An Eye into the World of Child Centred Living

Its a marvelous day, the sun is up, the sky is blue (despite weather girl warnings of pending rain) and I'm sitting in the office waiting for my 9.30 meeting.

I've spent the last week playing with my neice aged one and three quarters after work - endless rounds of repetative games of walking up and down the garden stopping to pull flowers off shrubs and to play the wind chime (its loud but it isn't pretty), bubble blowing until my mouth is sore and my hands are sticky, bathing games of moving water from one container to another and story reading (I now have intimate knowledge of peepo, the hungry catapillar and Mr Greedy).

My sister and I went for a brief trip to the West End, childless, to scout for that truck of the perambulator world the double buggy (she's expecting a second in September so for a couple of months she'll have a couple of under 2 year olds to contend with). Massive pavement filling contraptions which mostly don't fold down (where are you going to store it at home, how will it get in the car?). And those posh range-rover style four wheel drive versions with three huge wheels and bullbar-esque frames that are popular in Crouch End also have a two seater cousin.

Remarkable to be shopping for those things that are the bain of the childless' lives - nothing worse than to be confronted by a gang of buggy weilding mums bombing down the road to get to Starbucks for their coffee morning. And interesting how by being at work and going out after dark you manage to almost entirely avoid that side of life infrequently glimpsed on trips to Crouch End during working hours where everyone is either retired or pregnant or with buggy.

There's a whole other world out there.