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...
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