this has given you a chance to relax and enjoy the process of learning too. We’ve had more fun together since I stopped worrying about doing what’s right for you, and instead just started doing it. It’s a good thing, because today we are heading into the uncharted territory of solid food and I want you to be able to approach this adventure with as much confidence and enthusiasm as it deserves.

A whole lot has happened in six months, though the time has gone by far too quickly, as they said it would. I’m so thankful to have another six months of getting to know you before I go back to work. I wish it were longer.


Happy half-birthday, my stompy little ox. I love you more than you can know.

This imaginary hour

Bruce and I were having one of our many theological conversations (I hesitate to call them debates since neither of us are particularly invested in what we’re saying), and Bruce put to me the idea that since we can’t conceive of infinity, maybe there is a God. A rather A-Z analysis of a more complex idea he had, but this was the general thrust of his argument.

I countered with the theory that Infinity didn’t exist until humans came along and created it – an unfortunate by-product of an artificial notion of time.

This got me thinking, though, about Time. Paul Auster kicked it off really, with his wonderfully clear prose in Man in The Dark, and though he wasn’t writing anywhere in the vicinity of my thoughts (or perhaps my thinking wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity of his writing – that sounds right, actually), it was as though his words had suddenly cleared a path through the unruly jungle of consciousness itself and I realised:

We live every moment of our lives, as it’s happened and as it has yet to occur, simultaneously - all the time. This is to say that we are the clocks, and each event we have lived, and will ever live, has been etched into our faces from very early on, maybe from the moment we became self-aware. Maybe even those who lack self-awareness do this, as it’s not something to realise but is instead a state of being.

I haven’t thought it through any better than that and, in any case, I’m sure it’s a load of bollocks like everything else that shoots into my head. But today it helps me to think this for some reason.

I keep looking at families in the midst of their lives and wondering when we will ever reach this or that stage ourselves, always forgetting to recognise what is happening in the here and now.

It is so important to try and glean as many nutrients from this moment as you can, or you’ll be waiting a good long time for that imaginary hour to arrive.

Twitter you can't have these

I suspect that most of us read books so that we can try and come to terms with the nature of reality, which is to say, the end of all things.

Moments before the last line of a book flies up to obscure the windscreen, I close my eyes as one would before some ultimate, indelible impact.

Always I am afraid to say these kinds of things out loud, in case. Well...

Birthday

Today I turned 33! I’m the same age as Jesus was when he built a lovely oak cabinet or rose from the dead or did some other neat-o trick that only card-carrying mankind saviours can lay claim to. Fabulous!

Bruce is off from work and we have a great day planned – a shopping spree for some new clothes this afternoon, a short break (for me) from child rearing and then it’s dinner out with a big group of friends at Mela - a restaurant I’ve been dreaming fitfully of since I last ate there well over a year ago. I’m a very lucky gal, I know.

It’s also the anniversary of that fateful night Bruce and I fell in love at the karaoke bar in Soho, kicking off the maddest and best three years in the recorded and unrecorded history of me, so – happy day x 2.

Gosh, this poor neglected little blog! Ah well, Life’s got my full attention now at least.

Hartley: Five Months Old

Dearest Hartley,

You are five months old today and I almost wrote six, not because I’m willing the time to go by more quickly but because I’m very tired. For the past two weeks you’ve kept me awake, scrabbling at my back or my arm or my breast with your sharp little nails that I trim and trim but which still manage to retain their sharpness, scrabbling and squawking because you are hungry – hungrier than I can keep up with, even when I’m wide awake and cognisant of where my nipple is in relation to your little mouth. I’m sorting this out for us, but at the moment my brain is (baby) mush, and this is why when someone asks me how old you are, I have to round up to the nearest month. And sometimes I can’t even get that right.

One day when you grow up, you will come to know what I am like, and then you’ll be shocked to discover that not only was I considering feeding you baby rice before you reached six months of age, but that this decision came to me easily and without a note of dread. This is because motherhood is set up in a way that is conducive to how I learn – you never have to do anything new until you’ve talked it through with at least ten other people, at least six weeks prior to having to do it, and by then you feel like you’ve been mixing expressed milk with a cream-of-wheat-like substance for your heretofore exclusively breastfed infant your entire life.* Though in any case, sleep is much more important than doing things by the book, and this is why you and I still share a bed.


