Baby steps

I took the baby for a walk yesterday.  Well, to be fair, I did most of the walking.  Well, all of the walking actually, because the baby cannot yet walk.  Isaac was safely encased in a giant space-age buggy-thing, burbling away.  People treat you differently when you have a baby with you.  I'll never forget the first time I was in sole charge of Isaac, taking him all the way from Waterloo East to Orpington last July.  I almost got the buggy wedged in the gap between the platform and the train, which I had been told so clearly, by the haunting voice of the automated woman, to avoid.  At Waterloo East, whilst the baby was howling his head off, a savvy Southeastern employee took it upon himself to inform me, 'your baby is distressed'.  It's a good job he told me that, because I hadn't realised that this tiny 9-week-old was howling his lungs out, distressed at being left with this peculiar aunt, albeit genetically similar, which he wasn't to know.  'He's not mine', I reliably informed the train passengers; I mean, I rapidly reframed, 'I didn't just find him somewhere - he's my sister's!'

Babies eh - what curious little things they are.  There are just like little people.  I keep hearing stories of people forgetting that they have had a baby.  Who saw that episode of Rev a couple of weeks ago? The one where Adam left his baby girl in a shop and didn't realise till Mick, a local junkie, turned up and tried to sell the baby back to him.  Adam was mortified to have left her behind, but I can see how it happened.  He managed to get her back before his wife realised.  All good.  Rev is a legendary series, with uncanny parallels to the church I attended in Plumstead for five years - a curious microcosm of the Church of England in a multicultural, urbanised London.  Do watch it, if you don't already.  I think it is on Mondays.

I awoke this morning and wondered where on earth I was and why I could hear a baby crying.  As I gradually remembered, I went to assist with the baby, so my sister could return to bed.  When I was organising my travel insurance policy last week, the agent ran through all sorts of dangerous activities and asked if I was going to do any of them.  I assured him that I was not.  However, this morning, when the baby took a swipe at my face, narrowly missing my left eye, I wondered if I should have mentioned baby-handling as a dangerous activity.  Baby's opening cuddle yesterday morning, when I hadn't seen him for nine months, involved a hefty swipe to the face, which I took as a term of endearment.  I was reassured when he did the same to the pastor who scooped him up to baptise him yesterday.

The church had a a good font.  Not as good as Trebuchet mind.