I've moved!

Hello everyone,

Thanks so much for visiting my blog. I've actually moved to Wordpress where I hope you'll see a vague improvement. There's still work to do but I'm getting there...

www.postcardsfrompramstead.com

I hope to see you there!
All the best.

Is it a bird? Is it a...?

"It's a plane! Bye bye plane!" are the boy's favourite words, accompanied by squeals of genuine delight, open-mouthed amazement and vigorous waving.

A while ago we looked into moving to west London so I could cut down my commute and have the luxury of getting up after the radio breakfast shows have started (much as Radio 4's Farming Today really addresses my daily crop rotation issues). We rambled around Richmond, chugged around Chiswick and tootled around Twickenham. But for all that these areas have some gorgeous areas and actual, semi-affordable houses, there was one big problem: the planes. Try as we might to ignore them, the picnic at Kew Gardens where I could only hear half of H's musings thanks to the home-bound holidayers overhead sent us scurrying back to NW3 and early starts.

No planes here! Or so I had conned myself into believing until the boy started speaking and pointing; pointing out that, in fact, we do live under the flight path. There are hundreds of them, all day long. The boy can hear a lone aircraft over a boiling kettle or the Hoover, looking at me with excitement for confirmation that it is indeed yet another aircraft. I sometimes wonder if he conceals a pair of binoculars in his mop of blond hair as he can spot a pinprick of a plane in the widest of skies (and clouds are inevitably a source of some disappointment).

I bought him the sweetest airplane mobile the other day which he adores (and makes bedtime marginally less traumatic -bonus!), fueling his obsession yet further. But as a car-free household that struggles up the hill each week with the recycling, buys local/fairtrade/organic/whatever and is a mere 10 year wait away from being owners of our very own allotment, I'm not sure how we've produced a16 month old that would vote for a third runway at Heathrow...

Silent Sunday

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Four Easters

If you've ever seen the film 'Four Christmases', you'll have a vague idea of how my Easter panned out. Now I'm no Reese Witherspoon and H is no Vince Vaughn (thank God), but their frantic attempt to get around all four sets of divorced parents to celebrate the holiday is grimly familiar. H and I were both born to entirely incompatible couples who, in their own good time, saw the error of their ways and parted company.

They've all now found the yin to their yang and have remarried (some more than once, but we'll gloss over that). When we were younger, the emotional upheaval was more than made up for with double the presents on birthdays and at Christmas, extra pocket money and other guilt-induced treats. Now, however, it's just an administrative nightmare. I'll leave you to imagine the logistics of the top table at our wedding; it was so long that it may have spanned different time zones (a sure-fire way to keep any potentially warring factions apart, at least).

Once we were married I had to face the fact that I could no longer just enjoy Christmas and Easter with my own (two sets of) parents but had to join H's (two sets of) parents to celebrate with them as well. It was bad enough when it was just the two of us enduring the lonely drive up the A1 on Christmas day, but with a baby it's so much worse. For a start, Little Boy has increased our popularity tenfold; he is most definitely the star of the show and everyone wants a piece of him. He's the first grandchild, so I get it, but I can think of better ways of spending our bank holidays than criss-crossing the north of England with nursery rhymes on loop. There are times when I think it would be rather nice to just hole up somewhere cosy and receive guests like a monarch of some sort. That said, we had a lovely Easter. It's almost always worth the effort and at least we don't have to worry about cooking. And we drove home with double the amount of Easter eggs than we should have. Some things never change.

Silent Sunday

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Happy birthday to me!

Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday dear...Well, you get the idea. Another year older and still none the wiser. My boys did a very good job at distracting me from thinking about the extra candle on the cake (or in my case, almond croissant), helped hugely by the beautiful sunshine we had today. It started well with a splendid breakfast with a huge pot of Yorkshire tea and some lovely presents, followed rather too quickly by a delicious lunch at Marine Ices in Chalk Farm. The little boy did us the courtesy of falling asleep so we could enjoy a large glass of wine and far too much pizza in peace.

The rest of the day would have been a suitable birthday treat for a five-year-old: an impromptu trip to the zoo and ice cream. Still, I couldn't have had more fun if I'd tried. Watching the little one blow kisses to the llamas and wave furiously at the giraffes filled my heart with joy. I'm sure the days of long boozy birthdays in the pub will roll around again one day, but for now this is my idea of a happy birthday.

So here's what I've learnt this year:

• If your baby is under six months and you're not breastfeeding, don't tell anyone. They will only judge.
• If your baby is over six months and you are breastfeeding, don't tell anyone. They will only judge.
• Whatever it is, it's only a phase. It will pass.
• All babies will sleep through the night. Eventually.
• "They" have a lot to say about how you should bring up your baby and live your life (I'm looking at you, Gina Ford). "They" are more often than not entirely wrong.
• The best beauty treatment in the world is sleep, and lots of it.
• Your baby will still love you whether you choose a nanny, a nursery, a childminder or you brave all the childcare yourself.
• There is nothing in the world as wonderful as your baby's dance of utter joy when you enter the room.

