On good citizenship.

Yesterday, you went to the airport to see off Mother In Law after her epic three month visit.

So there you are, sitting in the cafe having a last cup of tea before sending her off to brave the security gauntlet, when you notice that there’s a number of cabin crew types drinking coffee there too.

You were idly pondering over this - you had rather assumed that one of the perks of being cabin crew was that you don’t have to mix with the rumpled masses of the great unwashed at an airport - when one of them gets up and wonders off leaving his luggage behind.

And then doesn’t come back.

So then you sit there for about five minutes, looking around and hoping that someone else has noticed that there are now two unattended suitcases lurking in the middle of Heathrow.

But apparently, the answer is no and you realise that whilst ordinarily you would just sit there feeling the same sort of thrill you get before doing something mildly dangerous like getting on a rusty, rickety roller coaster in Blackpool, the presence of the Star means that you feel somehow obliged to be excruiciatingly unBritish and not mind your own business.

At which point a policeman hoves into view. Fully bullet proof jacketed and complete with gun, which, as you haven’t been to an airport for a while, is a bit disconcerting.

Unfortunately, some other people have now sat down next to the bags, and so the policeman goes straight past them. So you are actually forced to (unobtrusively) flag him down and in what you are fondly hoping was a very unhysterical manner, mention that you don’t think those bags belong to that couple, and they were just sitting there before they came.

The policeman was monumentally casual. You were most impressed by his saunter as he made his way over to the bags. You got ready to duck and cover or make an orderly sprint for the exit, anticipating sirens, flashing lights and the closure of Terminal Two for six and a half hours.

Frankly, it was all a bit of a let down when, as he was fingering the luggage labels, two gentlemen hurtled over from the other side of the cafe to explain that the bags belonged to them, but they couldn’t be bothered to wheel the trolley through the tables to the nice window seat they were occupying.

And you are still reeling from the shock of having been a good citizen for approximately the first time in your life. You must be getting old. At this rate you’ll be writing to the council to complain about cracks in the pavement before the year is out.

On shocks and docs.

The doctor kept you waiting for 40 minutes this morning simply because, you discovered once you had actually made it into her office, she likes to chat.

This, however, is not important. What is important is that in between the five anecdotes about her own pregnancy which she managed to showhorn into the measuring and prodding that goes on in these sessions, she told you that in the next four weeks the Star is going to double in size.

Oh.

My.

God.

Is all you have to say about that.

On the unbearable being.

You have to confess that you find the Star’s complete insistence on you eating healthily somewhat obnoxious.

There is something perverse, in you opinion, about the amount of fruit and veg he thinks is the minimum necessary for your combined survival.

This has been particularly hard to bear given that it is winter. You are heartily sick of oranges, apples and bananas.

All you can say is, he doesn’t get it from your side of the family.

Although you suppose that you should be thankful that it won’t come as a surprise when he hits his teenage years and will only wear organically spun hemp and eat free trade brown rice which has been humanely boiled in ungenetically engineered spring water. And such.

And will run marathons. Since it seems that the Star also objects to your habitual sloth.

There you are, having a much deserved lie in on the first day of the Easter holidays that, owing to the unaccustomed early arrival of the chocolate egg season, aren’t.

And the Star decides that today is the day for giving you a damn good kicking.

Luckily B got to share in this delightful experience for once. Because, and I’m afraid this is going to be something of a cute pregnancy moment so those of a delicate disposition should look away now, as you were spooning at the time, the Star was managing to hammer so energetically on Papa-to-be’s kidneys that Papa woke up.

Indignant.

Which is precisely how you feel when eating the smallest slither of cake makes you feel distinctly ill for the rest of the day.

On the state of the Zeppelin.

Of course, ‘rocketing out of your chair shouting obscenities at the TV’ has been a bit hard of late given that you developed horrendous backache last week.

‘Flopping over onto your side and using all available furniture and husbands to pull yourself up while whimpering before waddling slowly off like a duck’ would definitely have been more accurate.

This undoubtedly serves you right for having felt so splendid over the last few months. But you are into the last trimester now and have started warily eyeing the hemorrhoid counter in Boots in anticipation, staring at the bits of your stomach you can still see in case stretch marks appear and checking your legs for pulsating veins.

The whole question of pain (relief) during birth is becoming worryingly concrete about now too.

Mind you, the splendidly ergonomic chairs in the staffroom of your latest school seem to have done the backache wonders for now, so perhaps you shouldn’t get unduly pessimistic just yet.

On misleading advertising

Now you wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression that you are anti advertising.

