Moolies

Ah, a new paranoia

Back of brain trying desperately to reach front of brain:

Why isn't she moving? I haven't felt her for hours! There's something wrong! there's something wrong!

Well. We'll see. In other pregnancy related shenanigans I at last gave in and bought a piece of "maternity wear". I am now the proud owner of a pair of jeans with a huge bucket like extra panel and stretchy sides. They hold themselves (surely this grammar is becoming tenuous) up by being so huge they stretch over the front of the belly completely, thus achieving a Hogarth-like Billy Bunter style trouser wearing look, with trews far stretched over a huge distended belly, high up almost to the armpits, and making me feel as if I should also have gout. Or be wearing braces and a small hat.

And I've also just had a load of watered down apple juice with super-wowee gubbins-what-is-good-for-you in with my lunch which has made me go a bit lightheaded.

Oh and I've been meaning to say this for absolutely ages and I keep forgetting. I am now at the stage where I literally loathe all smokers. All of them. Suppose you're walking next to a non-smoking woman who is pregnant and you're blowing smoke in to her face? Even worse if you're smoking a fucking cigarillo. How do you know she is pregnant? You don't necessarily. So the only answer is to NOT SMOKE AND BLOW YOUR SMOKE IN TO EVERYONE AROUND YOU'S FACES. Do you get it? Will you get defensive if I ask you to move rather than me coughing and wheezing and moving myself? Why I do believe you will. You will have to excuse me then if I start coughing in your face you INCONSIDERATE FUCKER.

(Note that the above is not in fact aimed at anyone I know at all - it's all people at train stations or waiting to cross roads of lighting up outside the damn tube station the *second* they get beyond the boundary, the pigfuckers).

....and relax.

Good news

Liz Stephens, who is the head of the home-based midwives based at St Georges is going to come over on Friday evening to discuss home birthing options.

Hoorah!

And back in the office, almost immediately feeling more productive and happier all round. Which in some ways is slightly depressing. anyway, much to do after two days of zombie'd out afternoons of minimal effectiveness and general uselessness.

Scans

So the hospital cocked up with the second scan I was supposed to be having today for the pre-elampsia research they're doing (where they listen to *my* heart) and put me on the heart abnormality research scanning instead where they listen to munchkin's heart.

Which was a bit weird, but fair enough. Anyway. So I got to see her again today which cheered me up immensely this morning. I'm really down at the moment - generally tired, generally unmotivated and generally having to try and deal with a fairly extreme legal situation at work that makes me want to pull my hair out. Not only that but trying to manage a situation with a friend and a different friend who's so inundated with mail that he doesn't read my email - which put all of us in a very strained situation earlier today. I'm under so much stress and am presumably reacting very hormonally to the whole situation but I did feel like shouting "Get a grip" once or twice. or similar messages but with slightly more swearing.

Anyway. Jesus. There's more important stuff in the world. Like her, for example:

Here are the scans from yesterday, when she was conked out asleep:

You can see her head and backbone quite clearly. She looks a little less like a Terminator without flesh on :)

Here's the second from yesterday. Don't know why they gave us two:

...and here's from this morning. She's flipped over and was picking her nose for a large section of the heart scan. Tsk!

Oh my God

This, courtesy of the Yozlet. the Washington Post reports on the US military decision to halt local elections in Iraq and install puppet leaders.

The stupidity of this action astounds me more than it probably should.

Completely unrelated to the below

I should remember this.

Working at home does my head in.

I get very depressed very quickly if I'm on my own and with things on my mind.

Then I'm incapable of working under any circs anyway.

So - meanwhile, something to cheer me up.

Meanwhile, a message for Sprog.

Hello gorgeous.

It must be stranger than strange reading through this and seeing "he" for nearly 5 months, then suddenly you become a girl - and here am I, feeling like a right berk having been convinced all this time as a result of your Grannie's assertion that she knew all the genders of her kids (including me) so therefore I must be right.

What an eeediot.

Now don't you ever, for a moment think that finding out you were a girl was in any way a disappointment because nothing could be futher from the truth. If you had seen the grins across both our faces during the scan, and I messed up the next few seconds because I was laughing for joy and laughing at my own stupidity so much!

