Escalation

Today

Today Becky told me that Richard was showing Carmen (aged 17 months) how to go up and down the escalators at their local shopping centre. "That reminds me...... "I said.

In My Day

It's 1975 and I have just been transferred to Lewes Tax Office with the grand title of "Tax Officer,  Higher Grade". This necessitated a couple of weeks' training and I was booked into the training centre at Stanmore in London. Lizzie was about two and a half years old and I arranged to stay with my brother in London and for their au-pair to look after her while I was on the course.

I set off to London on the train. When I reached Victoria I had to use the underground to get to Highgate where my brother lived. This meant negotiating the escalators, something which Lizzie had never seen before. I was carrying a suitcase and pushchair. I was also very suitably dressed in high wooden wedge-heeled sandals on which I could hardly walk even when unencumbered.

We stood at the top of the escalator. Lizzie looked down the horrifying steep moving steps. I explained to her how to get her feet onto the top step so that she would travel downwards. She was having none of it. Clearly mother was up to something, trying to persuade her down this instrument of death.

She reacted in the way two year olds do best - by screaming and refusing to move. Encumbered as I was with luggage and buggy, I couldn't simply pick her up and cart her down. I couldn't even really hold her hand properly. London crowds surged around my as I reasoned, cajoled and bullied the howling child. I began to panic as well, wondering what to do next. I think, in the end, Lizzie finally decided that I was more fearsome than the escalator, gave up screeching and listened to me and we got down the steps after about half-an-hour.  

So I congratulate Carmen for having learnt this essential city-dwellers' skill so young!