Nostalgic appeal of the sturdy old pram
A baby, being for life and not just for Christmas, cannot be swaddled forever or left behind in the nursery with nanny eating marmite soldiers while you pop to Iceland.
No. It is important that you devise some means of moving the infant from A to B. Important and paved with pitfalls. Choices, choices.
As if you didn't make the most significant choice of your life in off-springing in the first place, you are now required to choose a vehicle in which to zoom the little one along Bognor sea front.
Far more zooming seems to take place today than in days of yore. Yore saw a lot more 'perambulating'. Perambulation with the baby was a leisurely pursuit, usually done in very good clothes and heeled court shoes.
Try wearing a mid-calf fitted 'Gor-ray' skirt, with a twin set, over a Berlei corselette, with a coat made by Harella from five yards of heavy tweed. Oh, and a hat, of course, and the aforementioned court shoes.
You can really do nothing other than perambulate. No zooming (trainers were nothing other than men who took care of horses of may be lions and tigers at the circus).
There was a way of smart walking that you rarely see today. The big prams that glided their way down our high streets were actually instrumental in the promotion of smart walking.
The perambulating parent stood tall with a straight back and a proud bearing. Compare with a zooming modern mum or dad hunched over an all-terrain stroller.
But what of the baby? We must consider the child. I have no personal experience of what the Scots call a 'way-un'. But I was a way-un once upon a time.
My mother would sit me in my big pram and park me in the back yard of our little Handsworth terraced home. I think there was some grass. Perhaps we grew some lupins.
I would have watched clouds for hours. Perhaps a birdy or two would fly across. Many hours passed and I had little choice other than to take up philosophy.
I had no Fisher Price entertainment centre or Cee Beebies channel. Thinking thoughts and watching clouds. The morning passed. In the afternoon we might go to the shops.
My mum in her voluminous coat and me in the Big Pram. It had the regulation collapsible hood, with an apron and bib that fitted with wing nuts.
My friend Merinda says she could unscrew her own wing nuts at a very early age. At a slightly later age she was known to kick off the brakes of other babies' big prams and cause chaos outside shops.
None of that occured to me. In those days there was no question that mothers would not want to face the baby. Communication was extremely important.
Children learned from their pusher how to make various facial expressions. Pushing a big pram up a big gutter would produce a straining face, while passing by Aunty Dolly and her wooly dog Chum would cause wreathed smiles.
Recently, some of the perpetual survey work that takes place at universities has pointed out that children who look towards their pusher are better adjusted than those who face the world alone and unaided - the ones who learn their facial expressions, one surmises, from Shrek or Iggle Piggle.
Am I surprised? Are you?
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Weather for Chichester
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
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Temperature: 13 C to 19 C
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