Today
Carmen's progressed onto feeding herself, at least some of the time. Becky gives her a selection of chopped items to choose from. Quite a lot misses the mouth. "I bought one of those plastic bibs with a scoop," explained Becky.
"Oh, I used to call those Dicky Bibs," I replied
In My Day
Like all babies, Lizzie slowly learnt to feed herself. It was a messy business, involving the placing of a large plastic groundsheet under her highchair to stop bits from falling on our new carpet. This sheet had to be shaken out and wiped every day - a chore that I didn't much like having to perform. Plus, the towelling bibs she wore became grimed with food as well as soaked from spilt milk and water.
One day, in Mothercare, I saw exactly the thing! A bright yellow plastic bib with a curved up bottom to catch the food, It was called a "Dicky bib". What a fantastic idea! food wouldn't fall on the carpet, the fronts of Lizzie's clothing would stay dry and clean and the bib itself would just go in the washing up.
I carried this object home in triumph, showed it to Lizzie at the next mealtime. and popped it round her neck.
Maybe I'd been too enthusiastic. Lizzie looked down admiringly at her yellow plastic front before starting her meal. Success! The food that didn't go into her mouth went into the bib's tray. My smile of relief that the thing actually worked turned to a grimace as Lizzie, dismayed at the way the nice new bib was being spoiled, put her hand into the tray and scooped the food out onto the floor. There! Now the bib was nice and clean again!
She smiled at me triumphantly, well pleased with her ingenuity, and I reinstated the plastic sheet.
Which just goes to show that something that works for the parent just might not be seen in the same way by the child!
Today
Walking along Bexhill Seafront the other day, Paul said "I performed in the De La Warr Pavilion when I was a child." He reminisced about saying little poems at South Coast festivals "Get upon a chuff-chuff" he declaimed "Ours is a nice house, ours is". and so on. He won prizes for singing ("I never won gold" he said, a little sorrowfully) and later for making a speech about life on Mars.
In My Day
Alone, I think, among my siblings, as a child I competed in the local competitions, entirely in the verse-speaking class.
My first ever poem was recited at the age of four and went like this:
"Goose, goose girl, come and mind your geese
They're making such a cackling we can't get any peace."
Over the next few years, I recited a range of poems. I had a clear voice, which elocution lessons made clearer, and a formidable memory, both attributes which I still possess. I was also pretty cute, which I certainly am not now.
In fact Mamma didn't think I was cute enough because she continually grumbled that I didn't win gold, not because I wasn't the best reciter in the contest, but because the regular winner was cuter than I.....
In these ways we shape our children's self-esteem.
Today
On the way home from Market Harborough we stopped for coffee at a little tea shop in Moreton-in-Marsh. Maybe it was because we were tired, but when Paul went to use the facilities he came back complaining that there was even piped music in the vestibule leading to the loos. "Whatever happened to quiet?" he grumbled.
In My Day
Back in 1965 I and my friend Anne Bryant went cycling in Cornwall. One day we were peddling along and realised that we were very hungry and had no lunch with us. Anne spotted a sign to a restaurant and we cycled up a long track which led to an up-market establishment.
Full of bravado we parked our bikes and went in. There were no other customers and a youngish waitress ushered us to our seats at a table which was laid with impeccable white napery. We were hot and sweaty and clad in shorts. The menus were brought and we regarded the prices with horror. While we made up our minds that we really only wanted soup and bread, the waitress wounded up the background music. I think that it was rather tasteful stuff - maybe Mantovani or quiet chamber music. I remember that were rather amused by this.
We may have had posh accents but we didn't have posh money. The waitress took our orders for soup without comment.
I just hope she thought that we were worth all the effort - maybe any customers are better than none and we appreciated the music at least.
I heard about someone who, when the neighbouring club's high decibel offering drowned out the already unsuitable Bach's B Minor Mass muzak at the restaurant in which she was eating, was appalled that the waiter's response to her protest was to turn the B Minor mass up to max in an attempt to drown out disco hell!!
Today
Whilst having supper tonight I joked about some of the food having been on the kitchen floor. "That's OK", said Paul "I'll scrape out the spiders and bugs.. " "Well", I said "Why don't we just embrace upper class squalor?" "I think we have", responded my spouse.
In My Day
Noticing and caring about cleaning up stuff is a very middle-class virtue, I think. There are truly some people so posh that they don't notice trivial things like dirt.
One summer, about 1997 or so, Becky had Summer jobs as a Nanny. One of these took her to an Exmoor farmhouse where a couple with an unpronounceable Balkan surname lived. He was something in the City, she was an artist of sorts, and they were awaiting the arrival of child number two.
The whole exciting story of baby two's arrival on the sitting room floor is Becky's to tell. However, we became involved because the rough drive to the farmhouse which was all right for their 4X4, slaughtered the subframe of Becky's little Metro. So we ferried her down weekly.
The farmhouse certainly had Thomas Hardy charm. It also had Thomas Hardy filth. In fact, probably more than it would have done in Hardy's day, when people slaved night and day with brooms and hot water and soap. The quarry tiled kitchen floor had probably not seen soap and hot water for about a hundred years. Food vied with mud, doggy footprints and other unmentionables. We gingerly sat down on some greasy chairs and made polite small talk and admired the baby, wondering how soon we could escape.
It's not as though they displayed even the tiniest bit of embarrassment ("Sorry about the mess" etc etc) and they were certainly able to afford a cleaner; they were simply above that sort of thing. I immediately dubbed their lifestyle "Upper Class Squalor"
Becky always said that after the new baby was born on the sitting room floor there was a suspicious stain on the carpet that was never cleaned up, but more importantly, was simply never mentioned.
Thinking about that has made me determined to steam clean the kitchen floor at the first opportunity Oh, and none of the food had actually been on the floor.
