En voiture

(Psst. I am emerging from my nine-month stew of bad hormones and no sense of humour to write a blog post. Don't tell anyone.)

So, we spent most of this afternoon in the car.

Ian's car, for newer readers, is a 1971 Land Rover. It has a three-person bench seat across the front, and four side-facing tipper seats in the back.

According to some bit of the Road Traffic Act that I can't be arsed to look up right now, it is perfectly legal for a child over three years of age to ride unrestrained in the back of Ian's car. YES. Motoring like it used to be. Do you remember how it used to be? A whole generation of us went in the back of the car without child seats, booster cushions or seatbelts, bouncing off the windows whenever the thing turned a corner. We survived. And this, now, is how Esme is allowed to ride! (Worry not, though: she never rides in the back of the car alone. If I'm not there to make sure she's holding on, then she has to go in her old baby seat up front.)

ANYWAY. I didn't need to tell you all that to explain why we were both in the back of the car: I'm just showing off that I don't have to deal with a child safety seat and its stupid fucking clunky buckles any more, not until #2 is born. It would actually be ILLEGAL to fit a child seat in the back of Ian's Land Rover, as none has been approved for side-facing travel. Hooray!

So, we spent most of this afternoon in the car. Ian up front, Esme and I in the back, facing one another.

We drove over Albert Bridge. Albert Bridge looks like this:

It is very pretty, and lifts one's spirits even on a dark piss-wet afternoon like today.

"Look at the pretty bridge, Esme!" said Ian.
"Can you see the lights on it?" I asked. Esme peered through the back window.
"Ooooooo!" she said, delightedly.
"It's a princess bridge!" said Ian, "with its pink paint and its turrets and its fairy lights, isn't it."
"Pwincess bwidge!" repeated Esme.

(Esme has the endearing trait of not being able to sound her Rs perfectly. The other day she got exaspewated with the tower she was twying to build and said "Oh, Chwist" under her bweath.)

"Do you like the lights, Mummy?" Esme asked.
"Yes, I do," I answered. "I think they're very pretty."
"No, you don't. You don't like those lights."
"Yes I do."
"No you DON'T."

(Have you ever met a three-year-old? They are contrary for the sake of it.)

"I DO like those lights," I said.
"You DON'T."
"Yes I DO."

It's important to hone the finer points of your child's debating skills from an early age, I think.

"You DON'T. You don't," said Esme.
"DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DO DO DO DO DO DOOOOOOOOOOOO."
"DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNN'T."
"DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."
"DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNN'T."
"DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I LOVE THOSE LIGHTS. I WANT TO MARRY THEM."
"DON'T!"
"YES I DO I WANT TO MARRY THEM ALL I LOVE THEM SO MUCH."
"I already HAVE married them," Ian cut in. "I married them AND HAD THEIR CHILDREN."

We all took a break from our intellectual debate at this point, mainly because we were all laughing, but also because some of us had been arguing in growly dirty-phone-call voices and just needed a breather.

"Do you like the lights, Mummy?" Esme asked again.
"No," I said.
"You don't like the lights? Then what you do like?"
"I like DARK."
"Do you?"
"Yes. I like DARK. I hate ALL LIGHTS. Ever since that time with the lights. UGH LIGHTS I HATE LIGHTS."
"I like the lights," said Esme.
"What's your favourite colour light?" I asked.
"Pink," she said, because she is three and a girl. "And what's your favourite?"
"White," I answered.
"No, white is my favourite."
"You just said pink was your favourite."
"And white is my favourite too."
"Well, it can be both our favourites. It's not exclusive."
"No, it's my favourite."
"Okay, I'll have gold as my favourite. I like gold light."
"No, gold is MY favourite."
"No, mine."
"Mine!"
"MINE."
"MINE!"
"Mine!" I said. "Mine mine mine mine mine."
"MIIINNE!"
"MIIIIINNE!!!!"
"MIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNEEE!" Esme yelled, and then she won the argument with the greatest move I have ever witnessed in my life: she took a swipe at the air between our faces and stuffed the imaginary contents of her fist into her open mouth, which then snapped shut. She stared at me in challenge. I coughed up a lung laughing.

"What happened?" asked Ian, from the front. I put my coughed-up lung back in and explained.