You were asleep during your scan. You looked very calm and kept opening and closing your mouth, as if you were breathing. Your belly was full of amniotic fluid and they measured your head, your body length and your femur length, amongst other things. So, we know that your brain size is just above the mean, your head size is wayyy above the mean and your chest size and height are almost in the "unusually big and tall" category.

So an easy birth is up ahead then!

By the way, if you had been a boy, we were going to call you Charlie Gilbert MacKay, we think. We thought I should say. Charlie after Dickens, Darwin and Babbage, and Gilbert after MacKay's Grandad.

That was after a month or so of name musing, so we've got plenty of time to think about your new name :)

Right now all I can think of is that you are less than nineteen weeks away from opening your eyes for the first time outside of me. And that makes me so proud of you - for no reason that I can fathom other than that you will have made it in to the world! That's achievement enough, believe me.

xxx

So much for feminine intuition

It's a girl.

Well.

Taking a moral stand over something that's fairly heavy duty is certainly an interesting pickle to be in.

I think sprog must sense my disquiet. He's wriggling around like a snake in a sack.

...and no, I won't be discussing it in detail. Or in vague terms either, come to that.

I've drawn a blank

I'm extremely, extremely tired today for only marginally good reasons. got to sleep around 11 then woke up at the now normal 5.40. Dozed after that. I shall try getting to sleep at 10 today if that's feasible, and then waking up at 5.40 should see me refreshed and awake. Ahem.

But, meanwhile, I'm also very happy because I just bought a lovely birthday present for the Beloved. 'Tis his birthday tomorrow, and it's a very large box. I'm not quite sure if he actually reads this 'ere diary, having been completely freaked out by the last one (for understandable reasons) so for that reason I shall decline to say what it is.

For now, therefore I will return to the world of the half awake, as I attempt to get through the rest of the afternoon without yawning my head off every seven seconds. Impossible, sadly.

Know your onions

Particularly young, fresh, strong ones that should really have been destined to be pickled in vinegar.

I have now been sick with the pregnancy a grand total of twice (but please do not forget, gentle reader the *weeks* in which 24 hour a day nausea was the norm). After eating raw onion with my Indian meal tonight (a usual occurrence), within seconds I felt ill. Surprise and amazement followed as I began to feel *really* ill. I thought - get water... by the time I got to the miseral water stash I felt the need to go stand in the bathroom breathing slowly, and within about ten seconds the contents of my stomach were slooshing in the toilet.

After which I continued eating! Giving the onions a miss. Unsurprisingly.

Twenty weeks, by the way

I was going to say this over the weekend.

Half way through.

Well, more than half way through now. Time has been doing the strange "two track" action whereby it seems to rush by at the pace of a train (if I think of where I am now) or trundle along at the pace of an arthritic donkey (if I think back to March - which seems to be *decades* ago).

I became very aware of two track time when I was doing the MBA. Holy shit, we're 3/4's of the way through! I can't believe it! Do you remember Christmas 2000 before we started? Good god yes, wasn't that when I was but a mere youngster? (etc).

By the way, eventually I have got round to reading the McSweeneys short stories collection of "Fantastic Tales" - some of them are good, some of them are frankly not good. But seems to be about half worth the money thus far.

Hair

I had my hair cut. I look like less of a hippy. I also have that strange burnt caramel smell of having too many hair products on my head. It's gone all super-wavy on me and reminds me slightly of a perm that's growing out! (still flat on top, see).

Meanwhile, I have just had a very protein free lunch and feel a bit weird - I'm full of noodles but barely anything of actual nutritional value. And waiting for the inevitable acid heartburn.

Sprog is busy squiggling about. What is he capable of thinking about yet? In another 3 weeks he'll be a viable human being that could survive outside the womb. That suggests that he's really not far off being a conscious being. Does he think in simple terms ie: dark, light, noise, pressure, stiff - must kick legs out?

Curious how pompous people get regarding scientific advances - as if science is something that is concrete and people have real *answers* instead of theoretical principles that seem to hold weight at the moment - and yet, until a baby begins to get those Wittgensteinian language limits in place, we can't understand what the hell they're on about, or what they're thinking at all (well, we can tell brain activity which is part of the way there, but you know - go with the general principle here!). Something so fundamental to all human beings, and it's still there, a mysterious grey area.