Your learning curve is much steeper than mine in many ways, and if you thought about how much an infant has to figure out in that first year of life, you would never balk at returning to school to complete a PHD, because there at least you have a frame of reference. Your frame of reference was a relentless vortex of sound and sensation you had yet to decipher as your own wrenching cries (I’m still so sorry about that), and the particles from that existential detonation are still travelling outward, making new constellations for you to try and connect up, to try and find sounds for, to name.

But I truly believe that in the midst of all this scary learning, you and I are actually good influences on one another. You have instigated so many positive changes in me over these last few months. I am cynical about many things, for instance, but I could never be cynical about you. When I disentangle myself from you after your last somnambulistic feed and stealthily tiptoe off to the next room to tell your father that you look like an angel, I really do mean what I say – clichés are what they are, and far be it from me to dispute the celestial nature of your lovely features while you sleep the sleep of one who has never tasted a moment of bitterness.

You are still rooty tooty in that way you started off being when you were my little anaconda, except now you could feasibly dislodge the bolts from your cot with that insatiable mouth of yours, and when I come back into the room from washing my hands, I usually find you on your side, your head practically meeting your heels as you contort yourself in an attempt to grab hold of - and root on - a package of nappies, a pillow, a rolled up blanket or something else I would have never thought you capable of getting your lips around. Whereas the idea of such a mouth - wet with dribble and sometimes worse - would at one time have inspired the purchase of a contamination suit, I actually feel privileged that you’ve appointed me as your personal chew toy, and when I see you coming for the side of my face or my nose with the intent of latching on in your breathy, slobbery way, I don’t duck. You can slime me any day, darling; In fact, I’d feel hurt if you didn’t.


I say that I’ve influenced you, and I’m sure that’s true, but actually, I can’t think of a single thing you do now that didn’t somehow arise from your own strong will. Sometimes I look at you and marvel at how you’ve managed to not only come away with the absolute best qualities your father and I possess but, by some incredible alchemy, translate these into a fully developed little person who constantly exceeds both our wildest dreams and expectations about what you would be like. I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t hear your father exclaim, Aw, he’s so lovely! which, you should know, is a complement of the highest order from a manly man who does not easily gush.

Your personality isn’t so much emerging as it is intensifying, and you have very definite ideas of what you like (which you reward with a massive grin or a screech of delight) and what you don’t (a warning noise like a whine that quickly becomes a scream I can only liken to that of a heroin in some murder mystery movie, as when the shower curtain is pulled back to reveal the man with the sharp knife). We’ve learned very quickly that it isn’t prudent to let you sit in your sling-back chair in front of your favourite programme for any longer than it takes us to wolf down our dinner, and in fact, I can hear you demonstrating this in the next room as your father desperately tries to entertain you while I bash this out.

That’s another talent you’ve picked up – the ability to tell the difference between real engagement and the artificial kind that gives us the opportunity to take a wee break. Your patience is becoming more limited and I find I have to step up my game in order to keep you from unnerving the neighbourhood with your shouty shoutingness. I’ve been told that this means you’re exceptionally bright, but then again, that advice came from the owner of a toy shop during a recession, so I’m not sure how much of it I should trust. Still, I tend to believe every good thing I hear about you because secretly (not so secretly) I believe all of it.


I could point to how strong you are becoming, only wanting to stand or sit up at every opportunity, and how vocal (your new favourite sound is ‘em,’ as in EMMMMMMM!, as in you’re not happy about being left on the bed while I run to wash my hands for the fiftieth time that day, and sometimes this sound turns into an indignant ‘mum’ sound, like EMMMUMUM, which I know not to interpret favourably), and how you will grab at whatever is within reach and immediately set about stuffing it into your mouth, but it seems you’re only doing all the things that babies are supposed to be doing, so I’ll hold off on designing the trophies for these particular accomplishments.

But know this: your mother is always watching you, and when she isn’t driven to laughter or tears because of something you said or did that day, she is more than likely welling up with pride because, in her humble opinion, she truly believes that she has the most beautiful, amazing and gifted infant of anyone, and that is more than enough reason to celebrate.


Happy fifth month, my boo-faced boo. We’re doing marvellously, you and I.

*After having read that weaning foods don’t necessarily lead to better sleeps, we’ve decided to postpone this move for now. I’m a bit relieved, actually.