"Did you put the argument in your mouth, Esme?" asked Ian.
"I had to," said Esme. "It was tasty."

We had a break from being in the car at this point, because we all went to Sainsbury's.

"I can't believe Esme decided to win the argument by stuffing it in her mouth," said Ian in admiration as we pushed her in the trolley.
"It was fucking amazing," I said. "If you ever get the chance to do that in a professional situation, please oh please do."

The shopping done, we found ourselves back in the car again. The car that wouldn't start. Oh ho ho. Ian tried to hand-start it with the crank lever, which usually works, but it wasn't having it.

Yes: a crank lever. A bent rod that you stick in the front of the car and turn BY HAND. At one point I heard a burst of unrestrained, merry laughter: it was an elderly Caribbean man who had seen what Ian was doing.

"No way," he laughed. "Oh my God."

Ian really wished the car would start at that point, just to prove the triumph of old-fashioned mechanics over scoffing disbelief, but the car was being an old git and wouldn't go. We sat and waited for the AA.

It was 5.30pm, and it had been dark for an hour. It was chilly. The windows steamed up as we sat in the silent, dead car and watched the car park slowly empty as people got into their modern cars, started them effortlessly, and drove away to their houses. The last shoppers left Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's turned off their floodlights and shut their metal grille. We were still in the car park, waiting for the AA.

"What are you doing?" Ian asked me.
"Writing I WISH MY WIFE WAS THIS OLD on your back window," I said, carefully doing the letters back-to-front so they could be read from outside. "Actually I'll add a C. I WISH MY WIFE WAS THIS COLD. There."
"I don't want the S," said Esme, and rubbed out the S of THIS. "And that S." She rubbed out the S of WAS, and most of the other letters too. I wiped the whole window clear and peered in vain for the recovery van.
"I hope they can start the car, when they get here," Ian worried.
"Well, if they can't, they'll tow us home, won't they?"
"Oh, yeah. Of course." Ian was relieved.
"We won't be forced to live here for the rest of our lives, like people you read about in the papers."
"Yip," said Ian in a hillbilly voice. "We bin livin' here fifty years. It suits our purpose."
"It's a simpler way of livin'," I hillbillied back at him. "We just livin' off the land, well, livin' off this car park. Back to Nature."
"We jist couldn' git home one night so we jist stayed here and we like it," Ian agreed.
"When times are hard we jist eat shit," I chimed in. "When folks park their cars and go into Sainsbury's to do their shoppin', we put the shit on their cars to heat up, cuz their engines is still warm. We cain't do it on our own car cuz she don't work no more."
"We ain't botherin' no one," said Ian. "'Cept maybe the folks whose cars we put shit on. Sometimes they take exception to that."

There was a sudden flare of headlights as the recovery van arrived. The AA man looked at the 1971 engine in wonder. He and Ian talked about how you don't see many gas-powered cars these days, that sort of thing, and he gave us a jump start. Ian's car roared into life, Esme jumped up & down and shouted "It works!", and we were off, back home, and that was the end of our afternoon spent mostly in the car.

Which was sort of a shame, because it was really quite fun while it lasted.

Just where has this blog gone anyway?

HELLO INTERNET. Right. I am just going to write a post, not a brilliant or well thought-out one, but just SOMETHING to stop people emailing me and asking if I am dead. No I am not dead! Hello! I am right here.

Lots of other people are right here, too. My house is full of people, and I am roundly pregnant, and looking after a toddler, which turns out to be mentally and physically exhausting - who knew? - and by the time I put Esme to bed at night, when I finally have some mental breathing space, I just want to fall asleep from being bright and chirpy for the benefit of Esme and the house full of people all the time every day. My bump aches, my brain doesn't work, and my family are all falling out with each other, so I don't really feel like posting. Can I just shut myself in my bedroom and read all day? No? Oh well.