I think we might have a name beginning to form, if my instinct is right and sprog is indeed male. Which does seem a bit preemptive, so I won't disclose it here.

...meanwhile, in the land of unborn children...

Well, in the last 4 days, what had been happening occasionally sort of solidified finally in to MOVEMENT.

Not just the occasional movement either. He's like a bloody snake rippling around in there 24 hours a day! If he doesn't turn out to be a world class athlete then he'll fidget more than anyone I've ever known.

A veritable punch from the inside was felt by Mackay also which made me very happy.

One more myth I wish to explode here - in several books people have called "the Quickening" (a fantastically gothic phrase if I ever heard one) "a fluttering feeling" or similar words to that effect. That, I'm afraid, is nonsense. I can tell you exactly what it's like - it's exactly the same feeling as a fart trapped in one's colon and moving around the tubes, gurgling and bulging occasionally - but this time, one about 4"'s in front of the colon.

I'm not epecting that level of bubbliness to continue, given the current rate of racing about. I fully expect to have bruises coming up from the inside starting any day now.

Meanwhile, having ascertained real life status can I just say:

WOW. Or to put it another way: Blimey!!!

Reborn after a weekend of deadness

Apparently Cisco are evil and they released a bunch of software that fucked up Flirble's routers. Nice. Dumbasses.

Of course, with my responsibility for looking after Warren's mail list on the back of using James's "goodness of his heart" 'net service it's all been a bit hellish, given that the mail list server blew up the week before. Warren has been very patient bless him.

Anyway. all finished now. THAN GOD. At least I hope so, or else Warren'll end up on SmartGroups, which I don't want since everyone'll end up with ads.

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Very occasionally, in whispered tones, it can be said that rain is good. Even wearing sandles whilst it is raining is good, and having no coat.

Meanwhile I am in Leeds and suffering from eating shit food (egg sandwiches, mostly. hmm... lovely) but succumbed last night to some kind of omelette thing with smoked haddock on the top. Thank you to the haddock. I could just about stomach the "smoked-ness" of it.

People who did not know i was pregnant up north can now see the evidence so have had a good deal of positivity from well wishers, which is fun / strange.

Sometimes at work I get scared that I can't do everything in this job. Or that it's overwhelming me. i mostly get that bwhen I get kick back from particularly jobsworth employees who sadly, seem to want to take initiative or responibility about as much as they want to walk the channel.

Which always depresses the hell out of me. What the hell is the point in doing anything if you're not prepared to do it well or in order to stretch yourself or ...whatever. Sad and frustrating. And I could do well without it to be honest.

Suggestions please

It's hotter than Madrid in London. This is obviously mad and good for most people therefore I am not going to suggest such weather should disappear.

Therefore I am asking for suggestions for sleeping possibilities for someone currently unable to get to sleep. 4.30am Sunday night, 3.03 last night. Work is totally fucked. No fans, too loud so won't sleep.

Slight problem also is sleeping next to the hottest man in the world. He burns out heat more than a 3 bar bloody heater, and thus far, *incredibly* he's refused to remove the duvet from the cover. This morning I laid down the law in no undertain terms. We are removing the fucking duvet. I don't give a toss about whatever feeble and nonsensical reasons you dream up. We are sleeping under a sheet. End of bloody story.

Weekend adventures

Well, apart from the computer playing up. Only a bit, but enough to be very disruptive at a bad time.

Saturday: "The Master Builder" - a live play and everyfink, which I was forced to go and view since it had Patrick Stewart in the lead, and the Mackay needed to witness this amazing spectacle alongside Paddy and Simon.

Conclusion: a decent production. Himself and Sue Johnston who played his Missus were really very good (she particularly, I mean - really excellent), but the production in itself had a few too many "Weeelll" type comments in the discussion afterward. As opposed to the play, which we talked about and mused over for well over an hour. Which was a good brain sharpener.