Windows of opportunity opening

This morning Bruce took Hartley to work. I’ve known this for a week – ample opportunity to stay up late and worry about how to fit in every last thing I’ve wanted to do alone for the past four months. I woke at 4.30 and never did get back to sleep, which only contributes to the surreal, dreamlike feeling that being alone gives me now that I’m tied to a whole other person 24 hours a day.

After we parted ways at the end of our street - Bruce heading off to East Finchley Station with our small boy strapped to his front - I turned in the direction of our favourite restaurant, which serves up just about anything for the indecisive, and not too badly for what it costs, to have a solitary breakfast of porridge. Once there, I had sufficient time and space to notice that the service was unbearably slow, the porridge oats mixed in with fruit that was obviously cut up with the same knife used to trim garnish for the savory dishes, and that everybody else had one or more children, none of whom held a candle to my beloved, at least in my eyes.

Then it was back home where, in a state of urgency, I made a hot cup of coffee and contemplated also opening a cold (non-alcoholic) bottle of beer before dismissing this as an indulgence even yours truly couldn’t stomach. I ate a chocolate cupcake standing at the kitchen counter. I ate another cupcake, faster.

And here I sit, watching the sands of time luge madly down the gullet of a modestly sized hour glass and wishing I’d just made a plan and stuck to it. I’ve managed to read half a short story and lie supine on the bed for as long as I could stand to relax, and now I feel the need to move again. I was meant to visit the lido, which is finally open for the season, but the weather has taken a turn for the grey and, although warm, does not inspire outdoor swimming.

I would take photos, but my favourite subjects are being fawned over by men and women I don’t know, and anyway, doing so would probably eat up all my time, as it takes me a dog’s age to get the shot I want and then choose just one (sometimes two) from a spate of about thirty. I would write a proper blog post, but feel that I’m disciplined enough with my daily dishwashing and laundry, nappy changes and long walks around Alexandra Palace. I could put on a record and lounge about the place moodily, but cannot decelerate quickly enough to enjoy the experience, and anyway, it’s too messy for moody lounging.

On Monday Bruce and I are going to see Synecdoche, New York (against our better judgment and that of the reviewers) and then have a quick dinner somewhere local, to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. There are so many little windows of childless opportunity opening up, their fisheyes briefly flashing the world of double-handed typing, hot drinks and messy lunches before wincing shut against the glare of present-day responsibility. I won’t stress out too much about wasting time as long as I know they’re still there.

Well, I’d better head out and find something to do with the last bit of free time I have left. I did know I’d probably come running to the internet to mark the occasion, but it’s time to take it offline now.

Behind the scenes

This afternoon my friend’s nine-month-old daughter may or may not have swallowed a thumbnail-sized sunglasses detail she may or may not have chewed off the arm of a pair of sunglasses. The point is, the mother was up like a shot, banging her kid’s head against the rug in a frenzied attempt to determine if she was choking, then hanging her upside-down whilst gagging her with a finger to try and bring up the offending ornament as she screamed like a baby that was probably going to shit out a foreign object sometime in the next 24 hours.

Then on the phone to a friend with five children of her own: I mean, what do I do – do I take her to the doctor, get her x-rayed, have them open her up, what? By then the child is breastfeeding calmly and Hartley has stopped crying because he’s back to being the centre of my universe. We’re all waiting for an answer because none of us have been through this before, though we’ve definitely reached an unspoken consensus that probably she is fine, and anyway, the friend’s children have never swallowed anything they’re not supposed to.

This past week has been difficult. There are many things about being a new parent that I simply cannot think about too much or I would spend the bulk of my time crying instead of inventing new games for him to play and trying to remember the words to picture books so that I don’t have to keep turning them away from him to read what they say.

The bond I formed with him in order to survive the experience is the very thing that now makes it impossible to even fathom being away from him for more than an hour at a time. Every first-time mother goes through it I guess, but I don’t trust the world or anyone in it at the moment, not with Hartley, and if I could spend the next eighteen years with him strapped to my front without being crippled by the weight of him, well. Don’t tempt me.

Next week Bruce and I are celebrating our second-year anniversary and will leave Hartley with someone else while we catch a film and go out for an early dinner. This woman has known Bruce for a very long time, is practically like a second mother to him and has two children of her own. She was the first person outside the family to meet Hartley, having driven us home from hospital after everyone else resigned themselves to the fact that we were probably never getting out. She will make a very good babysitter, and will not call us to come home early at the first sign of trouble.

