Living in the city it is easy to dismiss everyone around you as a miserable prick, rushing about their business and swearing at anyone who dares to share the same pavement. But if you go outside with a buggy, everyone smiles at you. If you so much as look at a set of steps a horde of clutching hands reaches out to carry you and all your accoutrements where ever you would like to go. People are nice. Old ladies actually get out of the way as you go past, and staggering drunks babble at you and drop coins into the pram. (This is less welcome, but something of a Glasgow tradition. The coins can be rinsed.)
Public transport is another matter. The buses are ok, but they won’t let you on if there is already another buggy on the bus. And the fucking underground, the famous clockwork orange, doesn’t even have a lift so you need to fold the buggy and carry it and the baby onto the escalator. This means that a team of at least two people are required to get a baby onto the underground, which is ridiculous. And there’s more. If you fail to fold up the buggy on approaching the escalator, they shout at you over the tannoy. Nobody comes out to help. Many times I have seen a flustered young parent struggling to get all their equipment in order at the turnstile while the tannoy squawks at them like God’s tinnitus.
But on the whole getting out and about is easy, as long as nothing goes wrong. When something goes wrong it’s a disaster. Yesterday we were in a shop and the baby woke up, blinked for a bit, and then proceeded to poo straight through every layer of clothing she had on. We were quite close to the Botanical Gardens, which has baby changing facilities, but I didn’t fancy the idea of completely undressing the child in the park on a cold day in March. We were only carrying a back-up vest anyway. We had to sprint home with the kid before the poo went cold.
Public transport is another matter. The buses are ok, but they won’t let you on if there is already another buggy on the bus. And the fucking underground, the famous clockwork orange, doesn’t even have a lift so you need to fold the buggy and carry it and the baby onto the escalator. This means that a team of at least two people are required to get a baby onto the underground, which is ridiculous. And there’s more. If you fail to fold up the buggy on approaching the escalator, they shout at you over the tannoy. Nobody comes out to help. Many times I have seen a flustered young parent struggling to get all their equipment in order at the turnstile while the tannoy squawks at them like God’s tinnitus.
But on the whole getting out and about is easy, as long as nothing goes wrong. When something goes wrong it’s a disaster. Yesterday we were in a shop and the baby woke up, blinked for a bit, and then proceeded to poo straight through every layer of clothing she had on. We were quite close to the Botanical Gardens, which has baby changing facilities, but I didn’t fancy the idea of completely undressing the child in the park on a cold day in March. We were only carrying a back-up vest anyway. We had to sprint home with the kid before the poo went cold.
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