I am one of those impractical people who needs time alone to think properly, turn life into blog posts, turn jumbled thoughts into coherent English. I have not had a great deal of time alone in the last few weeks. One night I was so overwhelmed with bleak pregnancy hormones and the constant pressure to be cheerful that I went to the shop, bought a small Guinness, let myself into Ian's car and sat in the car on the drive in the dark drinking Guinness and watching the world go by and pick its nose and answer its text messages. I needed that hour very much. That was probably the lowest point of my pregnancy so far, right in the middle of what was supposed to be the glowing, blooming second trimester, but which was actually a trimester of sinus infections, pre-natal Weltschmerz, anxiety, and insomnia. I have Cheered Up and stopped being a self-absorbed dick now, and my sense of humour is almost back, even if my IQ has dropped about 50 points because I'm pregnant so I still can't write very good blog posts even if I want to. QED.

I have had to ask Esme to be quiet and leave me alone please darling at least five times since I began writing this and she won't be held off any longer, so I must go now. Seriously, I have wanted and tried to write a post every day for over a week, as the half-dozen unfinished posts in my drafts folder will testify, but every day has been one thing after another after another and I go to bed every night thinking "SHIT. I still haven't written one." Everything is very busy here, which is how I like it, but it isn't very practical for keeping up a blog. Please bear with me. But hey! I have made a Christmas cake. Thrills!

Gespräch des frühen Morgens*

*Early-morning conversation†

†This is what the online translator assures me, anyway

"Would you like tea?"

"Please."

Ian drinks loose-leaf Darjeeling. It requires a strainer: a word - and an object - that on this morning completely escape me. I cast about, looking for the bloody thing.

"Where is the thing that goes in the mug that you put the loose tea inside that stops all the bits going in the water?" I ask.

"I've seen that. Hang on."

"Do you think the German language was developed by people with Alzheimer's?"

"Sorry?"

"They make compound nouns in the same way I think before I've had my coffee. The literal translation of the German for television is Far-Seeing Apparatus. It's like they were groping around for the right word but just couldn't get it."

"The Thing That Does the Other Thing to the First Thing So That The First Thing is Protected From Adverse Conditions by the Other Thing."

"Yes. You understand."

(A Steinschlagschutzhülle, by way of further example, covers the grill of a car to protect against nicks from stones, while a Buecherregalerdbebensicherungshaken is a device for securing shelves on which to put books during the shaking of earthquakes.)

"Here's the Flavour-Enhancing Thing that Goes in the Mug to Prevent the Small Floaty Bits from Going Into the Water," says Ian, who has found the strainer.

"AH. Where was it?"

"Towards the back of the Slatted Wooden Rack Thing For Drying Plates That Have Been Wet."

"Could you put it there, next to the Thing for Making Water Reach a Higher Temperature Than it Was Previously?"

"Actually, I just left it in front of the Electrical Apparatus for Increasing the Amount of Warmth and Rigidity in Bread That Has Been Sliced."

"Danke schön."

It's like our house just passed its smear test

I had my chimneys swept today! I mean this not as a crude allusion to an intimate sexual encounter, but in the sense that a man came round and stuck his extendable broom right up my flue. Ian's flue, too, of course. We are very happy campers.

I like to relax in my own home by setting fire to it. Ian, the spoilsport, said I was not to set fire to it any more until we'd had the chimneys checked and swept, because he has no Sense of Fun. However, he does have an old friend, Dave, from school days, who sweeps chimneys for a living, and who gamely drove 130 miles from farthest Norfolk to sweep ours, bringing their other old school friend Len with him, in a van full of brooms and dustsheets and a monstrous chimney-clearing Hoover that doesn't fall over and start crying like ours does at the sight of Victorian soot.

So there were several reasons for my excitement: one, we got to see Ian's old friends again; two, chimney-sweeping is a filthy, thrilling occasion, involving Soot and Sheets and Brushes Sticking Out the Top of the House; and three, I would (hopefully) be able to once more have fires in the house. Who doesn't love a nice fire? It holds everyone's attention even more than a television set but even better, you can all poke it with sticks. This weekend brought the first really chilly wind of winter with it, too, so it was perfect timing.

Esme completely picked up on my excitement, and hopped around all over the dustsheets like a helium-filled rabbit. For there were dustsheets! and brooms! and a big spiky brush! just like I hoped there would be. Ian had insisted it was all probably done with hi-tech Hoovers and tubes these days, but no, he was wrong. Hooray!