(And, note, it was a little bit like watching a holodeck thing - heh ;)

I had to eat tuna steak, not even organic, in this restaurant afterwards which fucking annoyed me since they had a big greekish goats cheese salad on the specials board but I think sprog appreciated the extra energy boost. Met up with Abby and had a lovely stroll around the South Bank before toodling over to Rich's for his party, at which holy Mother of God, Graham and Arthur were there as well as Gina's sister, Emma. It did my head in. Luckily, there was no nostalgic talk at all and Graham seemed a bit more... well he was stil being nervous Graham n'all but he just seemed... more laid back. Meanwehile, lovely to see Arthur who is of course, the loveliest man in the world (TM). I grabbed his phone number while I could and promised to get in touch tail end of august.

And even more of a shocker, Gina is married and is moving to Australia! Like - bloody hell! But... good good good for her.

Anyway, needless to say I actually felt rather good for a large part of the evening - nothing like being obviously pregnant to illicit enormous amounts of cooing conversatino from almost complete and utter strangers - including one lass who then got very drunk and desperately needed to hold the sprog-bump because she'd missed her friend being pregnant or something.

But, after a while, I did feel like I might as well have a cardboard box on my head, and people just talk to the belly part. I had to go and sleep after a while so I went and watched the South Park movie in Rich's TV room, dozed off and Rich, while showing a young lady around the flat (hope I didn't ruin his plans) came in and said "Oh, right, this is Cait, who's having a baby".
Not right now, munchcake, not right now.

All told it was a completly lovely evening it has to be said.

Anmd then it started geting HOTTER. Not much sleep, Tod (my mother) and David (her husband) arrive the next day with Stephen in tow to find me somewhat dishevelled through lack of sleep. mostly through waking up in sweat and also it has to be said because my mad neighbour decided to have a bad night. (5am loud sneezing fit lasting 2 hours).

Steve stayed and we played a good round of Monopoly and then I failed to get to sleep until 4.30am.

So today was fucked, intensely.

I am now hoping, BEGGING that I might be able to make it through the night in one piece. It's a form of torture I'm sure - the planet is trying to get me to complain about the weather. I refuse god damn you. Hot is good! It's just that... cool is good at night, ok? Are you listening???

And it burns, burns, burns...

If only I could now say "my heart". It would sound so poetic. But god knows what I ate today. It hurt though. A lot. A Lot. You can almost sense the acid bubbling up out of the stomach and in to the oesophagus.

Curious thing - I can really, and I mean *really* tell the difference between mineral waters these days. "Vittel" for example, I can tell you is *disgusting*. It doesn't even taste "Vichy" minerally, it just tastes horrible. Evian is ok, but Volvic seems to be the one I actually enjoy drinking.

At work, brief conversation as to the merits of calling sprog "Jesus" (in the Spanish / South American style). And if "Jesus" is in fact an acceptable name for a large percentage ofthe Earth's community, why not "Christ" too? Brenda, the resident Irish woman suggested having children called "Jesus, Mary and Joseph". However, Christ sounds quite amusing. "Christ! Will you come and have your tea for jaysus sake". Etc, etc.

I now have a craving for chips, so I must return home and eat illicit, bad for me food whilst I stuff my face full of veggie hot dogs.

Oh! And I eventually bought the D&Q collected edition of "Berlin" by Jason Lutes. Good god it's fantastic. I kept missing them on the shelves and you know how it is, you just end up waiting for the collections in the end. It's just stunning. One of the best works read together as a novel I've read in absolutely *ages*. I mean not only is he a great artist with a unique, smooth style but his storytelling is wonderful. I must give these to my Dad and just say to him - look, look at what people are writing here. A fuck of alot better to spend money on that the welter of absolute rubbish that comes out in paperback in this country now. I know he'd like it if he looked. I think.

So buy it, you lot. Whoever you are.

Bleh... weird day

I actually can't bear that I'm so emotional nowadays.

I'm upset for several different reasons today, all of them stupid. All of them if I were giving advice to someone else, I'd shrug my shoulders and say "So?" or words to that effect. And even worse, I can imagine my friends, to whom I burst out a load of grumpiness this morning, all lifting their eyes skyward and saying "Yeah, pregnant woman, what do you expect". It's horrible when you have valid things to say but they all come out on bleggy fashion.

