Out to lunch

Today I decided I would be ready to meet a friend for lunch; she with her baby and me with mine. Hers was sleeping and slept throughout. Mine was not. Not for a moment. At the beginning he was happy enough in his pram looking around at all the contrasting colours, I believe that’s all they can see at this stage, but they can hear and boy, were there lots of sounds to listen to! Among them mom’s voice (“Can you believe that Checkers charges so much more than everywhere else for nappies! I mean, it’s robbery!”); other strange voices; trucks vrooming; birds chirping carsbeepingdogsbarking-andallthoselovelycontrastingcolours! Oooh OOOH OOOOVER STIMULATION! “Sshhhhh. Take the dummy baby. You like your dummy. Dummy is nice. Dummy is good for boys. There we go!” Whew! I turn to my friend in an attempt to pick up on the conversation thread but it’s soon in tatters and all I’m picking up is the dummy off the floor. “Waiter… Waiter! WAITER! Hi, excuse me, I need a bowl of boiling water, please. As quickly as possible.” But he doesn’t understand 'as quickly as possible' and takes an interminably long time so I tell another waiter and then the owner about my bowl of water and suddenly all these bowls of hot water start arriving at the table but after dunking the dummy and trying to plug my son with it, it becomes clear that he definitely does not want the dummy at all. I take crying baby out of pram and shoggle him by the table a bit but I feel uncomfortable surrounded by sophisticated lunching ladies and suited men, so we escape to a quiet shady area where I walk him up and down while intoning soothing words and my friend sits eating her lunch alone (but for her angelic sleeping daughter).

In the end I just ask for my lunch in a takeaway container, gather all my belongings, load us into the car and head for the sanctity and sanity of home.

Maybe we weren’t so ready…