No, the point is, everyone keeps trying to get me to feed Hartley a breadstick, a baby cookie, you know, whatever. Leave him for an evening, a night, a whole weekend – take a break! These are just suggestions, and what’s the harm in a bit of food? It’s symbolic, see. I not only feel obliged to intercept the offer – sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who would. And I simply cannot follow Hartley around for his entire life fending off the well-meaning gestures of others.

I don’t want a break, or a breadstick, or to reclaim my life. I just want to stop feeling so afraid.

Hartley: 4 Months Old

I can’t remember who said that a baby isn’t really a person until (s)he learns to laugh, but your mummy must be only half human, as she finds most of the things people say not very funny and spends the bulk of her time with other mummies only pretending to laugh. You, on the other hand, need only go from a fairly placid expression to that maniacal grin of yours and I just can’t help myself - I am ROTFL (you’ll not only know what that means one day but will probably find it rather dated). And I guess on the 20th of April at approximately 1600 hrs you decided to get all personable, because that is when I heard you laugh for the first time.

You are easily bored at home and even though we’d been out for most of the day and I hadn’t once resorted to putting you in front of the television, I was running out of ways to entertain you. I started lifting you over my head in a kind of rhythmic, vertical airplane ride so that I could keep my eye on the Gilmore Girls and suddenly you made a noise that sounded so perfectly like a baby laughing I thought you might be hiding a tiny tape recorder of sound effects in your nappy (thank you for not doing ‘gun going off’ or ‘woman screaming,’ by the way). I brought you down to face level and studied you for a moment before throwing you back into the air, again and again, making you laugh and laughing with you until my arms ached.


Try as I might, I could not for the life of me get you to replicate that sound for daddy, not even after a feed and a lovely nap and me saying, Wait, watch, I think he’s going to do it! while I pumped you into the air for the twentieth time and you sucked your fist at me with mild interest.

Of course since then, we’ve been doing our best to understand just what it is about us you find so amusing. Sometimes I’ll be feeding you and typing an email over your head and for no discernible reason you’ll stop mid-suck to look up at my face and laugh. I find this unbearably sweet and always tickle your chin and kiss the folds of your neck whenever you do this, so possibly you’re just discovering better ways to get our attention – ways that do not involve indignant squawking, which you always resort to if I leave you to amuse yourself while I dry dishes or put away groceries or hang out the washing. I think you are expressing your resentment at having to watch your mummy occupy a traditionalist role within our household. We may need to hire a maid.


You’re growing in so many ways now, and so quickly, that I’d need to completely deconstruct you in order to tease them all out. I won’t attempt this, but I will itemise some things I don’t ever want to forget in case you outgrow them before next month:

• The way your squawks of indignation turn to excited shrieks as you see me fumbling at my nursing bra. If I reach you before you’re good and ready to pack up your pity party, you’ll make a few more noises of despair, even though my nipple is in your mouth and you’re already contentedly feeding.
  

• The way you lace your little fingers together while you eat

• The way it sometimes takes you a few seconds to calculate whether or not the occasion of having woken from a deep sleep warrants a cry and, once you’ve decided that yes, it does, the way your bottom lip pops out and you let out a staccato waah that sounds more like baah before bringing down the house with your hoarse, boyish wails. Forgive us – we laugh because we love these. We practically stumble over ourselves to make you feel better, although once I rocked you in my arms while daddy filmed you.

• The way you smile at me whenever I appear in your line of vision. The way you smile extra hard at daddy, now that you realise there are two of us on your team, and that one of us is not afraid to hang you upside-down from his knees.

I could go on and on, but I don’t think I can convince you to nap for much longer, and anyway, I hope that you’ll keep doing these things that are unique to you, and that I won’t have to resort to writing them down so as not to forget them, at least for a little while.

In the meantime, please know that your smile and your laughter mean more to me than anything, because sometimes it hits home that you are doing these things for me and then I feel sorry that you got stuck with such a silly, frightened, self-conscious mother who has to push through all her insecurities just to get you out of the house and around to all the people who want to see and play with you.

But it’s hard to stay anxious when the most beautiful little boy in the entire world is beaming at you with his whole face, and then you know that you musn’t be doing too badly.


Happy fourth month, little smiler. I love you hugely.

Just trying something out

Do you know how hard it is to find an embedded player that will play stuff on your website for free? When you have a four-month-old boy on your hands?

More on that later, when we've gotten over our respective illnesses and I've found a bit of time to be serious.

