Travels With My Pram

The worst vice, as the old cliché goes, is advice. And most of what I heard during the nine months of Karen’s pregnancy was worse than useless. At the bottom of a very deep and dingy barrel I encountered an occasional colleague who, upon finding out our baby was to be female, imparted the following pearl: “A GIRL? Nah, you don’t want A GIRL, mate, too much trouble in later life they are. ‘Ave a boy, much better.”

Among the few nuggets of sensible advice was this from Steve, the ever-friendly and cheery husband of Janine and father of twin boys who, like me, is sharing the child-rearing chores:

“Whenever I felt like screaming because they were screaming, I just put ‘em in the pram and walked and walked and walked.”

Sound advice, as it turns out, providing both stimulation and fresh air to help baby sleep, and buzzy endorphins for the frazzled parent. I have taken to it so well that Karen now calls me Prambo.

As a result of my long rambles, I have covered parts of London hitherto unknown to me. Enclaves such as Herne Hill in south London, a kind of neither-Dulwich-nor-Brixton netherworld that should work but doesn’t. In an ideal world it could be as posh as Dulwich with the vibrancy of Brixton. Unfortunately, it comes out as posh as Brixton with all the vibrancy of Dulwich.

What blows away the pervading flavour of south London anonymity, however, are the shops. Particularly the shops on Half Moon Lane, where almost every one is concerned with children. Books for kids, clothes for kids, toys for kids, travel systems (that’s prams to you and me), you name it. The final shop in the parade is an estate agent and, as it hoved into view, I was almost surprised to find real properties in the window and not a selection of Wendy Houses with conservatories and off-road parking for pedal cars.

Nearby is a shop called Starburst, which does natty pop-art-ish tops and baby grows. We already have the blue Elvis and the pink Audrey Hepburn numbers, bought in the first flush of the let’s-treat-baby-like-Barbie stage. This stage passed for me when I turned my back for two seconds only to look back and find that Isobella had spewed up all over the face of the King of Rock’n’Roll. Gentle reader, in that moment I began to doubt her paternity, I really did.

Hanging on the rack was an all in one in devil’s red emblazoned with the legend “Drama Queen” in gothic lettering. I laughed out loud and reached for it, when an image flashed through my mind: it was four o’clock in the morning on what F. Scott Fitzgerald once described as a dark night of the soul. Little Macbeth - as played by my daughter Isobella – had murdered sleep. Her air raid siren scream of tired/wet/hungry/windy all-at-once was ripping the arsehole out of the sacred night. Would a devil’s red all-in-one with the words Drama Queen be quite so funny in this context, I wondered.

I put the garment back, made my excuses and left.