based on diary extract march 15 2011
There's a reason why buggies are known as such; they bug people, they bug parents, people in the street, people on the bus, people in the shops. Don't say you've never been bugged by one yourself because at some stage in your life you will fit into one of these categories:
a). You will have to give up your seat on the bus for a plastic monstrosity on wheels.
This seems like an honourable thing to do, yet in reality you feel that giving up a seat for an item that takes up three seat spaces is slightly unfair when, in reality, a baby does not need even one seat - it could be neatly strapped to his or her parent's chest. Besides which, the parent gets to occupy any available seat nearby to be near the 'baby on wheels' and gets to have a ready made shopping trolly too. This is made twice as painful when such parents are spotted on buses in rush hour. Could they not have waited for the 10am bus?!
b). You've been caught behind one in the supermarket, taking up most of the isle
...God forbid you get stuck behind a double buggy, equipped with 2 whining children. The worst kind are those parents who decide to go clothes shopping on a Saturday, pushing a silver cross pram down the isles of H&M and clogging up lift space. Do they not have a whole week off in which to go fannying around perusing clothes isles, is that not what maternity leave is for?!
c). You've settled down for a nice quiet cuppa with a friend in a quaint little tea room.
All of a sudden there's a mother trying to barge her pram through the door, bashing it into everything in sight. Why on earth you would choose the tiniest of coffee shops to take your 'baby on wheels' is beyond everyone. Still, the mother perseveres to find a table that she can squash a pram next to to await her friend who has a buggy that's twice the size, eventually taking up two tables. People try to squeeze past just to order another coffee or a slice of cake, thinking that it would have been easier if all parents just stayed at home for coffee and baked cakes - is that not what women do on maternity leave anyway?!
d). You're a mother: Like me.
You've been given a dentist appointment at 9:10am and the only way you can get there is by bus. The bus doesn't pull up to the pavement properly, meaning that you have to hoist the baby up and ask for help from strangers who are wondering why the hell you are getting on a bus in rush hour. You then have to make a lady, who has a rather large briefcase, standup because you need the buggy space. Once you get off the bus the driver pulls up too far from the road again, and right in front of a bus shelter, meaning you have to do some sort of contortionist trick in order to get onto the street, almost tipping your baby out in the process. After the ordeal of the bus and the dentist your baby is getting restless for a feed so you decide to go for a coffee as you don't quite fancy feeding on the bus home. You look for a coffee shop that has ample room for a buggy and realise that these don't really exist, besides which your baby is screaming and you need to just find the nearest place possible. You try to open the cafe door with difficulty and no one comes to your aid, leaving you trying to manoeuvre the buggy back and forth and people look at you as though you were attempting to reverse up the M1. On the way home it rains, or worse, snows, and you've got the 'town buggy' which fits into smaller spaces and buses but can't quite move in general british weather, and you try to work out the rain cover, which is like when my husband tries to make the bed, it looks skewif and inside out (but you could have sworn that was the way it went). When you finally get back home you are relieved it's Saturday tomorrow and you will actually have the car, meaning you have ample time to nip to town and back without coffee shop stops and then you can go shopping and replace those saggy maternity leggings at H+M.
Which are you??
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