In the meantime, please have a listen:

Recipe #1 – Snoopy Sno-Cones

Ingredients:
Snoopy Sno-Cone flavoured syrup
Ice

You’ll need a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine for this recipe. Dig out your old SSCM from storage or, if you led an impoverished childhood or live in some backwoods place like Europe, buy one off eBay.

Make sure you clean all the parts with warm, soapy water, because whether or not you have a second hand SSCM, you don’t want manky old 1980s dust in your sno-cone, now do you? No you do not. I’ll see you back here in a few.

Instructions:

Remove the rooftop (aka Snoopy) from the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. Why is Snoopy wearing a red hat that looks vaguely like the product? I don’t know. What does a Charles Schultz character have to do with an ice treat anyway? We could stand around debating the philosophical nature of capitalism and the exploitation of childhood nostalgia all day long, but the point is, your ice is melting, so try and keep up.

Put your ice cubes down the chimney (I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry – he never sleeps there) and drive that Snoopy roof home. This is what you’ll use to keep the ice in place while you hold the dog house with your feet in order to get a purchase on that flimsy plastic crank. Now get cranking! Do you remember that part in Edward Scissorhands where he is making an ice sculpture on the lawn of Winona Ryder’s parents’ house for their Christmas party and his scissor hands are flying around the block of ice at such a rate that the ice chips are spinning off it in big clouds like snow and Winona is dancing around in the blizzard of ice chips in slow motion like a ballerina princess? Yeah – SO RETARDED. Am I right?


Anyway, where were we. Oh yes – cranking the ice. So keep cranking out that ice until Snoopy’s butt hits the roof of his house and the crank turns effortlessly in your hand. If you’re lucky enough to have managed not to lose the plastic shovel, try your best to scoop that shit out into a cup, otherwise just use a spoon. It’s less authentic but we’re not five anymore (oh, unless you are five, in which case: hey little guy! Does your mummy know you’re online? Well you’d better ask her to help you ‘cause I sure as shit can’t afford the legal fees if you go grinding your knuckles off or choke on an ice cube or something) and, anyway, the end result is the same.

So now that you’ve got your tiny, hard won cup of ice chips, it’s time to squeeze out the syrup from your snowman, who obviously buys his hats from the same crap store as Snoopy – maybe they were two for a dollar. Oh hey look, it’s Woodstock! Painted on like some cheap afterthought! Just for a change, hey Woody? Well, it was always about the dog, so don’t look too surprised. At least they painted you twice, though I see by your exclusive lack of sno-cone that you still haven’t managed to assert yourself. This is why you’ll never amount to anything more than a sidekick, even if you went on American Cartoon Character Idol and met Ryan Seacrest in person. Your journey ends here my yellow-feathered friend, so why don’t you just dry your tears and sing us out, yeah?

You know that shovel doubles as a spoon, don’t you? Oh man, what a saddo you were. Well, enjoy. Don’t eat the yellow sno.

(Makes: 1 big sno-cone or 5 Woodstock-sized cones)

Simon's advocate

I don’t understand it when people complain about the lauding of Susan Boyle’s great voice. You’re damned if you do in this knee-jerk reactionary world, and it’s a bit naive to blame the superficial nature of eyeballs. Television gives the counterculture what it wants (ugly people doing well in the media) and that demographic turns around and reinforces the very thing it’s fighting by insisting that ugly people only get recognition for being talented because . . . they’re ugly. Pardon me, but didn’t you just finish saying that the media is obsessed with good looking people who possess good looking voices? So what’s the problem here?

One thing North Americans don’t realise about the British (if I may) is that supporting the underdog is not only encouraged – it’s deeply embedded in the culture. They appreciate talent in whatever form it takes, and don’t get me wrong – if there’s an opportunity to see a pretty girl get her kit off, they’re all for it. But if it comes too easily to someone (and what comes more easily to a good looking person than good looks?) then they don’t want to know. Plainly put, the British public, like virtually anyone, takes notice of glamour, but when it comes to showing support, they will always back the underdog.

Quite apart from this, don’t for a second imagine that such support occurs inside a vacuum – most of us are smart enough to recognise when we are being manipulated, and many of us allow for this manipulation to take place willingly. How many of you have ever bought shampoo, a lip gloss or a nice pair of shoes? Anyone highlight a zit with a daub of poo or leave the house wearing their grandfather’s stinky sweater vest recently? Not even to make a point.