Dave knelt down and looked up the chimney with a special rectangular mirror that he keeps in a leather envelope. I thought immediately of gynaecological examinations, although mine never involve leather envelopes. I think it was something about the small group of spectators, the smell of soot, the reverent hush in the room and that 14" spiky brush.

The chimney in the bedroom was declared Clear and Okay and Worth Going Ahead and Sweeping. Fires in the bedroom! Oh, this winter is going to be great. Ian, Esme and I lined up on our tummies on the bed and watched lots of exciting equipment be carried into our room, followed by lots of Hard Work.

Esme, of course, assumed the role of Site Manager.

When the Big Hardcore Hoover had stopped, she leaned over to Dave. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Me? Yeah, I'm okay. Are you okay?"
"Yes, I'm okay," she said. "Are you going to make some more noise?"
"A little bit," said Dave, making the Universal Hand Gesture for A Little Bit.
"He's going to make a little bit more noise," Esme shouted to us from three feet away.
"Okay," we said. "Thanks for letting us know."

This was my favourite part: the sheet with the glory hole, like something from a Victorian prude's bedlinen set. It stops all the shit from up the chimney being coughed back into the room when the broom dislodges it. I know you worked that out for yourselves, but it was all very exciting so I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

Chimney flues don't necessarily go straight up, but turn corners on their way skywards, and over time, they can fall apart, sort of crumble into one another, so that smoke going up one flue might come out of two pots. I learned loads of stuff today. Dave lit a smoke pellet to test for leaks, and we all ran outside to count how many pots the smoke was coming out of.

One! Right answer.

Len got funny looks from passers-by: the latex gloves and the mask made him look like a ghostbusting proctologist.

Then the broom went up, and we all ran outside to look at that, too:

Ian said as a joke to Esme: "We could send you up there, just like in the olden days."
"How old are these chimneys?" asked Dave.
"170," I answered. "Built in eighteen thirty-something."
"Then they'll have had kids up them," said Dave. "They didn't pass a law against that until 1875."
"Jesus."

I feel a bit guilty, knowing small children might have had to go up our chimneys, even though I didn't make them do it and even if they'd lived to a ripe old age, they'd have been dead before I was born.

Dave found a bit of one, look:

Not really. It's probably a bit of chicken take-away that a rook dropped or something. Not part of a child. Definitely not. Nope.

Anyway! Look at the massive pile of shit that came out of the chimneys:

And how clean and tidy they looked afterwards:

Esme stood around watching and picking her nose, like the little lady she is.

"Anything good up there?" asked Dave.
"Wasn't that one of your chat-up lines at the Pink Toothbrush?" said Len, to Ian. " 'Look what I just found up my nose'?"
"I, er," said Ian. "I can't remember."

When all three chimneys were swept and clean, we all went to Chimes, my very favouritest restaurant, for a slap-up lunch of pie, treacle tart and extraordinarily lumpy custard, and then Dave and Len got in their van and drove 130 miles all the way back to farthest Norfolk, leaving us stunned at the fact they didn't want paying for doing our chimneys, no, not even petrol money. I was actually speechless.

"I'd probably have done it for nothing, too, for a friend," said Ian, "but still."

"Oh God, me too, no question," I said. Because we are altruistic old things like that. Ian can ask fluently for favours from other people, but I would rather rip my own eyes out than inconvenience anyone, ever, and to encounter someone else who Does Huge Favours For Others came as a rare and amazing shock. I feel like we've been visited by chimney-sweeping angels.

As it grew dark, I built a fire and, once Esme and her fire-hazard skirt had gone to bed, I lit candles too. I tidied the front room, turned out the lights except for the fairy lights, got the logs crackling gently in the grate, then called Ian to join me. Together, we relaxed on the enormous deep-pile wool rug in the glow of the hearth, breathed the sensuous aroma of woodsmoke, then stuffed our faces with toasted marshmallows until we nearly puked.

I love the beginning of winter. Bring it on.

This Week: I Think My Cat Is Secretly Wearing My Underwear

Following the responses to the OH NOOOO post, I've decided that instead of trying to think up photo stories involving us in fancy dress, or drawing cartoons of genitals bringing down planes, I am just going to complain to the Internet about a new topic every few days and then wallow in all the good advice. There, if that isn't the blueprint for an astoundingly brilliant blog, then I don't know what is.