And here's what I'm still working on:

• How to keep the in-laws happy (also known as 'how to please the unpleaseable').
• How to strike the right balance between work and family and not feel constantly guilty. This one is going to run and run...

Speaking of running, I ended the day with a quick run to the Heath and back. There were a lot of joggers out tonight, no doubt having the same thoughts as me having seen the coverage of the London Marathon this morning: "Yeah I could've done it but, you know, chose not to. I'll enter the ballot next year when I've got more time to train". I haven't run a marathon for six years now, but maybe it's time to bite the bullet and sign up. At least that would be one way to try to hold back the years.

'Contracts for crawlers!'

So H comes home the other day proudly brandishing a flyer advertising classical concerts for babies. It's held somewhere in our 'hood, on a Wednesday (when I happen to be off work), and costs ten pounds. Ten pounds!

"So are you going to take him then?", he asks.

"No way - it's far too expensive".

"Ah, but you can't put a price on culture".

"Yes you can', I replied, "and it's under a tenner".

Oh how times have changed. This time last year I would have jumped at the chance, shifting playdates and coffee mornings to shoehorn in yet another class. At one point we did swimming (a disaster every time because like any normal human being he wasn't keen on being submerged incessantly); baby massage, which he loved as he had a major crush on the teacher; Gymboree, for our sins, though I detest its enforced jollity and not-very-subliminal advertising ("Where's Gymbo everybody? That's right, he's in the shop and retails at a very reasonable £19.99!"; Mini Mozart and Monkey Music. Looking at it now, this explains a lot about the state of my bank account and the lines on my face.

A new toy shop has opened up the road, called 100 Acres, which I've so far managed to resist going into. I have perused the list of classes it holds, however, and was amused to see baby Mandarin. I mean, seriously? Mine can barely speak English yet, so I think I'll hold off for now.

One of the best classes we did was the low-key, low-tech Mini Mozart which was held in the dusty old Quaker meeting house. The babies would be mesmerised by the teacher singing beautifully, playing the violin or showing them how a clarinet works. It was fabulous and great for the boy to learn that some people have lovely singing voices (just not his mother, try as I might).

Fair play to the people who run these classes; if I could sing or had followed through with learning the flute rather than getting distracted by boys during my teenage years, I'd be tempted to set one up myself. As my talents are limited to drafting contracts, I think my options are limited. But maybe the pushy mothers would approve of a little light legal training at an early age. Watch out: 'Contracts for Crawlers' and 'Terms and Conditions for Toddlers' - coming to a community centre near you!

The sun is shining and the stars are out

So it seems that we are finally shaking off the shackles of a long, hard winter. The central heating is officially off, the boy's Michelin-inspired, all weather duvet jacket has been consigned to the back of the bulging coat cupboard and the hunt for a sun hat to fit his sizeable head has begun in earnest.

I've noticed that these lovely warm days are coaxing the great and the good from the Hampstead houses where they've been hibernating over the cold months (when they weren't soaking up the sun in LA, of course). The celeb count around here is pretty high at the best of times: while on maternity leave, I loved nothing more than to sit outside Maison Blanc with an obscenely large coffee and tot up the number of TV presenters, journalists, comedians and pop stars cluttering up the pavements. And now it's sunny they seem to have multiplied. Last week Ricky Gervais ran past me as I climbed the hill to nursery, and I've recently seen Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton walking the school run (if that's not a contradiction in terms). I'm sure even the Starbucks baristas have had bitparts in Casualty and The Bill.

While I like to think I'm immune to the presence of so-called celebrities, thanks to a former career in the music industry where I had regular contact with famous musicians, this is clearly not the case. However many times I see Liam Gallagher, Michael Macintyre, Chris Moyles, James Corden and others, I do a very undignified double-take. I am not and will never be cool with it. I've read too many issues of Heat over the years, and am too interesting in what they are wearing/saying/eating/drinking. And the boy is no better: he gave Emma Thompson an especially large and winning grin when she peered into his buggy, and he saves his most determined stares for Denise Van Outen. Melanie Sykes has also been subjected to his attentions while trying to enjoy a discreet breakfast in Carluccio's. At some point, the prospect of being able to own an actual house with actual stairs will lure me and the boys back up north where the most exciting celebrity is the weatherman from the local news. For now, then, I'll hope for more sun and more stars.

A room with a view

The price we pay for treading the cultured cobbles of this little village is in square footage. We're less than five minutes from the Tube, a stone's throw from the Heath and wake up to birdsong, but swing a cat and it's going to get hurt. Our little pied a terre is one of many flats in what's optimistically described by estate agents as a mansion block (I always rather dreamed of owning a mansion, but if they all have communal areas like ours I'm not so sure).