To be subversive is to first self-consciously allude to the rule to which you are making an exception. You cannot stand up for the ugly guy unless you own up to the fact that as a society, we allow ourselves to be had by the cult of beauty over and over again. The reason nobody is surprised when a beautiful person shows great talent is because the correlation is constantly crammed down our throats. Beauty is often just the icing on the cake – any cake – and it’s a dessert we’re more than a little sick of tasting, even if we can’t help ourselves at times.

We see that notion turned on its head to the extreme (and who can say that oddball Ms Boyle isn’t sitting on the opposite side of the spectrum from someone like Katy Perry?) and we can’t help but stand up and cheer. Even Susan Boyle recognises this. Why on earth do you think she came on the show? Paul Potts already blazed this trail back in 2007 and it’s opened the doors to celebrity for the less-than-sightly in Great Britain ever since. It’s the Paul Pottses, Susan Boyles and – most recently – Greg Pritchards of the world that bring us back down to earth and remind us that raw talent, which we perhaps more blindly admire, simply does not discriminate.

While you were sleeping

It seems my infant son is only happy to sleep if I am lying sleeplessly next to him. That’s fine, I tell him, I wasn’t using that last bit of sanity anyway.

I tell him this in my head, because if I said it out loud he would wake up and I wouldn’t be able to create these useless 4.00 AM comics.

This one is for friends and family back home.

Keeping my day job

Yesterday was Bruce’s birthday, and in spite of a cold shared between the three of us (and a few sleepless nights due to some nasty infant teething issues), we managed to make it out of the house and into the city to meet up with all our friends for a really lovely time at one of our favourite restaurants. I haven’t been in the company of childless adults for quite a while, so the fact that I ended the evening wearing a napkin on my head can probably be chalked up to that, or to the 1.5 units of alcohol I drank once the little man had fallen asleep. Or maybe I’m just turning into my father.

Against all odds, Hartley is still enjoying his afternoon nap without my distinguished presence, so I’m taking this opportunity to do a few small things that take very little time (in case he wakes up) and which I’ve been putting off (because they are nearly impossible to accomplish when he is awake). This is item number two (item number one was to sit back on the sofa and, reclining thusly, eat an apple), so hello there! I should really revert back to the lazy, list-making way of generating blog posts until I’m a bit more freed up, but it all flies out of my head the instant I put fingers to keys (see what I did there? Huh? Huh? Mhmm.).

Ah, there he goes. Well, here’s a comic I made that will probably only make sense to one of you. You can make your own comics too, just follow this link here!

To be continued

I wouldn’t use the term ‘schedule,’ though let’s just say that it’s become a trend for Hartley to fall asleep for the last 2 minutes of an outing, a nap which he will happily continue in his pram near the open back door so long as I can manage to get the entire operation inside without too much hassle.

Given the transient nature of baby trends, I am even more hesitant to decree this unexpected period of rest ‘me time,’ except that I need to start thinking seriously about writing – writing anything at all – before the urge is entirely discouraged out of me.

Lately I feel no impetus to turn every last detail of my life into a blog post. Partially this is due to the fact that I can’t seem to keep on top of processing the rapidly expanding details, nor locate a familiar frame of reference by which to pin them down. Partially I just can’t be bothered. My inner life is not so interesting anymore – at least not in the way you’d want to magnify, and Hartley’s inner life is mainly only interesting to me. Even so, I scramble for moments to myself to record what I can - moments that are quickly snatched away before an epiphany of any kind can resolve.

I read the headlines every day, and bits from the Guardian on weekends, but events only serve to illustrate how specifically focused my life has become and, as such, untranslatable. Motherhood is truly not of this world – we walk around duck ponds and grocery stores, form bonds of convenience and sing songs without a shred of dignity or cynicism. Conversations are always to be continued, and you continue them with about as many mothers as you come across until you are satisfied, except you are rarely ever satisfied.

See? It’s fairly nonsensical. You have to be there.

But that’s not to say I’m not having the time of my life, or that I’ve capped my pen and welded it shut for all eternity. There are plenty of people with children who write (you only have to type ‘baby’ and ‘blog’ into a search engine to see how many) and plenty of people with children who write (how often are works of fiction dedicated to children?), so I hold out hope that one day I too will fall into one of these camps.

So now that we got that straight. I have a grizzling infant to rescue.

