Hymn

Comic

She’s not only a happy baby, she has a sense of humour.  I know I sound like a stuck record (how long will people understand what I mean by that?), but she smiles a lot.  The exceptions are gently morphing - still when tired at bedtime, now after her bath and a new one - whenever I try to capture proof of her contentedness.  Any kind of camera results in a puzzled frown.  Making Daddy look foolish.  Making him pull those silly faces, utter those daft sounds, dance around.  But she won’t flinch as long as there’s a lens there.  Now that’s comedy.

Hick Cup

I really am a country hick.  Making the most of arriving early for a meeting, I settled at a nearby cafe for a quick cuppa.  But it all felt so relaxed, sophisticated and, dare I say it, continental.  Tables on the pavement, sunshine, polished people and lots and lots of elegant mothers with babies.  It felt so luxuriously decadent.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, it was a real treat, I envied the lifestyle, but I knew I was the Outsider, the Lottery Winner, the Alien sat there with my Builders’ Tea in a velvety ocean of coffee.

Wild West

I think I’ve just been sitting on the oldest train on the West Coast Mainline.  Possibly the oldest in UK not pulled by a steam engine.  My carriage, delightfully described as a “Standard Saloon” had none of the niceties of post Great War vehicles: no stifling air conditioning and with seats upholstered with cardboard.  The exterior doors had those fiendishly stubborn drop-down windows that you have to open, lean through and fumble with the external handle to exit.  The kind you can open as the train hurtles along.  The kind you can stick your head out.  The kind where you can feel the wind in your hair as an InterCity whistles past just inches away.  Even my hair.  There was something wonderfully wild and unfussy about the whole thing.   I relished every moment knowing that someday soon it’ll be consigned to the history books by Health and Safety and the unstoppable march of unnecessary ‘improvement.’

Battle Dress

Everyone it seemed was curious.  Staring openly with quiet asides to companions.  There, sat in the middle of the hall, was a squaddie in full battle dress.  Desert fatigues. With helmet.  Sat on bulging kit bags. No obvious firearm, but we wondered.  As if a soldier casually out and about wasn’t such a strange sight in these Terrible Times, this one was a girl.  I know.  I know.  People do all sorts of things these days, but still, it felt a bit like seeing Uncle Steve in a dress for the first time.   

Intoxicating

I’m not tiring of it.  In fact, it’s increasingly addictive but my clumsy words won’t do it justice.  I rush to her room when I hear she’s awake to be greeted by her beaming smile.  I make bizarre noises, pull funny faces and jig impromptu dances just to amuse her, so intoxicating is the resulting giggle.  Often she’ll grin when someone just speaks to her.  Tonight in the bath, she laughed long and hard at the simple joy of splashing in the water.  Her pure unrestrained joy in life is overwhelming.  And it is so so contagious - even a glimpse of her smiling sends my spirit soaring.  It is an astonishing drug.  It makes me so happy I could cry.