Lifts and Toilets

Earlier this week I went out for a bit, on my own, with The Creature.

We went to meet @Motherventing for some tea and cake, then to do a bit of shopping.

I learnt a lesson on that trip: shopping centres are crap for a lone parent with a big pram/buggy thing.

As an able bodied, reasonably fit, reasonably young person, I do not use lifts. I use stairs. There are many reasons for this: lifts contain lift music. Lift music is not actual music, and should be banned. Lifts also contain other people, squished together into a small space. On occasion, one of those other people will fart. Unpleasant.

My final reason for not using lifts is that I don’t know where they are. Lifts (with their terrible music and farting) are like the dirty secret which shops don’t want you to know about, so they’re hidden away. The signs that say “lifts this way” are actually a cunning ruse, and take you further from the lift.

But as a parent with a child in a pram I need to use the lift.

I lost fifteen minutes of my life looking for the lift in Marks & Spencer. I will never get that back, and I could have been using it to do something important, like eating a nice piece of cake. Or anything that wasn’t looking for a lift.

Worse still was House of Fraser. Their lifts weren’t signposted at all. I still don’t know whether there is a lift there or not, I gave up after I’d done a few laps of the floor I came in on. Well played House of Fraser, quite a subtle way of making me feel unwelcome.

Now I think of it, I don’t remember seeing any other people pushing a buggy in there. Perhaps I missed the sign saying I should shop elsewhere.

Once I’d finished the exciting business of looking for lifts the tea I had consumed earlier had made its way through the system and wanted out. The Creature was also in need of a change.

I made a discovery: changing facilities are quite often in the ladies toilets. When they are not in the ladies toilets, they are often a standalone room, without a toilet. Ha fucking ha. At least the baby got a change.

I will share something with you here. My bladder is RUBBISH. It is made more rubbish when my brain gets the opportunity to tell it that there are no toilet facilities available to it.

Question for my male readers: it’s okay to take your baby into the men’s toilets, yes? Have him next to you at the urinal? It didn’t feel like it ought to be okay, I don’t recall EVER seeing another man doing it (although my toiletiquette is perfect, so I don’t look around more than is absolutely necessary). So I thought dry thoughts and made my way back to the car.

What I wonder is how dads on their own are supposed to cope with situations where there is no baby change option outside of the women’s toilet. I suppose you can change a baby anywhere really.

Challenging

There are moments in life where we are faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, either as individuals or as a race. Climbing Mount Everest, visiting the north and south poles, putting footsteps on the moon. All these and many more bear testament to the will and ingenuity of humankind.

We're pretty damn awesome when you think about it; pat yourself on the back quickly, bask in the glory of being a person, take a sip of whatever is your favourite tipple and permit yourself an indulgent moment of self congratulation.

There.  Feels good right?  Good, you've earned that.

There's something else that, if you are a parent, there's a good chance you've done. Something which you might not often think about, might not wish to recall. You may well have fitted an Isofix car seat base, plus the associated seat.

I was feeling masochistic tonight, so I decided to take on that particular challenge for myself.  I'd heard the stories about how annoying it is, how awkward and frustrating. But there was a little sticker on the base. It had pictorial instructions, like you get on Lego kits. There were numbers next to the pictures and the biggest of those numbers was five.

LIES.  PICTURES OF ACTUAL LIES.

"It must be easy" I thought to myself "there are only FIVE instructions, and they all look really simple!"

DO NOT BE FOOLED.  There is false security deeply ingrained within those bright, cheerful instructions.  Here's how it went:

1.  Push the button on the front of the base.

(Done.  Easy.  This is going to be a piece of piss.)

2.  Slide the seat base forward, exposing the two Isofix mount thingies. 

(Bit of a struggle.  Hmm, this is harder than it should be isn't it?  Am I doing this right?  Oh, for the love of Jesus, why won't this farking thing mov...*smack of plastic on knuckles*...*Swearing*... Oh, good, done it.)

3.  Push the Isofix mount thingies onto the Isofix bracket thingies in your car.

(I don't see the bracket thingies.  The car definitely has bracket thingies, doesn't it?  Are you supposed to take the seat out or something?  WTF?  *rummaging in depths of car seat*...*scraped knuckles*...*more swearing*... AHA!  There they are.  Now, just push them in until they click.  Done.  *mop sweat from forehead*)

4.  Slide the seat base back until snug to the back of the car's seat.


(*pinches tiny piece of skin on hand between sliding parts of Isofix base*...*VIOLENT swearing*... Done.)

5.  Slide the stabilising arm doofer until firmly against the floor of the car.


(*shaking in anticipation of mishap*...Oh.  That bit was actually easy.)

Feeling a strange mixture of smugness and resentment I went back into the house.  That was when I found the two little pieces of plastic which go between the car's seat and the Isofix base.  The two little pieces of plastic which meant I had to go back out to the car and start again.  The two little pieces of plastic which I may well one day tell my therapist about.

Yeah, it's all smiles for you...

Still, I've calmed down now and realised that, actually, all the manufacturers of these things are trying to do is prepare us for the arrival of the child itself: poor instructions, lots of mistakes, trials and tribulations, swearing and pain.  I ought to be writing to thank them.