Also, I am the world's worst person ever when working out anything to do with finances. Which is why on a personal level I have a (biodegradable, no less) credit card that pays itself off through my bank account at the end of every month. So basically, I have no debt other than the obscenely large amount of money we owe to Virgin One for our flat. Anything that isn't direct debited, closely organised so I don't have to get my hands on it literally falls to pieces in my unbearably forgetful hands.

Which has caused more grief for me today - eeeeek, I just get all catatonic and panicky with it. How unbearably rubbish. at least I know this is not a female trait. I know of several blokes who are the same.

5am eternally

Bitch cat jumped up at the window and scrabbled through the *tiny* gap we kept open last night at almost exactly 5, meaning because it was so light, sleep ended on the spot.

So after trying to get to sleep for *too long* I got up and measured all the rooms so that we can begin to approximate costs for doing the wooden floor if we can manage to get it done before sprog arives (long story, another time).

Then I measured the curtains and windows and YAY bought the bloody blackout curtain liners. Aargh... "28 day delivery" - it had better not fucking be.

Then I cleared up the kitchen, made Mackay his tea and read my email.

I spent quite a lot of time thinking about the house actually, things we need to do - things we can do to make it a bit better and what have you. I've suddenly realised that if we don't do this shit *now* we're going to be screwed in the longer term. Alot of what I'm thinking is small in the way of making things better but some of it is fairly huge (for us, anyway).

Then I stretched my back out and did one of these pilates stretches for not-long-enough to be honest with you. However, a trick I picked up in physio for my RSI is doing something relatively little but often (ie: for 1 minute, 12 times a day) can work just as well if not better than something once a day that takes ten minutes. It becomes habit too, for your body. So I'm going to try and give my back a good stretch, say, every time I go to the loo at work and see how it helps it feel. Walked quite a stretch today and yesterday too.

Oh yes, and went to see the Doc last night about the dizziness. He said thatr my blood pressure was more stable when I stand up than when I sit down, but apart from that there was absolutely no difference in BP from last time so I should keep an eye on my hypoglaecemic (sp) index to make sure my blood sugar doesn't go too low. Fair enough. I thought it wasn't anything too much to worry about.

So tired, so overheated.

Fuck my cat. We can't keep our windows open in this heat because the little cow gets in to the bedroom and jumps up and down on the bed (or rather, comes and stands near our heads, purring loudly at 3am).

She came in 3 times last night. Then at 5 it was light enough for me to not get back to sleep properly at all, and spent the rest of the night fitfully dozing, waking up parched and throwing the fucking cat out yet again, after which I closed the window, which is obviously unacceptable.

Spent some of my time when I should have been dozing trying to work out some kind of mesh / grill system I can fit to this side of the window, which would enable me to open the window fully, then like an American anti-fly screen door or something, pull over a mesh and secure it thus making entry a complete no-no. I shall be investigating hardware store options. That'll stump the slag.

Honestly, I just can't take this. I need my sleep and it's so hot, once I do wake up, I can't get back to sleep easily. Tossing and turning, damp with heat... it's absolutely grim. Halleluyah for the otherwise entirely and hilariously awful "House of Bath" for slipping a catalogue through my door this morning containing "blackout curtain liners". I will be measuring up this evening.

Nudism

I read something in a pregnancy magazine the other day (ok, I have to qualify that because it feels so rubbish having read one. It was in Borders. I was having a cup of tea. I didn't buy it). anyway, it was called "Fit Pregnancy" which I liked the sound of as opposed to the awful UK "mother and baby" type nonsenses.

And it was ok.

In it was a quote from a woman who said that being pregnant made her reassess her attitude toward her body, and in a positive sense. I have to say I agree with that, generally speaking. Yesterday, it was so hot, and I wasn't going out so why the hell not, I spent a lot of the day either in the bath having a nice coolish soak or mooching around more or less bare-ass-nekked.