Far from it, in fact. You find ads endlessly fascinating.

You take a secret delight in an industry that is blatantly all about manipulation. So much more honest than the pretence of making objective news reports.

It’s quite soothing just to be able to relax and let your brain get washed without constantly having to count how many pejorative adjectives the anchor has used about Vladimir Vladimirovitch or analysing the effect of having the Russia-based correspondent, wearily urging some sort of perspective, interviewed rather than introduced as a reporter, placing him on the same ‘this is just one side of the story’ footing as Berezovsky’s mouthpiece.

Because you are also not under any illusions about whether or not it works. The existential crisis you felt when first shopping in Russia for washing powder which was brought about by not finding any of the familiar brand names certainly would have put paid to that.

If you hadn’t, years before, found yourself in McDonald’s ordering some special new type of chicken burger after being caught at a weak moment in front of the TV on a Saturday morning with a hangover by a particularly seductive shot of sizzling meat and lettuce in a sesame seed bun, of course.

It’s such a pleasingly functional art form as well. The thing that occasionally bothers you about the more self indulgently incomprehensible items of Modern Art is that you find it difficult to work out what’s it’s for. Especially if it seems to require very little actual skill to produce.

Of course, art generally is clearly for historians. Likewise, literature. But you find it hard to decide what a historian will gather from Hirst’s cows pickled in formaldehyde or Emin’s bloody underwear other than the fact that clearly some people in the late 20th Century had too much time on their hands.

Advertising is obviously for something. Even if it is making money, this, somehow, makes it OK.

And not without its own sociological interests either.

You were quite pleased with the latest series of BT ads at first. They represent the latest attempt at one of those advertising soap operas, with a set cast of characters all singing the praises of various aspects of the product whilst unfolding some kind of storyline.

You were amused that in contrast with Nescafe’s very 80s inspired tale of two urban sophisticates flirting in their chrome laden apartments, and the 70s homely Bistro family, with its housewife mother, plump children, pine kitchen and dog, this set of skits is all about the difficulties of a man taking on a woman who has two children and an annoying ex husband. Very appropriate, you though, particularly as the man is doing a very good impression of a chap out of a Nick Hornby novel.

However, all enjoyment of this particular series has been destroyed by the latest episode, which is on distressingly heavy rotation at the moment.

It’s supposed to be telling us all about the amazing facility BT Internet services offers to back up all the data stored on your computer, and the way we hammer the message home is by having the Woman greet her Bloke all distressed one evening with the horrifying news that she has deleted an important folder on her computer. The implication is that this is the only place where the important things inside the important folder exist.

The thing is, this important folder contains all the photos of her children ‘from when they were babies’.

What sends you rocketing out of your chair screaming obscenities at the TV and totally unable to appreciate the hysterically funny little exchange that then takes place when the Bloke reassures Woman that it’s OK, they can make another one, and the Woman thinks Bloke means a baby, is that even you can see that the eldest child is into his teens.

And you may be a bit backwards when it comes to technological innovations, but you very much doubt that anybody much had a digital camera in, what, 1996, and are certain that only the nerdiest of techno nerds has transferred all their paper photos and film onto the computer and destroyed all the paper negatives since then.

On being nearly new.

You went to an NCT sale today. Elbows at dawn to hold off all the other mums or mums-to-be as you all dive simultaneously for that Natty Designer Babysock sort of thing.

You went with Best Friend, as it occurred to you that having a bone fide mother in tow might help you start to navigate your way through the frightening wilderness of Things You Do Not Know About Having A Baby. In this case, specifically, clothes.

What, for example is the difference between a bodysuit, a babygrow and a growbag, how many pairs of cutely logoed vests do you need and exactly what is this actually for?

You set off this morning blithely declaring that you weren’t actually going to buy anything, this was merely a reconnaissance mission.

B refrained from commenting and stuffed a handful of notes into you purse.

You now have two very large plastic bags full of Darling Little Outfits.

Some of them don’t have a hint of blue on them.

On more comparative linguistics.

Incidentally, you did find something new out in your first trimester, and that is that it is impossible to sing while pregnant.

Unfortunately, you discovered this by collapsing in the middle of the winter concert of your choir.

Interesting programme. You have now added two new singing languages to your repertoire: French and Russian.

French, the conductor spent a savage five minutes saying, is the Worst Language for Singing Ever. If you remember correctly, which you probably don’t, it has no proper consonants to punctuate the words and sounds like a bunch of muddy nasal vowels run together. It is possible, he claims, to actually fall asleep from boredom in the middle of what should be the most fantastic piece of music by someone like Debussy.