Thank you, lovely, wise, fantastic people. And I'm sorry to those of you who read the last post and felt sad, because I'd so much rather make you laugh. But, my God, you're amazing, and full of the right things to say to someone stupid with a blocked-up nose and sleep deprivation. What did we do before the Internet? Oh, that's right, we got to know our neighbours. One day I must tell you about mine: I mean the people in the street where I grew up. For example, the woman at number 17 had dyed black hair, three chins and a pint-glass figure. When it was raining, she used to come out in a bikini and sweep the road.

(I don't think she'd have been a terribly useful fount of advice, so I'm glad the Internet has taken over.)

I feel so much better armed for family life than I was before, and I can't believe how much I'm looking forward to this new baby. Thank you for your words of wisdom and experience: the comments and emails I had after the last post were far more useful than anything I could have read in a book.

(Yay! We're having a boy! I can't wait!)

I think, knowing Esme as I do, that much of the reason for her tears wasn't the gender of the baby, but the fact that the gender couldn't be changed. He's still quite an abstract concept in Esme's head. A very welcome concept, one she plays with in her imagination daily, but in her imagination the colour of his hair probably changes every day, and so does his face, and so who knows, maybe his gender does too, and maybe slapping an immutable quality on her idea of the baby was upsetting to her. Maybe the fact that no one in this family has the power to change or to choose the baby's gender is what upset her: just the fact she had to put up with it.

I DON'T KNOW. And I'm not explaining myself very well, because I've left writing this post until last thing at night. But I have stopped being silly about it. Worse things happen at sea, and Esme will love her baby brother, and it's not like she's being packed off to the country to live with smelly tweed aunts who make her eat liver for tea.

I did come up with another jolly good answer for her, though. The day after the OH NOOOO post, she asked me again if the baby would be a boy, and I said Yes, and she asked, "Why?"

And in a flash of inspiration, I said, "Because you're the girl." Like it was bleeding obvious.

"Oh!" said Esme.

"That vacancy has already been filled," I went on, "and very splendidly, too. You're the girl, so now we need a boy."

Esme smiled, and was completely happy with this faultless logic.

Later that day, I gave her a little plastic frog whistle: you blow up its anus, it goes WEEEEE! and its eyes pop up! in surprise. Esme loved it, naturally, and we all had a go, and when we'd all had our go she ran over to me, rolled up my dress and poked the frog's green plastic anus into my navel. Then she made a noise like "Fffffft."

"The baby's having a go," she explained.

And that sweet gesture, of letting the baby have a go at blowing up a plastic frog's bum, made me smile with a tear of happiness in my eye.

It is 11pm in London, and I must go to bed. Thank you, good people, you made me love the Internet this weekend more than I ever have before. I didn't really mean it about turning this blog into somewhere I piss and moan all the time, so don't worry. But if I catch the cat wearing my pants, you'll be the first to know. Unless the cat already has its own Flickr stream and you've been hip to it for months. This is the Internet, after all.

Oh, bollocks

I remember the day in my first pregnancy on which we found out we were having a girl.

It was summer 2006. I remember the inside of the cafeteria at St Thomas' Hospital: smell of 1. microwaved food 2. disinfectant 3. fear; white Formica; warm brown water in foam cups, joyless crisps. Me. Ian. Other people shuffling around with tin pots on their heads and their bums hanging out of blue gowns. A four-month bump. And bleakness.

"A GIRL. We can't be having a GIRL. What am I going to do with a girl?"

Ian made some consoling noises. I pouted.

"UGH," I went on. "I don't want a girl. Girls don't like me. I'm not girly. Oh, God." It was the end of my world.

"We could just get her to wear a beard," said Ian.

"A beard, and a little strap-on cock."

We sipped our warm brown water.

"This probably isn't the kind of conversation you should have about your children, is it."

"No."

Afterwards, Ian went to work. I went home, threw myself on the bed and cried.

Of course, I Know Better Now. Oh my God how I love Esme. I love brushing her ringlets, buying her silly pink things, painting her face, stroking her hair while she lies with her head in my lap. I know now that it doesn't matter. I know that you have a child, and that child looks like you, has your sense of humour, is one of you and your partner, and makes total sense as a part of your life. It doesn't matter that it isn't the gender you hoped for: you love it more than life itself and wouldn't change it, not even to glue a cock to it. I know that now, which is why I didn't care at last week's scan what gender baby #2 would be.