Talking to my dad in the afternoon, I commented on the gentle attitude change toward my body, and he must have been in a different room to Shelagh, because he mentioned that when Tod was pregnant, he became a lot more tactile with her, and felt more close physically than he had done before - not sexually necessarily (by the sound of it).

and with Mackay this is definitely true. I asked him how he felt, looking at my body now, and he looked a bit nonplussed but nevertheless happy for a mo, before saying he felt really proud (awww). But he too has been much more hands on. I thought about how ape like the behaviour is - instinctive and unconsciously done.

Anyway, it's very charming. And thank god I don't care about wandering about the house with nothing but a towel around my waist - it's so damned hot now.

Something else crossed my mind - whilst I'm here. I've started posting much more about other things, which says to me that my anxiety levels are way lower than they were and generally speaking I'm a lot more comfortable with things now. All I can say to that is PHEW.

Uganda

Listening to "From Our Own Correspondent" on Radio 4 yesterday morning, Hilary Andersson's report from northern Uganda was so unbearable I had to switch the radio off , I just couldn't listen to any more. Ordinarily I would feel extremely guilty for not facing up to the horrors of the world we live in but to be honest, I think the fact that I was in tears by that point suggests I'd heard all I could bear to hear.

This is the RAM file she did for BBC News 24 covering the same story but she talks in more detail that perhaps was decided was too awful for the TV audience (but could be read and heard by Radio 4 listeners) in this article.

"At a centre for children who have escaped I met a boy called Dennis. He is 14 now but was kidnapped when he was 11 and spent three years in captivity.
He had a chubby, friendly face, and was disarmingly open. Like everyone else the night he was kidnapped, he was tied by ropes to other children and marched off to the bush with a heavy load on his head.
One day, he told me, the rebel leader gave a random order that no one should eat at four o'clock - a message from the angels.
One of the kidnapped boys with Dennis disobeyed and so the rebels selected seven boys, including Dennis, and ordered them to kill the offender.
Dennis, fearing for his life, said he picked up a heavy stick and beat him on the head until his skull cracked open and he died.
His hands started fidgeting as he told me the story. The boy he had been made to kill was his friend. "

Interviewing the Ugandan president on the video piece he's depressingly defensive about asking for outside help. And what sort of help could the rich west give. Money? Hardly. Military aid? Well, is it any less likely to be used in the DR Congo instead of the north?

Meanwhile this schizophrenic and very frightening human being is singling out children to destroy in the name of God and the angels.

Turns out that Human Rights Watch did a huge report on this in March. Presumably the whole Iraq sutation prevented the Beeb from covering it until now. Doesn't excuse my having not read it before though, useless woman.

Of course, it aroused a long discussion on the nature of human experience in extremes.. of how ethnic Serb neighbours in Bosnia could kill children they had known and throw them in to local rivers, of how education doesn't seem to shield humanity from its worst imaginings, in Germany for example. Situations like these seem to give free reign to local psychopaths. How else could Ugandan people find themselves whipped up in to such a state of self belief and belief in the cause to justify the hacking off of childrens' noses and ears.

As Andersson says, this is a place where the nightmares told to children at night are actually real. A true vision of hell, surely.

Oh yes, and don't believe a word...

He doesn't live in Hackney. He said it to be "amusing"!

Still. Hooray! Generally speaking.

Quick update on this post. Quite surprised but very intrigued that I had to delete a comment on this post today. I deleted it because it was a singularly daft and completely pointless sneering comment about how unfunny Stu and Richard's opera must be, by an American reader who obviously had never seen it and I assume won't anyway.

I fear I may have antagonised the situation by telling him to shut up and go away, but hopefully that won't create a situation of childish reprisals or whatever.

But it is a quick "wake up" slap to remember that people I don't actually know are reading this, who therefore have no idea of my history. But then, what does one do - annotate entries to allow for these things? I think the answer is that one risk the ire of occasional readers instead by deleting the odd post here and there.

Curious situation though. I wonder hnow often that sort of thing happens to other people? I know it happened to Tom recently.

US attempts to exempt itself from the International Criminal Court

I'd forgotten that Clinton originally helped create this.

Meanwhile, Robin, who is a friend of Danny & Quinn's that I've never met (could be male or female - who knows!) consistently comes up with powerful politically flavoured links.

