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won’t be putting her hand up much for babysitting duties. I grimace as this thought hits me because I doubt I’d be much chop atbabysitting either, but for very different reasons. Diane is a born mother whereas I . . . well, I’m not.
    In fact, I don’t even particularly like babies. When other women, and quite a lot of men too, start gurgling over bunny-rug occupants, I just feel a tad bewildered. Sure, they’re cute and rather appealing – in a shrink-proof wrapping kind of way – but, let’s face it, what can you say about a developmental stage wherein your appearance is actually enhanced by a state of total baldness? And don’t even get me started on babies at restaurants, and the way they get all the good parking spots at the shopping centres. Then look at what they do to your figure, your stress levels and your bank balance. No, I don’t get it.
    In fact, if it weren’t for a rather literal misinterpretation of exactly what the rhythm method entailed, Bronte herself wouldn’t ever have made her appearance twenty-odd years ago. And it wasn’t like I had an awful lot of time to decide whether I wanted kids now, later, or ever, as I’d only been married twelve and a half minutes when she was conceived.
    I’m not exaggerating – I went into the reception bathroom to freshen up before the wedding photographs and my new husband, obliging soul that he was, came in to give me a hand – or whatever. So, with the background encouragement of Carole King, one thing led to another, the earth moved and we got into a rhythm that was made all the easier by my hoop-style wedding dress, which flipped up neatly over my head. When, eventually, I readjusted the hoops and went out for photographs, all the while, unbeknownst to me, Dennis’s little tadpoles were displaying a total lack of appropriate wedding etiquette and swimming frantically upstream. Nine months later – voila! Baby girl.
    Not that I don’t love Bronte, I do – very much. But it was never the bells clanging, whistles blowing, life-altering,instantaneous, maternally magical experience that I’d read about. Rather, it was a slow process that started with more of a sense of bemusement at her birth, and culminated about four months later when once, during a night-feed, I looked down at her nestled against my breast and suddenly realised oh-my-god, I love her. And that I’d just die if anything happened to her. But that love didn’t make me think twice about buying a book which detailed what the rhythm method really entailed, and then going on the pill as well just to make doubly sure. And not having any more children certainly didn’t count as one of my regrets when the marriage shuddered miserably to a halt about nine years later.
    Also, that love has certainly been put to the test this morning. Even apart from the matter of giving birth on my carpet and then telling everybody about it before I could, there was also the fact, as I discovered when I finally managed to get out the door, that Bronte had parked her pink Volkswagen right behind my car when she arrived in the middle of the night. And, as she left with Bill and Sven, of course the pink Volkswagen was still there. I had to execute a seventy-eight point turn and run over my new rosebush in order to extricate my Barina and head off to collect my mother.
    I put my blinker on and coast into the left-hand lane in preparation for turning into Forest Road. Several vehicles already in the left-hand lane honk furiously so I take one hand off the steering wheel momentarily to send them an appropriate gesture. Then I try to crank the car back into third – but it won’t go, so I look down quickly and realise the car is already in third. No wonder it was making all those complaining noises coming down the highway. I look back up just in time to brake before colliding with a bus that, very rudely, has pulled out right in