On the fly

I’m typing this in my underthings, my clothing in a damp pile on the floor beside me, the two-for-five-quid tulips still wrapped in their grocery store plastic and dripping onto the hardwoods. I met Bruce from the bus and handed off Hartley, fast asleep in his pram, so that I could hurry away to M&S and then home for a bit of writing, and got caught up behind a large group of gangly teenaged boys wearing nothing but jumpers - smoke and dirty laughter and enigmatic snatches of improvised rap emanating off them - and boasting their indifference to the wall of rain that soaked those of us without umbrellas (just me and these boys, it turns out). Ergo, no time for decorum.

This afternoon Hartley and I made our way to Crouch End to meet up with the postnatal group, which has turned into a themed potluck lunch that someone agrees to host on a Friday, and which generates much emailing throughout the week about numbers and types of food and timings. It all sounds a bit mad and serious, and it is, at least until you get there, and then someone hands you a cup of coffee and you try to plunk your infant down on a play mat and two seconds later you’re joggling him about while he cries at the new surroundings and you’ve got your boob out and someone else is taking the coffee off you and handing you a biscuit instead and before you know it you’re all in the midst of feeding and distracting and calming but, more importantly, babbling about your babies and the week you’ve had. It’s strangely cathartic.

Apart from shamelessly exposing my breasts in mixed company, I’m learning more and more about my baby through the impressions of others, as our closeness sometimes obscures all but his most obvious qualities. Three main characteristics tend to crop up again and again: serious, intense, sensitive. I have tried my best to keep things light in my handling of him, and in my dealings with situations when he’s around, but it seems that nature has taken a stronger hold and, despite my best efforts, I am raising a child who shares my misgivings about the physical world and the people that inhabit it after all.

Morag suggested I try him on the baby swing, and after attempting to read the warning embossed on its side, Hartley proceeded to muddle over the purpose of this unlikely, swinging chair, first questioning its structural integrity and then simply frowning at the soft little toys that adorned its handle and which trembled gently just in his line of vision. He gave the vibrating sling seat and padded cloth jungle gym the same doubtful consideration and only seemed to relax once I’d taken him out of these and piled him, rather uncomfortably I would have thought, onto my knee. Nobody knows that Hartley has a wicked sense of humour, a great love of play and an abundance of affection for me and for Bruce and for his own toys, because he only displays these qualities at home. I suppose he’s just being honest.

Anyway, I meant to come home and write a good long post about something or other, but Bruce has already called from the bus and I could hear Hartley crying away in the background, so it won’t be long before they're here. I’m thinking I might have time for a two-minute lie down on my back in the middle of the floor, because a break in tradition is usually about as good as a holiday. Except I hear a key in the door.

Hartley: Three Months Old

Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

- Kahlil Gibran

The art of sneaking away with both hands free to type these missives is nearly equal to the task of writing them, as you’re much more savvy about naptime than you once were, and although my thoughts rest almost exclusively with you now (with the important exception of your father, of course), conjuring something intelligible from these with the spoils of motherhood still booming away in my breast is about as fathomable some days as building a church out of feathers and wind.



It occurred to me earlier this week that I could by now compile a dictionary of your sounds, the meaning of which, though they most certainly elude most others, speaks directly to my heart and makes me babble to you in tones that would have my nineteen-year-old self blushing with shame and burying her nose in a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow which, between you and I, she’s really only pretending to understand.

I didn’t know then that one day I’d become the linguist tasked with the important job of interpreting such obscure expressions as ‘owb’ and ‘aidoo’ which, as far as I can tell, are variations of ‘oh’, as in: Oh. I see you’ve got your face buried in my neck. Okay then. Lately I can’t seem to keep my face out of your neck, my lips off the soft skin of your belly and the slightly sticky soles of your feet, and even when you are asleep and I know that waking you would spell disaster, I can no more deprive your silky cheeks of kisses while you nap than I can keep myself from eating an entire bag of Sour Strawbs once they’ve been opened.



I think we must have reached the honeymoon phase of your infancy, because everything you do now – from those wide, gummy smiles that appear out of nowhere, even though you may have been shrieking with rage over the Springtime bumper on the Cbeebies channel only moments before, to the hysterical crying that could mean just about anything and that you do with such ridiculous charm that I can’t help but savor it a bit, even while I’m trying to make it stop – fills me with pure, unadulterated joy. You’ve come to associate me with such visceral integrity as well, and will often look up from a feed to consider my face and then offer me an unexpected peek at that lovely, shivering tongue of yours.



