Today, we did something we’d never done before. We went to the Traffic Centre on a Sunday afternoon.

It was a bit peculiar. The Traffic Centre is really the only full-scale shopping mall in the North West, and as a result, it gets very busy. We go very, very rarely - partly because it’s thirty miles away, partly because we don’t really like shopping, partly because we have two kids to make shopping an even more unpleasant experience, and partly because we don’t really like other people much, and there are usually a lot of them there.

As a result, on the couple of occasions a year that we DO go, it tends to be evenings, or mornings, or some other time calculated to be fairly quiet, and it tends to be with the aim of achieving a specific goal as quickly as possible, and then escaping.

Today was slightly different. We’d actually gone for the food - we’d landed up in Warrington (which is half-way there), we needed some lunch, and it seemed like the best option. We knew that Sunday is a busy day in such places, and we were expecting it to be busy, but we weren’t quite expecting the sense of culture shock.

The place was crawling with people. They were all holding plastic carrier bags full of stuff. None of them looked happy. Within minutes of entering the building, we’d already heard two very unhappy children wailing, and whilst one was out of sight, the other upset me because he was only a baby, and he just wanted someone to pick him up, but nobody would. Actually, the happiest-looking family we saw were taking photos of themselves, posing in front of… the shops. Not even the big fountain, or the statues, just themselves, leaning against the balustrade of the balcony, in front of the shops.

It felt very odd. It felt like we’d walked into a closed community, full of rites and rituals that we, mere outsiders, couldn’t hope to understand. And the more people I saw, the more they seemed to be scurrying about like lab-rats - not going anywhere, not achieving anything, but never daring to stop.

I knew I wasn’t a particularly materialistic person, and I think I probably knew that I was becoming less so with age (and, let’s be honest, with the comfort of knowing I already had most of the Stuff I felt I needed - it’s easy to be snobby about consumerism once you’ve already stocked up). But I never expected to find the Traffic Centre so shocking in it’s total and uncompromising glorification and worship of the Accumulation of Stuff.

I asked Kevin how all those people found the money to keep going back so often, and buying so much - surely they’re not all tumbling into an abyss of credit card debt? I mean, I know that far too many people are, and I don’t, generally, blame them nearly as much as I blame the society that seems to coerce them into it, but surely not all of them? And even if they had the money in the bank, why on earth would you keep going back there, to spend more and more of it, on less and less?

It made me sad. It made me uncomfortable. It made me a little angry - consumerist culture is conspiring to dupe people into thinking that the purchase of stuff is going to make their lives better, and it NEVER EVER DOES. I felt like I’d stumbled into a huge, destructive cult, and that only I, the outsider, could see it for what it was - but just like with a cult, my clarity of vision would carry no weight with the insiders, precisely because I didn’t belong.

I’ve really never felt like that before, about something so inane and ubiquitous as shopping. It was a very odd thing.

Still, Daisy managed to accidentally Stick it To the Man - she pulled an entire shelf of merchandise ( which should have been screwed to the bracket, but wasn’t) onto the floor, with a very impressive crash, and was lucky not be underneath it when it landed. Apparently, she was trying to reach the windmills…

I’m getting more and more minimalist. I keep looking around my house, and wanting to streamline it, declutter it, make it less hard work to look at it. The couple across the road redecorated their living room recently, and when they leave the curtains open in the early evening, we can see how calm and simple and tidy and EMPTY it looks. And it makes me want to go and live there.

This is the complaint I’ve put in to the city council:

Details
This morning, I took my three year old daughter to the Peter Lloyd Leisure Centre, for the Preschool Swimming class there. It was her first class, and I enrolled her because she has never been confident in the water, and I wanted her to get the opportunity to become so.

I signed up for the class, and paid ?18 up front for six sessions, six days earlier, and arrived well ahead of 10.30am, as requested.

I was a little surprised by the size of the group - given that the regulations for the pools prohibit me from taking both my children swimming at once (they are both under four), I was not expecting a staff ratio of one to ten children, but it was so.

My daughter struggled throughout the session - most of the other children were much more experienced in the activities, and much more confident. My daughter seemed to be left to cope by herself quite a lot, and I was concerned that if she felt left behind, she wouldn’t want to come again. However, that is just background - the bit that horrified me was this:

At the end of the session, the children had “play time” - the small slide was brought out, and the previously structured programme gave way to freer play. The single member of staff with the group took up a position at the slide, but as a consequence he was unable to see the entire area, and at most times there were children out of his line of sight. My daughter was four or five yards to his left, and slightly behind him, when she lost her footing, couldn’t find it again, and went under the water three or four times.

Fortunately, she recovered, and was able to leave the pool by herself. Not only hadn’t he noticed her difficulties in the water, he didn’t seem to notice her leave the pool in a state of great distress, making a beeline for me.

Essentially, he lost a child from his class, and didn’t notice. In a pool situation, I find that horrifying.

When we first arrived at the pool, there appeared to be a similar, earlier session in progress, featuring only one child. We were told to attend the 10.30am session, without any suggestion that it may be oversubscribed, or that there was more than one option.

It seems to me that pitifully weak administration created a class that was too large to be safe, and either weakness, ineptitude, or organisational culture prevented the single instructor in the pool from taking steps tomake the situation safe - either by finding another adult to assist, or by refusing to run the class at all.

My daughter’s confidence in the water is now utterly shattered, and the entire exercise has proved counter-productive to my original aim.