Well, okay. To be honest, truly honest, I hoped a little more for a girl than a boy. Here's why: Our house is already Swamped with The Pinkness. Tutus hang from the backs of dining-room chairs; tiny bits of pink plastic what-the-fucks litter the floor and make me shout expletives when I tread on them. Ian has answered the door to pizza deliveries with his hair full of little pink hairclips. We have given up and succumbed to the wiles of a Girl, and we have done so willingly. Another girl would just fit right in. I hoped Esme would have a close sisterly bond with the new arrival. But no: we need to find room for sticks, trucks, and whatever else boys like, on top of all the pink.

I thought Esme wanted a little brother. I'd been careful not to ask her what she wanted, because I couldn't promise one way or the other, but I got the impression she favoured the idea of a boy. Ian thought so, too.

So: today, Bollocks Day, I was going through all the old clothes of Esme's I'd saved, and being delighted by how many of them are gender-neutral or, actually, boys' clothes. Then I found a pink stripy top and held it up to look at it.

"Is that Baby Ozzie's?" asked Esme.

(I asked her to name him: I gave her the choice of Oliver/Oscar, or Ollie/Ozzie, and she has been dancing around and singing "Baby Ozzie!" ever since, turning him into an imaginary friend who sits beside her when she plays.)

"Yes," I said of the pink stripy top. "It's a bit pink, but Ozzie can wear it."

"Is Baby Ozzie a girl?" asked Esme.

"No, a boy," I said.

(Esme was there at the scan, and heard the news with Ian and I, although she was more preoccupied with getting out of there and going for cake as soon as possible. After cake we came home and looked at the pictures again, and she seemed delighted by the news, even going so far as to say "I want a BIG, BIG WILLY for him!" before I changed the subject to like anything else at all.)

Back to today.

"I don't want Baby Ozzie to be a boy," said Esme, dissolving into sudden tears. "I want him to be a girl." And she wept.

Oh fuck.

It was pretty much one of the worst moments of my life as a parent so far.

Back in May this year, before even suggesting to Ian that we might have another child, I asked Esme for her opinion. I didn't want her to be a lonely only child, but nor did I want to saddle her with an unwelcome younger sibling. It was up to her. She said she'd love to have a baby in the house. Really wanted one. Okay. The last, very very last thing I wanted to do, was upset her life by bringing someone into it she didn't want.

So today was just terrible.

Esme cried into my shoulder, great racking sobs, that she didn't want the baby to be a boy; and because I've had a shitty, horrible, lonely week, a week of dizzying sinus infection, hardly any sleep, 24/7 parenting, jet lag, birthday blues, prenatal blues, wet weather, everything, I did what was probably unwise and I burst into tears too.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't change it. I'm so sorry."

And Esme ran not just from the room, but down the stairs, to be as very far away from me and the bump as possible. I sat in the middle of the pile of half-sorted baby clothes and cried my eyes out.

(On a positive note, this cleared my blocked sinuses completely.)

Now. A bit of background reading for those of you still here. Esme is unsettled at the moment. I think her tears might have been indicative of a reaction to change in general: I hope so. We've just been abroad for nearly three weeks, and in the middle of those three weeks was a five-day stretch during which every day for five days, we had to get up and check out and pack up and walk or drive and be somewhere else and check in and keep moving, all the time, every night a new room and new bed, no set routine, and it did Esme in. She came home so clingy and unsure of things, it made life harder than it was before, and I think she's had too much upheaval in her life recently to feel particularly eager for more.

Within half an hour, after she'd come back red-eyed to find me still weepy and urged me to be happy again, she started talking about the times Baby Ozzie and she would have together, watching DVDs on the sofa. She called him "him", and spoke of cuddling him, holding him on her lap, smiling and looking forward to it. I felt a little ray of hope.

Later in the afternoon, I brought the subject up again, gently, asking if she could love the baby even though he was a boy. She started to cry a bit again, saying again she wanted a girl, and refusing to believe I couldn't change it before it was born.

