Office gremlins

When a girl doesn't use her office more or less for six months, she can expect to find that:

• the number of chairs which have come to die there have substantially multiplied (it costs money to get them officially removed when dead)
• at least three gerbils have died in the desktop since last usage

Pregnancy musings (2)

Just wondering how large you have to get before someone offers you their seat on public transport rather than clocking your bump and then looking at the floor? What fun a one and a half - two hour commute across London into the archive that was last week: that's that long one way. (So looking forward to doing it again this week). And a similar question about individuals with no pool ettiquette: how long before they think 'Hmm, that lady is a wide load, perhaps I'll give her a little extra space?' I'm hoping, mainly for my opinion of my fellow countrymen, that as I increase further, offers of seats will occur. But for the pool sharks, I fear there is no hope.

Paris, then and now

Then was January 1989, now September 2009. Then I was on a very short school trip for French A-level students, more recently visiting the Sorbonne for a medieval history conference. Then I could speak French (or so I thought), and couldn't get anyone to speak French to me; more recently I couldn't get anyone to speak English to help me out with my completely corroded school-girl French (never so embarrasing as in an internet cafe - why had I not considered that I had no internet or computer-related vocabulary to dredge up from the back of my mind?) Then, being a self-hating almost 17 year old, I hardly ate; last week, being a pregnant lady of six months, that was hardly the case. But there were parallels too. Then we mainly saw the outside of buildings (presumably because we could not afford to go inside); and this month I again mainly saw the outside of buildings, having been in town for a different purpose than to sight-see. So Paris remains to be 'done'. Perhaps sooner than in another twenty years, mais qui sait?

Pregnancy musings (1)

Now at twenty-four weeks plus, my main thoughts (other than panic, worry and stress) have revolved around why it is apparently impossible to purchase maternity clothes in England, other than online. In a moderate sized town (Cambridge) one is told, I'm sorry but only our major stores carry maternity clothes - shop online. In a much bigger town, and more a city in the modern sense (Newcastle-upon-Tyne), one finds again the injunction to shop online, although one can of course go to Dotty P's which, allegedly, has a maternity 'range'. Having last shopped in 'Dorothy Perkin's' over twenty years ago, I was less than keen to grace its doors. But in one trots, and, yes, the maternity 'range' appears to be aimed at the average age of the Dotty P customer. Does this tell us something about teenage pregnancy rates in Britain? Some relief was found in Birmingham, thankfully, but not as much as you'd think. And Marks and Spencer was particularly disappointing and awful. So I suspect that those pregnant ladies who don't have access to the internet are forced to have recourse to the leggings and a baggy t-shirt option, suggested to me by a sales person in a Newcastle store, 'hen'. Fine for at home, but if you need something smart for work? Oeuf, c'est terrible.