Ideally, what would you like us to do?
Firstly, I would like the incident to be raised with the staff concerned. I did speak to the instructor at the end, and he apologised to me, but I would like some reassurance that this incident has been taken seriously, and steps have been taken to prevent its repetition.

Secondly, I would like to be reimbursed the ?18 I spent on six sessions, since it seems very unlikely that I shall be able to persuade my daughter to return to the venue, never mind the class.

So, the phrase “unmitigated disaster” springs to mind. Plus, you know, she could have drowned. To my shame, I froze. I should have shouted, but I froze. We’re probably only talking about seconds, in reality, but they were heart-stopping seconds. When she found her way out of the water, to me, she gave this incredibly deep throaty belch - which would suggest she was genuinely swallowing water and fighting for breath out there. I hurriedly passed Henry to a random person (the grandparents of another child), to deal with her, and I’m very grateful for their willingness to do that. But really. Ten three year olds to one adult? What were they thinking?

I’m kind of kicking myself for ever letting her go in the water - it was clearly too many children to be safe. But I didn’t want to be That Mother, you know? Well, I’m that mother now, because I’ve submitted a complaint.

The guy really wasn’t that good, anyway. The other children knew what they were doing, so with the scantest of instruction, they just went off and did it. Daisy hadn’t done the activities before, and mostly had no idea what she was being asked to do. Plus, for a person working with three year olds, he wasn’t remotely inspiring. Apparently, he was standing in for someone else, and she’s much better, but it’s all academic, because Daisy has decided that she wants to go back to “our pool” (Garston), because she perceives it as safe. I’m torn between not wanting her to develop a phobia of the pool, and letting her, because we’re never likely to go back. When I was a child, I used to get hysterical over going to Woolworths in Rochdale (and to a lesser extent, Woolworths anywhere else), because we were once evacuated from the shop because of a small fire. I didn’t see smoke or flames, I just heard the bells, and was whisked out of the door. Compared with that, she’s kind of entitled to develop an irrational fear. Children don’t necessarily have a coherent sense of WHY it was terrifying - just that it was.

I’m starting to loathe about half of our baby toys. The VTech ones, the LeapPad ones, and pretty much anything else electronic. They claim to be targetted at babies aged six months plus, but they’re not. They are entirely targetted at the over-pushy, socially ambtious aspirations of middle-class parents - or at the very least, at the companies’ perceptions of those parents. But they’re probably right, they don’t do these things without researching the market first.

The thing is, you can’t really blame the manufacturers. However noble their intentions, six month old babies don’t buy toys - their parents do. So their priority is, naturally, to appeal to parents, partly by appearing to appeal to babies*, but mostly by tapping into parental aspirations for those babies.

That is the only explanation that I can come up with, for why my six-month-old baby’s toys are endeavouring to teach him the alphabet. I mean, really. What is the point? Counting and letter work are for children, not babies. Three at the youngest, and only then if they’re both bright and keen. At six months, it should be all about music, and shape, and texture, and maybe some dexterity and motor skills. He’s still learning what happens when you let go of a toy over an empty space. Not only is it inappropriate to expect him to learn to count at this stage, 1) it’s never going to happen, and 2) it’s a distraction from the things he should be learning.

And don’t get me started on big statements about “Learning Fun”. That’s for my benefit, not his, and is to make me think “Oh good, this is an educational toy” - as if there was such a thing as a non-educational toy, and as if he would ever bother to play with it if there was…

In defence of VTech, LeapPad and the rest, I think they meandered into the baby market by accident, and exceeded their expertise in the process. Their older-kids toys are great - Daisy is genuinely learning the alphabet from her Leap Frog Phonics Radio, and seems to enjoy doing it, in a now-and-then, when-she-feels-like-it sort of way. Doing basically the same things in toys for babies, though, doesn’t make much sense to me.

* Fortunately, the effect is alleviated by this simple truth: the easiest way to appear to appeal to a baby, is to actually do so. If that wasn’t true, the toys would be even worse.

Different child, more or less the same routine.? I took Henry to the GP yesterday morning, because his cough seemed to be getting worse, and she listened to his chest, reckoned it sounded worse than she was expecting, considering how well he seemed, and thought that he might need a steroid treatment.? “He’s only 22 weeks old, though,” she said, “And I think I’d rather a paediatrician made that decision.? Don’t hate me.? I want you to take him to Alder Hey.”

So, I did a lightning readjustment of my day, threw Daisy at my friend, Shu for the afternoon, and took him to the hospital.

They prodded and poked, and said he had a bit of a wheeze, but they weren’t sure what it was - either “Virally Induced Wheezing”, which is what they call it when they don’t want the word asthma hanging around the neck of a child like a millstone, or bronchialitis.? The difference, apparently, is that bronchialitis is a viral chest infection, whereas the other is triggered by a head cold.

Since he’s feeding OK, and his oxygen levels were reasonable, they said there was no need to admit him (which I never expected them to do, but you can never be sure how it’s going to end, when you go to A&E, can you?), but gave him My First Ventolin Inhaler to take home.? And actually, that seems to have helped, since the only time he seemed to struggle in the night, was when he was about three hours overdue on the dose (which means he didn’t wake up between 11pm and 5am, which is pretty good on recent performance).

I was at the hospital for around three and a half? hours, and I have to say, it’s no fun.? Especially being there by myself, having the occasional panic in case he turns out to be really ill, and no one to tell me not to be silly.? On the flip side, I saw a lot of people who have it a lot worse than we do.