It appears that the US has shot itself in the foot by refusing military aid to a whole slew of countries who are refusing to ratify an exemption clause that excludes the US from the International Court. Now - this includes an awful lot of South American countries including, hilariously, Columbia. So much for the war on drugs, huh.

I don't think I need to voice an opinion as to the validity of either of these actions, it doesn't really need to be commented on given that the stench of its own crass and offensive nature should surely do enough.

Running before you can walk

Or have even begun to think about walking. Or breathing actual air for that matter.

An angry, guilty sounding left wing journo wrote in ye Grauniad (of course) this morning about the decision to send his lassy to a public school instead of keeping her in the Hampstead state primary she was in.

It put me in mind of my education and of course made me feel worried about Streatham.

Streatham is a hugely multi-ethnic community, and all the better for it, I think. It's not the best place to live on earth, but it's certainly more interesting and diverse (not just ethnically) than many places in London. It's also got a slew of local amenities for kids - ice rink, swimming pool, gym, cinema, huge common - you couldn't ask for better, to be honest.

It's also relatively poor, and none of the local schools seem to do hugely well in tests. Not that they are necessarily an indicator of anything. Mackay's point is that education has so much to do with parental influence (you know, opening up the world as a wonderful place to learn about and dive in to) that school test results only show up how many crap parents versus good parents there are in the borough. Or words to that effect.

I'm not sure about that. Mackay grew up first in Birmingham but then in a very small town in the West Country. I grew up in a crap suburb of Slough, and I spent many, many days at school bored out of my mind, staring out of the window having finished my work about half way through the lesson. Thinking back, I think Owen had more or less the same thing going on. Is that situation going to be any better in a poor borough, with large overcrowded schools, who according to the logic outlined above, have a majority of parents who don't really expect their kids to do much more than taxi driving? Aren't overworked teachers whose class sizes are overflowing going to spend more time trying to get the kids whose parents don't care to catch up with those kids who have been busy filling their notebooks with drawings born of pure tedium for the last hour?

The self loathing that one feels in thinking through this kind of situation is miserable, but so many questions spring to mind. Would our lives have been different had we gone to schools where we weren't bored out of our minds? Yes. Is it the boredom of schooling for bright kids that pushes them in to finding alternative interests like writing or music or... whatever? It possibly accentuates that pattern. Would our parents have sent us to public school if they had had the money? Not on your life, wedded as they were to equal opportunities for all, the great sixties socialist dreamers that they were.

Of course, I muse as if it would be possible that we might be able to scrape together the money for schooling. Excuse me whilst I stop coughing up my drink in laughing. Tens of thousands of pounds a year. Short of a lottery win I can't see how that could happen.

So - alternatives.
1) Check out what extra schooling / "gifted" (ew, stupid bloody word) schooling there is available for kids who will otherwise be bored out of their minds at school in Streatham (what's the betting?)
2) God knows. Move out of Streatham? Move to a nicey nicey suburban town of London so I can still get to work but where the school test results reveal more positive parenting? Condemn my kid to the glowing hatred I had of the tedium of suburbia, and make us both unhappy at the same time? I'm such a city dweller, it would be unholy torture to put me through living in some white middle class enclave in fucking Surrey.

When we went to visit some friends of Mackay for a xmas party in Rochester, it all seemed terribly nice. All very wholesome. Small town. Leafy. Ahhh fuck knows. Perhaps the New Zealand plan is the best one we've come up with overall. God knows.

Not so much running, as tumbling over and scraping our knees befoer we've even been born.

I just realised something

Well. Two things actually.

1. When I look at myself from the side, I remind myself of Oliver Hardy. Which is in turn miserable but also rather charming.

2. When I hold my stomach in now it makes very little difference to the size of my bump. That's only happened in the last few days. It's a big relief because - was I talking about being in stasis on here? Well that's a complete load of cobblers isn't it. Small changes I don't really notice on a day to day basis, then suddenly after 4 days I go - oooh, that's different.

Aaanyway...

Woah, where did that come from?