Another mansion block snuggles up to ours and I've always felt they're a little too close for comfort. An elderly lady whose living room looks right into ours loves nothing better than sticking her head out of the window for an update on our goings-on several times a day, so we put down our blinds and live in permanent semi-darkness.

This was bad enough but recently things have got worse; a couple has moved in to a flat facing ours and one floor up which has the most tremendous view into our kitchen from theirs. The previous tenants must have been barristers or members of some other hard-working, non-cooking profession, but our new neighbours are in. A lot. And they cook. A lot. Try as I might to ignore her, I have caught girl neighbour's eye once or twice as I've been stirring my soup or chopping an onion. As good manners dictate, we both quickly looked away and pretended that the other wasn't there. Boy neighbour rarely cooks so this is good, but I am rather resentful of having to curb my very infrequent but sometimes entirely necessary naked trips to put the kettle on or sort out some tupperware. Last night I was to be found in pitch blackness, stumbling around trying to decant some leftovers without scalding something sensitive.

My boy, of course, is totally ignorant of the rules of modern living. It took him all of about twenty minutes to discover that there were some new and exciting people in his life. As soon as he goes into the kitchen he points at the window and checks if he has an audience. If he does, he waves. I turn my head and pretend I don't know we have company. If I acknowledge them, where will it end? Will we write bold messages on large pieces of paper? Work out a wiring system for lending cups of sugar or, more likely, brown rice? I will continue to ponder these questions as I put in an order for a new set of blinds.

Food and the flicks

Another lovely day in the village. A school down the hill held an international food festival to launch their new cookbook so we thought we'd check it out. The grand church hall was filled with the smell of offerings from around the world: boxes of fresh sushi, bubbling post of African stews, Persian curries and the ubiquitous falafel. For the most part the stalls were run by well-meaning and enthusiastic parents, but Starbucks and Carluccio's had also got in on the act. While the crowds flocked to sample the wares of the independents, tumbleweed blew lightly across the trestle tables of the multinationals.

A rare night out tonight to see a Brit flick at the Everyman. Love that place (though my bank account does not). There's nothing quite like the challenge of eking out a large glass of wine until the credits roll. The film was pretty good, but being somewhere other than our sofa on a Saturday night was brilliant. To offset the astronomical cost of the cinema we decided to forgo dinner and instead joined the permanent queue at the crepe van outside the King William pub. Rain or shine, the little white van does a roaring trade. Two young, chiselled French guys in white aprons flip and spread and deliver to the hungry hoards while they natter to each other non-stop. Not a bad way to bring your rusty language skills up to scratch, actually, and as in the bakery up the road, many of the English customers deliver their orders in fluent French. So Hampstead. The crepes themselves were divine - fresh, hot and surprisingly light in spite of the generous bubbling filling. We wandered slowly home, ignoring each other's dripping cheese and errant ratatouille, pausing only to marvel at the prices in the estate agent's windows. If we're ever going to afford a decent sized home we'll have to cut down on visits to the Everyman.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Let them eat cake!

I spoke to a friend today who is already worrying about what to do for her baby's first birthday party in July. I know how she feels - this was the subject of lengthy debate among my friends with babies a similar age to mine.

We all agreed that it would be pointless to go to any great efforts as we would all be time- and cash-poor by the time December rolled around, and the little ones would be nonplussed by the whole thing. Or so I thought.

While the rest of the country was decking the halls with boughs of holly, my friends were variously booking church halls and official photographers, sending out personalised invitations and dragging home bags groaning with parent-approved baby snacks (no proper cake in sight). Meanwhile, I had emailed a few child-free friends to ask them to join us for some afternoon cocktails to mark the occasion. In haste I ordered a stack of cupcakes from Lola's in Primrose Hill (amazing - I recommend!) so at least we would have something to stick a candle in, and bought a birthday banner and badge.

As it turns out, December was the coldest on record and the snow fell thick and relentless. Of our guest list of 30, six brave souls ventured across London to raise a glass to our happy, giggly one-year-old. It was a day of firsts: first cupcake, first sugar rush, first post-party slump. It wasn't the traditional celebration but we enjoyed it and the photos are great. Maybe next time we'll try to be a bit more organised, though, and put in a plea for good weather.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Baby talk

The boy is at a lovely stage at the moment, chattering away incessantly. He's only 15 months so is far from being a great conversationalist but if you tune your ear to his frequency you can definitely make out some English words (and no doubt several foreign ones, too). Predictably there's a bit of oneupmanship among the mums on the speaking front; many is the time I've had a list of a little one's preferred one-syllable words parroted to me by the proud mother while the little wordsmith herself has sat there mute.

