I am in the process of re-organising my life. Well, I say "re", as if it had ever been organised in the first place. I have to decide which of my belongings comes with me to the new hovel,and which Precious Things will go into storage against the time when I can emerge from a cellar near Lark Lane, and expand again. I wish I could do this with the contents of my head. Large amounts of useless information are untidily hanging around in my brain. For example, I have complete recall of every outfit I have ever worn; and most of the lyrics of most of the songs I have ever heard. I can also remember in full every single slighting remark or unflattering comparison made about me since I was two. They would need a storage unit of their own. On the plus side, I find I have forgotten entire relationships.
One of my many deficiencies is the inability to operate any mechanical device. This ranges from the humble tin opener ( fingers cut,blood-covered corned beef) to the lordly photocopier ( grinding noises, smoke, costly engineers,opprobrium). So what I have been doing is buying a new thing when I discover that the first thing doesn't work. Although there may be faults on both sides. I now own several hoovers, two coffee-makers, a remarkable item for shaving one's legs, (which chased me round the room when I plugged it in), a wall of microwave ovens, several lamps, a steamer, and a drawerful of eyelash curlers and hair roddy articles. Accompanying these items is a large box which contains the history of the mobile phone in 100 mobile phone-shaped objects, many many cables, wires, plugs and chargers. I am too scared to throw these out,in case they turn out to be vital. I have appealed to the Giant Boy to sort it. Although congenitally incapable of finding matching socks, he is stunningly competent when it comes to small black plastic boxes and all that jazz. He has taken them away from me now,and is currently building a spaceship in his room with them. It's galling to a Ladyist like myself to admit, but it is a Boy Thing. From when he was a Giant Baby, he enjoyed breaking stuff but was able to fix it too. I hate and fear all inanimate objects, and have been injured by them frequently,usually to the accompaniment of hilarity and callous mirth from onlookers.I once caught my left breast in an ironing board. On two separate occasions I have been wounded by deckchairs, and had to go to Outpatients when a candelabra broke my toe. Another incident saw me jamming a pushchair in a revolving door,sending a startled baby flying into the cosmetics department of Johnny Lulu. When you are put in charge of a baby, by the way, one of the many things you are not told is that they have masses of gear, and all of it is lethal. There are car seats, which have an array of straps and buckles that would baffle an expert in Advanced Bondage. Amusingly, all cars have different belt arrangements. Some work with your car seat. Most don't. There are highchairs, there are harnesses, there are bottle-sterilising kits.There are folding things,and things with hinges. I screwed them all up, horribly. Firstly
by ineffectual poking and flailing, then by resorting to blind and furious force. Many a cabdriver has watched, poker-faced, as I tried to cram the GB and his seat into an inappropriate space, and buckle him firmly into the ashtray. Additionally, when you are a new mother, you have just had an experience akin to a nervewracking high-speed car crash compromising the entire lower body.It is likely that you have not slept for several months. So this is the very time to attempt to acquire some new and complex skill in wrangling unfamiliar objects that fold away,or in my case,don't. Every now and again, they publish those amusing lists to show how many people each year are in accidents involving cupcakes, or pyjamas. I am unsurprised.These people are my people. The wonder is that we manage to breed at all.When I say that my son was an "Accident", that is precisely what I mean. I was one too. So he is second,or possibly third, generation Accident. We ought to have our own zone.When I see one of those signs saying "There have been 120 Accidents here in 2011", I see it as throwing down the tribal gauntlet. "I can soon get those numbers up", I think. So look around East Albert Road, in the early part of September, for a sign reading "Danger, Ninny At Large". Just don't get too close.
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