Got up this morning to switch the alarm off and as I turned round to get my clothes, I got so dizzy I had to reach out for the bed on the way down to the floor (saying, for fairly useless purposes, "Help me"). Collapsed on to bed. Tried to sit upright again about ten minutes later, fell on top of Mackay's legs and then, really wierdly, blanked out for about half an hour. Managed to get up then, albeit slowly and everything is.... *almost* normal. I feel a bit disjointed. No nausea or ear related gubbins, and my cynuses are also completely clear so nothing going on there either.

Very, very odd!

24 hours from heartburn city

And I tell you what, not eating wheat makes a hell of a difference. Still feeling quite aargh "at times" but nothing like the agonies of Monday night. That and the Gaviscon!

And we apparently have won £9 on the lottery. Which makes up for the last 6 months of investment, I'd say.

Nothing happening with sprog of note. Oh, I got some of what Polly had verbally described as "Venal cream" (!). turns out to be V-Nal cream and it's got horse chestnut in amongst other stuff and it's supposed to be good for your legs, but you are supposed to rub it in 3 times a day, which is a bit much. It smells very strange too. Still, we'll see what it's like after a few days.

Read a thing in the Grauniad this morning about babies sleeping through the night. A (male) doctor was quoted as saying that he didn't see what all the fuss was about and that babies should be allowed to wake up in the night for as long as they wanted. Perhaps he would like to be subjected to long-term sleep deprivation?

Our curtains are to light - thin, I mean. Tthis must be one of the reasons I keep waking at 5-ish. Although last night got to sleep around 11.40 and managed to sleep through till 6.40 before tossing and turning for another 2 hours. Just about managing to be able to sleep on my side now. Takes me far longer to drop off but it's not as bad as it was. Anyway, I think we might have to get a different pair of curtains. I can't go through the whole summer knackered!

Gaviscon

Is King of Remedies.

I'm never taking a useless Rennie level tablet again.

Katherine Hepburn

Zadie Smith wrote a reasonable eulogy to the divine Ms H in The Guardian. Suffice to say I didn't have pictures of her on my wall as a teenager, but I did have a gorgeous picture of her as my desktop for a long time. "Bringing up Baby" and "The Philadelphia Story" are not only two of my favourite films, they are undoubtedly two of the best films ever made. Incredible scripts but more to the point, an ensemble type of acting from Hepburn / Grant / Stewart on the latter that literally dances through the film - and Bringing Up Baby is... it's a wonderful, cheeky, slightly saucy and very silly film written by a young couple and acted in by two young, vital actors who just love it. She really was a screen goddess and beyond that, in her life she was a fantastic role model. Generous, tough, sincere and I reckon she did more for popularising feminism than any of the sixties Lacanian theorists ever did. She lived for as long as I can remember as not really a recluse, but a determindly private person behind a wall in a large house in Manhatten. She was, after all, a determindly East Coast kind of woman.

And my God, what a face. What a look. She looked like she was carved, not born. I'll go and visit her grave some day. She made a difference, in some way, to this human experience.

A question:

For all you ex-pregnant women. Did you ever get this feeling of trapped wind (but it wsn't) or... *something* creating a really hard, and I mean rock hard area just below your diaphragm in the middle of your lower chest / top of your abdomen?

On top of which I had really *awful* heartburn last night. We were playing Star Wars Monopoly (I was Darth Vader against Mackay's Luke Skywalker... surely I should have realised that fate would simply replay itself?) lying on the floor or leaning against sofas, and by the time we got half way through the second game, my heartburn was so bad I was grimacing with pain every few seconds. Why? Well it can't be sprog, he's not big enough. Sure, 6 inches, and a now uncomfortable rugby ball shape behind my navel but he's too low. I can only put it down to me eating too much wheat, which I know I shouldn't eat. Bit of a nuisance when we haven't been shopping for 2 weeks and I'm scraping around trying to find things to eat in the house.

Anyway, so I was a bit fed up yesterday. Slept like a log but woke up at 5, having had a dream in which I slept with Robbie williams (no, luckily no sex was involved thank God) but in the morning I couldn't remember whether the baby was supposed to be inside or outside me. We were scrambling around trying to find it in the bedclothes and in the back of my mind was a niggling doubt... youknow... I know this is wrong somehow...