I try not to engage in this apparently good natured competition - they babies will get there when they get there. Meanwhile I'm quietly enjoying listening to my boy's world opening up. Here are some of his favourite words, recorded for my own purposes and not to show how clever he is! If there's one thing my brief foray into motherhood has shown me so far, it's that time moves fast and they're changing all the time. That's why I want to get these things down before I forget.

* Bye bye (complete with frenzied waving)
* Hiya
* Mama (thank goodness - this took rather longer than I'd like, whereas Dada was a firm favourite from the start!)
* Duck
* Cat
* Miaow
* Tea (I'm working on 'milk, no sugar')
* Flower (can be applied to sequins and anything sparkling as well as the traditional bloom)
* Night night (accompanied by a look of horrific realisation that it's time for the lights to go off)
* Daddy (this is used liberally, often shouted at volume to waiters, the postman, the doctor or any male of the species, causing the odd raised eyebrow. The shame)

Wonderful Wednesday

Yesterday was Wonderful Wednesday, when each week I ditch my desk for a day of toddler-friendly fun with the boy. It felt like the first proper day of spring, the birds getting up early to usher it in with song and the white stucco houses of Belsize Park shimmering in the sun.

We spent an intense morning doing soft play class in the local leisure centre, one of the boy's most favourite things. It's also a huge favourite of mums and nannies who form a long, noisy but patient queue to squeeze into the tiny lift down to the vast sports hall half filled with foam toys of all shapes in obligatory primary colours. In the corner a bouncy castle whirrs away oddly out of place indoors. Toddlers run free, climbing, tunnelling, crawling and rocking while mothers and nannies hover and hand hold with one eye on the clock. Just fifteen more minutes and we can get a coffee and hopefully he'll sleep...

It's a different scene entirely on a Sunday when dads selflessly sacrifice a lie-in to look after their babies while their wives get a welcome - and heavily negotiated - break. It's a much more frenzied forty-five minutes, children on the loose and generally unsupervised. With the odd exception, the men root themselves to the spot, one hand in pocket and the other playing host to an exhausted iPhone. Occasionally they will look up to check that the crying child is not theirs. Last Sunday one child tried to swipe a football from another. The poor victim's father squared up to the two-foot tall offender and suggested that he behave himself better and give it back, which the offender's dad did not take well. Chests were puffed out, voices raised and swear words enunciated at volume, followed by a swift ejection by a polo-shirted attendant. I wonder if they had to share the lift...

And baby makes four

Today I heard that the first of my NCT group is pregnant for the second time. It's amazing how quickly our talk has turned from 'I couldn't even think about having another one', 'chance would be a fine thing!' and 'I'm barely managing with the one I've got' to broody murmurings. We hover over our toddlers in cafes, trying to restrain them from eating stray chips from the floor, poking a dog in the face or blowing kisses to the waiter, allowing ourselves envious glances at the quiet corner of new mothers with their snoozing babes-in-arms. Suddenly we can see all the advantages that we were blind to at the time: the constant napping, the convenience of breastfeeding and the ability to sling them in the sling and walk out of the door.

So I await news from the other girls. It won't be long before more messages of the 'I have some news...' variety make their appearance and we're once more embarking on baby massage classes together and comparing notes on newborn nappies and top tips for getting rid of colic. It takes me back to the time around our due dates. One by one the emails arrived, glowing with pride and relief in our inboxes, a hastily taken photo of a still-squashed newborn attached: (s)he is finally here! 

Greetings from Pramstead.

'They call it Pramstead, you know', said the teacher at our NCT class while we took a breather from attempting to latch careworn plastic dolls onto knitted boobs. Laughter rippled around the semi-circle of cross-legged bumps. 'You must have noticed how many buggies there are. There are women and babies everywhere. You'll soon see how many friends you'll make and how baby-friendly it is. We're so lucky up here.'

I'd never really noticed it before, but she was right. Hampstead is a leafy London suburb known for being home to authors, actors, artists, musicians and intellectuals (whatever that means). But it is also crammed full of a very particular breed of mothers-to-be, mothers and their fragrant offspring. Now I'm supposedly one of them, I'm privy to a whole new world.

How to pass the time with your newborn? Baby Massage classes, of course, but how about Baby Mandarin? Your six month old isn't talking yet? Get down to Baby Signing! Or perhaps your toddler fancies thirty minutes of Baby Salsa before lunch? What do you mean he can't walk yet? No matter: he can sit on your hip on the specially made contraption just for the purpose.

Sleep-deprived and desperate for company and entertainment, I embraced this enclave and its baby madness. Now my babe-in-arms is a toddling chatterbox and I'm back at a desk for most of the week, daydreaming of picnics on Primrose Hill and coffee and cake at Kenwood.  

These occasional 'postcards' are my way of recording the latest news from Pramstead, NW3.