I have never felt so uninhibited, so given over to laughter and smiles as I have since I’ve known you, and you should know that this is a rare and wonderful thing you’ve inspired. Your lack of guile once frightened me, but I’m learning that although it renders you utterly vulnerable to the evils of humankind as I sometimes perceive them, it also reminds me of how beautiful the foundation of love and trust really is, and it fills me with awe when I think of how effortlessly these exist in you. I hope I will never do anything to bruise that inherent trust you have in me, or cast into doubt my love for you.



“Your children are not your children,” Kahlil Gibran famously wrote, and even though you are completely reliant on me, I know that this is true: that you do not belong to me in the most fundamental sense, even now. Your daddy and I are just the ones who are lucky enough to assist you in learning to be the lovely little person you already are. This is why, when you reward me with that enthusiastic grin of yours, I feel humbled, proud, and compelled to tell you Thank you, oh thank you! each and every time.



“You are the bows from which your children/ as living arrows are sent forth,” he continues, and although my trained eye must ultimately guide you towards “the mark upon the path of the infinite,” right now I am aiming that arrow straight back at myself so that I can feel the point go through me again and again. At least for a little while.



Happy third month, little boo. You’re awake again and I’m coming to see you.

All the web's a stage

And on Twitter, Hamlet faces a pretty major quandry...

Only this

Some prog rock meant to calm cot rage drones uselessly under the screams of two hysterical infants who lie beneath a strobing green play structure, Daliesque in proportion and sweetly butchering the Blue Danube at unhealthy decibels, over which Effy and I must shout at one another and, more pleadingly, at the babies, and I wonder what the neighbours must think but then realise that I stopped caring about that months ago.

Yes, months!

Two nuns walked into a bar

Yesterday I went for a pelvic exam and I'm pretty sure the gynecologist hit on me. I know that sounds like an April Fool's joke but this isn't something I find funny, and even though I talked it through with Bruce and we agreed that I might have misinterpreted her, the aftertaste of the experience remains unpleasant.

Even before she made the questionable comment as I undressed behind a curtain for my internal, I got the distinct impression that this squat, middle-aged Spanish woman was trying to flirt with me. The first words out of her mouth had to do with my appearance, and not in the 'you look well for having just had a baby' way that most people like to grace the post-pregnant. No, she said something along the lines of 'You look very smart, very nice. I like the way you look. It's effortless, I know, but that's why it works.'

I know - what a monster, Friday, she paid you a compliment - but within the context of the environment and what I was there for, it was a little inappropriate. I was a bit flattered nevertheless because at this point I wasn't under any impression that she was being anything but pleasantly chatty.

As the conversation continued, though, I started to feel like she was looking at me, I mean really looking, in a way that was almost leering. She asked me details about my life that had nothing to do with pregnancy or babies, all the while making eye contact that seemed rife with meaning, though I couldn't discern the message. I remember thinking to myself that I really didn't want this woman anywhere near my business, but then she was inviting me to the exam table and I was remonstrating myself for being so silly, because really. A sexual predator in gynecology?

But then, just as I'd pulled the curtain to, I heard her say "I really like your accent, Friday. I find it sexy." My head reeled and I thought, But surely she doesn't mean... I laughed nervously and said "Oh, really?" "Yes, I do, I find it sexy," she confirmed. And then she came through to do the internal, asking me about Canada while I lay trapped and exposed beneath a stiff, white sheet that had been washed and pressed a million times before, for a million different people. It was awful.

I waited until we were in the lift to tell Bruce because I didn't know how he'd react and I wasn't even sure what had just happened, if anything. He asked me if I wanted to lodge a formal complaint and I said I didn't. We tried to rationalise her behavior - inappropriate yes, but perhaps open in a way that bespeaks a certain European sensibility - insensitive but benign, without intent.

And realistically, why would someone risk their career on such a ridiculous stunt? She's probably just like that, in which case she's like that with everyone. If there was anything behind it, chances are I'm not the first person she's done that to, and hence she'd already be out of a job.

On the way home, I bought myself a new dress from Frocks Away ("Love the accent," the saleswoman said to me in passing, reinforcing my earlier conviction) which sort of saved the afternoon for me. But as I said, that whole experience still resonates unpleasantly, regardless of what she meant.