Aiee - it has come to pass - Sunday morning and Bryan has not posted. Over to me then, I guess....
I see Gordon is going to give £200 of our money to mothers-to-be to get them to eat better. Sigh - here we go again. Okay, by Gordie's standards, £200 is not a lot of our money to be throwing away - and there's something to be said for encouraging breeding, even on this overcrowded island - but this, surely, is yet another example of that mix of nannyish hectoring and total ineffectiveness that has characterised this wretched government throughout its term. Will it make one iota of difference (for the better)? Of course not - apart from anything else, money is not the issue. People don't eat junk food because they can't afford proper food - which is actually cheaper. They eat junk food because (a) they like it, and (b) they don't give a stuff - in a welfare state, they've no reason to. These are both perfectly sensible positions, and no amount of simplistic state-inspired propaganda is likely to shift them. So that'll be another £200 to spend on fags, booze and junk food - thanks, Gordo. And by the way, the woman in the picture doesn't seem to have got the hang of it at all - you can't feed your baby directly from outside. You have to eat the stuff first.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
My most treasured memory of pre-natal classes was of the one couple who came from what I will term a more "basic" socio-economic class. All the rest of us beautiful people were lapping up the modern voodoo about "co-birthing" and chortling merrily as the SS grumpenfuhreur ordered all the men to do breathing exercises, etc. in order to bond, but these two were completely lost in this enchanted kingdom and the guy, thoroughly disgusted at being stuck with all these weenies, clearly wanted to bolt, if not abort. The last day was about good nutrition (which the men had to promise to follow as well) and --surprise, surprise--we learned that vegetables were good for baby and us. As she went down the list--broccoli, legumes, tomatoes, etc. the girl, pathetically desperate to animate her partner somehow, shouted out hopefully: "French fries?"
ReplyDeleteGreat story, Peter. I remember classes like that. However, I happened to be in the same place I am right now -- the obese state of West Virginia -- when I had my first kid. And who says the society around one isn't amazingly influential? I ate like I was going for 1st prize in the hog fair. My favorite food was a massive bbq-beef sandwich, washed down by a pint or two of ice cream.
ReplyDeletePoor husband feared to take his second of six porkchops at dinner lest I take his hand off in my ravening lust; four porkchops was NOT ENOUGH for the pregnant woman.
At last, I had the baby, but retained about 30 extra lbs. I went to doctor and said, "How long will it take before I lose this weight?" His answer, "Waaalll, most wimmen never do." In W.V., that's true -- MOST women never do!
That was it: I realized I could not turn into a W.V. pork chop -- I lost the weight, and soon thereafter we left the state.
And wouldn't you know it, the baby born here all those years ago has now brought us back.