I told her I could understand how disappointed she was. I nodded and listened. I did all That Stuff you're meant to do, and I didn't insist that no, no, come on, she would surely love it. I told her I understood how she felt.

Then I tried a tack I don't know if you're supposed to try or not.

I said "If it's a girl, she'll want to borrow all your pink stuff, you know."

Esme sniffed. "What?"

"Well, if the baby was a girl, she would want to play with your dolls, and your pushchair - every time girls come round here to play, they always try to get your pushchair, and you always cry over it. A boy wouldn't want your pushchair, or any of your pink stuff, or your dolls."

"I want it to be a boy," said Esme, very decisively.

"A boy will play monsters with you," I added.

"I will be the monster?" asked Esme.

"Yes!"

"And Ozzie can be the monster?"

"Yes, you and Ozzie can be monsters and chase me and Daddy, and you can tickle him! and make him laugh! and run around!"

And she cheered right up. For now.

So anyway, Internet, HELP. I have no idea what I'm doing here.

I have no idea, no experience, of the dynamics of a nuclear family. I was the only child of a single parent for most of my childhood. I had a stepfather for a while, and have a half-sister ten years younger than I am who doesn't remember me living at home. I never felt like part of a family as much as related to a scattering of lone adults who refused to speak to each other. I have spent HOURS reading parenting forums and learned that it's not the genders that matter, it's not the age gap, it's how the parents treat the children, how the family dynamic works as a whole, that affects how well the kids get on and how happy everyone is. But I don't know what to do, and I don't want to fuck this up.

I was really, really cheered by those of you who left comments to say you have a girl and a younger boy, and it works for you: or that you're the older sister to younger brothers and it's wonderful. Really, you have no idea how happy those comments made me. If you can tell me any pointers as to how to introduce this baby with minimal tears on Esme's part, and make this work, I will be so grateful.

I know there are good books out there. I have my eye on a couple. But when I buy a parenting advice book, which I have done exactly twice now, I find them hard to read and take in. I read them backwards, in patches, then I get bored and read comics instead. I'd far rather hear real-life advice from real people with real experience and real younger brothers who they really love.

I keep thinking of the girl who used to live in the flat above ours, who asked me one day if I were going to have a second baby. I didn't know. She volunteered the information that she had a brother three years younger and could quite happily have stayed an only child instead. I vowed never to make Esme feel that way, and I still really don't want to. I know I'm tired, and hormonal, and getting over a filthy horrible cold, but I'm terribly worried I've buggered this family up by growing a pair of balls.

Argh.

Well, if it comes to it, we can always stick a pair of false tits on him.

Spoiler Alert

St. Thomas' Hospital
Women's Ultrasound Department
8th Floor, North Wing
Lambeth Palace Road
London SE1 7EH

ANTONIA CORNWELL
ANTONIA'S HOUSE
LONDON SW9

Dear MS.ANTONIA CORNWELL

You have been given the first available appointment to be seen in our Ultrasound department for a pregnancy scan at ST THOMAS' HOSPITAL, Women's Ultrasound, 8th Floor, North Wing, on

Monday October 5th [20wks] at 9.00

This letter ought to arrive at least three hours after that appointment, in keeping with standard NHS practice. Thank goodness a member of staff with a thick outer-space accent rang you last week and told you to turn up.

When you come to the hospital, please bring your yellow maternity record book with you. Failure to do so will result in our receptionist staring at you like you just fell out of the fuckwit tree. Your sonographer will not give two shits that you forgot it, and will happily print your results for you on cheerful yellow paper, but if you wish to avoid a time-consuming, eye-rolling lecture from the crabby old bitch at front desk, bring your book. She has a full diary of people to spit at after you and we like to keep things moving.

Please arrive 15 minutes prior to your appointment time, so that we can keep you waiting for longer. Standard practice guidelines dictate that we keep you waiting for no less than forty minutes before each appointment and we like to start to keep you waiting as promptly as we can.

When you leave the hospital, please check your records to verify that we have neglected to update them since the birth of your last child. Your last recorded period began on 21 January 2006 and the gestational age of your foetus is 193 weeks +2 days.

Congratulations, Antonia! It's a boy! Please accept this complementary MRSA superbug with our best wishes. Now wash your hands.

Lots of love,

The NHS