Certainly you find it incredibly difficult to sing in French. This is because you have never had much of a grasp on the French accent. You may have learned French for five years at school, but the best you have ever managed in that language is ‘I would like a kilo of tomatoes, please’ uttered in the broadest of dodgy sub London tones.

So it’s quite a good thing that presumably the audience were not picking much up from the mass nose singing in that piece.

The Russian pieces, on the other hand, were easy, despite the fact that you had no idea of what you were actually saying. Perhaps because a lot of it was in Church Slavonic, but probably because your Russian has always been much more use in asking people to pass you another cup of tea than capable of sophisticated abstract discussions.

Still, it was nice to know that the language is not familiar enough for you to do the consonant clusters, which really do look jaw cracking in Latin script, without thinking and for the next syllable to be thoroughly unsurprising.

You also found the conductor’s brief masterclass on how to speak Russian quite accurate. ‘Pretend you are swallowing a watermelon’, was the advice he gave. This just confirms what you have maintained for a while: English vowels are formed at the front of the mouth, and Russian at the back, practically in the throat.

There really isn’t much to beat some of the splendidly dark notes that this can produce.

Although you did find the conductor speaking Russian in order to demonstrate some of the strings of Russian sounds quite amusing. As a result of not having much idea of what he is saying, all the phrasing goes and it sounds much more like a record being dragged around backwards than actual Russian. Luckily, he is a fiend for getting it right when singing.

So B, who had been clutching his sides in glee at the thought of quite what middle class Britishness was going to do to Rachmaninoff and the boys, was quite surprised to find that not only could he understand us in the concert, but that we actually sounded quite Russian. Once he had looked that the words in the programme, that is.

Perhaps there was hope for the French piece after all.

You rounded off the evening with what is, judging by the look of ecstatic contemplation that came over the conductor’s face every time he mentioned it, a real singers’ piece of music.

Durufle’s Requiem. Wisely written, despite the composer’s Gallic background, in Latin.

Here it is, although you really don’t think that the Cyberbass keyboards are going to do justice to the modern Gregorian chant thing Durufle has going on.

Anyway, the fainting.

Well, to be honest, after you had gone through three rehearsals without being able to stand for the whole thing, having to sit down in the middle of the cpncert in order to prevent yourself falling off the stage didn’t come as a big surprise.

It was, however, a phenomenon that was beginning to quite worry you, until a woman you had noticed sinking gracefully into her seat at about the same time as you in both the dress and the concert waved away concerned enquiries by telling everyone she was pregnant. You nearly kissed her. It apparently being a pregnancy thing rather than a Solnushka and pregnancy thing and all.

So one of the five million and two things They don’t tell you about pregnancy is: as an amateur, you can’t sing in a choir after about ten weeks.

On фабрика звозд.

This time you spent the first twelve weeks ignoring the situation, beyond rather bad temperdly giving up the things you are supposed to be giving up and doggedly taking the pills you were supposed to be taking. There wasn’t even the distraction of the novelty of new sensations.

As a result you craved certain types of cheese almost solidly, the only respite being when you felt sick. Luckily, this was quite a lot of the time.

The first scan, of course, was a relief. One head, two arms and legs, complete with the correct number of hands and feet, and, praise be, a heartbeat.

But then your system went quiet. There was no dragging tiredness or nausea anymore to let you know something was going on, just a sudden increase in the amount of milk you were buying, an inexplicable hatred for peanuts, and a cautiously expanding waistline.

And it was starting to worry you. Not the fear for what might be wrong, but the fact that trying not to get too excited for so long so as not to let the fear take over had resulted in you having no particular interest in the proceedings.

Although the second scan was quite a blast. You can see bones, even. Mind you, you are not sure that seeing a small skull grinning back at you was quite the first treasured memory of you baby’s face you really wanted. It was nice to know, though, that the club foot which your Mother had kindly reminded you runs in the family has been avoided this time round.

But then it changed. Then it started kicking. Which, I am here to tell you, is nothing whatsoever like fluttering.

There was this programme you and B once watched in which a character was describing how he was freaked out by his partner’s pregnancy. He kept imagining, he said, that scene from alien where the creature fought itself, quite bloodily, out of its host’s stomach. He had a graphic little mime to accompany the description and everything. You had both always found this quite amusing, but now you suspect that the scene was written by a pregnant woman.

The thing about the kicking is that it isn’t just kicking. There is, of course, something very odd about seeing your stomach jump for reasons which are largely beyond your control. But it’s the wriggling, a sensation that has finally convinced you there is a small independent being crawling around in there that you find particularly disconcerting. And delightful.

You can only hope it doesn’t decide to eat its way out.

So anyway. There it is. You are pregnant. 22 weeks. It’s a boy. Due the end of June.

On The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay.

In case the gentle reader has not been convinced of William ‘Topaz’ McGonagall’s value by your mere words alone here is a little taster from this website dedicated to his works. Please note the sense of foreboding in the penultimate verse and then have a treat by reading the follow up.

BEAUTIFUL Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.
The greatest wonder of the day,
And a great beautification to the River Tay,
Most beautiful to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
That has caused the Emperor of Brazil to leave
His home far away, incognito in his dress,
And view thee ere he passed along en route to Inverness.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
The longest of the present day
That has ever crossed o’er a tidal river stream,
Most gigantic to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
Which will cause great rejoicing on the opening day
And hundreds of people will come from far away,
Also the Queen, most gorgeous to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Provost Cox, who has given
Thirty thousand pounds and upwards away
In helping to erect the Bridge of the Tay,
Most handsome to be seen,
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident will befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !
And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe,
The famous engineers of the present day,
Who have succeeded in erecting the Railway
Bridge of the Silvery Tay,
Which stands unequalled to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

On discoveries.

You are not in the least Scottish.

This has always been a source of faint irritation because you are able to conjure up in almost equal amounts a Welsh background, an Irish one, a Northern English past, a Southern English birthplace and a strong connection to the Channel Islands out of France. So to miss out on being definitively British (which includes the aformentioned episode of sticking two fingers up at France by emigrating) is really quite galling.

But it does explain why you had not, before Saturday, ever celebrated Burns’ Night. Which, it turns out, is something B is probably quite thankful for.

B has always maintained that whisky tastes like particularly nasty samagon (moonshine vodka). You are sorry to report that he wasn’t swayed at all by earnest comparison of the nose of different single malts or epic battles over whether or not to add water. This was a bit of a blow to his enjoyment of an evening which included quite dedicated whisky sipping.

You, on the other hand, were there for the food. You like haggis, even with whisky poured over it.

Haggis, counters B, just proves his point that all British cuisine revolves around the cooking of what in a more civilised country would be leftovers.

He did quite like the soup though. Well, you can’t go too far wrong with Cockaleekie.

However, it turns out that the original idea of Burns’ Night is actually to sit around reading Burns’ poetry.

And this is, on the surface, a pleasant way to pass the time, as long as the poems are rolled out in a suitable Scottish burr, which in this case they certainly were.

Unfortunately, Burns turns out to be a bit of an advanced political thinker. The wee timerous beastie for example is not, apparently, a mouse at all but a put upon Scottish highlander being put out of his house and generally crushed by enclosure.

While this does explain what had hitherto been to you his rather inexplicable popularity in Russia, or rather the USSR, it does mean that you and B have been sitting though an evening in celebration of a radical would be revolutionary lauded by communists everywhere, which given B’s family history is a bit of a faux pas in the B and Solnushka household.

However, you were quickly able to ignore the faint echoes of B’s relatives turning in their graves, as your hostess likes to double Burns’ Night with a celebration of another great Scottish poet.

Let me urge all readers that if they have not previously come across the glories of William ‘Topaz’ McGonagall, that they should immediately lay their hands on an anthology of his poems, invite all their friends round and hold a poetry reading session where the highlight of of the evening will be for all and sundry to join in by guessing the rhymes at the end of each line.

This is worryingly easy to do, except when McGonagall’s genius leads him to create such felicitous phrases as ’stark dead’ to couple with ‘from foot to head’.

And that’s without even mentioning the glorious incongruity of throwing in, quite at random, a passing visit by the emperor of Brazil (incognito) to a Scottish bridge disaster, McGonagall’s obsession with opening poems with the day, date and time of events he describes as well as his splendidly pedantic interest in the precise construction materials and methods of the various structures that he was eulogising in the three poems you read. Really, you share the great man’s puzzlement that when he died still puzzled that no-one had given him the Nobel Prize. Although you are not quite sure what for.

It can safely be said that the evening ended with howls of laughter and your firm intention to eat haggis at a McGonagall Night sometime in January next year.

And yet what overshadowed the glee was the fact that the person you realised you most wanted to rush home, phone up and quote McGonagall to was your Grandad, and you couldn’t because you had buried him last Monday.