The Squeak Shall Inherit the Earth

Although I do try not to fall into the trap of pigeon-holing children before they can even string a proper sentence together ('Well, little Pubert was pointing at some numbers yesterday, so Hubert and I are expecting him to become an actuary by the time he's twelve'), I must admit that I sometimes catch myself teetering on the edge of this trap. I think that this is probably entirely normal and suggests that you are actually paying a degree of attention and not just blithely letting your child climb into boiling pans of water or stage a hostile takeover of your local branch of Tesco.

I do often wonder how Felix will turn out - admittedly, partly born of that feeling of 'God, I hope I don't fuck you up too much'. Despite my aforementioned resistance, I can't help but notice what a singularly 'definite' character he has. He was miserable as a baby. I don't just mean that he cried a lot, as most babies do, but he actually spent a lot of time surveying us all with an expression that said, 'I despise you all for your ability to communicate effectively, move freely and generally disport yourselves in all your infuriating being-able-to-do-whatever-you-want ways'. Even his movements in utero conveyed a frustrated determination to do his own thing and not let anything (even a Mother's liver) stand in his way. I'm sure many people (my husband included) would tell me that I am either paranoid or a bit mad for suggesting this - at the very least that I'm 'projecting' or some nonsense. Pfft, I can't disprove that, I can only state what I felt.

It's certainly interesting to consider the nature/nurture debate when you are bringing up a child of your own. How much have I contributed to his personality? Does our parental style of allowing Felix to assert and express himself without censure (excepting the climbing into pots of boiling water and the usual hitting/biting/being a rude, horrible little pig stuff) create the independent, determined individual I had imagined him to be in the first place in my delusional pregnancy-brained state? Am I going to continue blathering on without making any kind of useful point until Felix wakes from his nap and therefore never finish this damned post? The answer to that, my friends, is 'Yes'.

Vintage Schmintage

Let me first say, despite the title of this rant, that I am totally, utterly, disgustingly in love with all things vintage and have been for as long as I can remember...but...

I am getting really, really pissed off with how popular vintage has become. It now often makes much more sense, economically speaking, to purchase modern interpretations (read: knock-offs) of vintage items - clothes, jewellery, furnishings etc. Proper vintage items are now usually so highly prized and therefore priced that they are no longer the poor person's preserve when wanting to a) not spend a fortune and b) find something a bit different. I've loved vintage over the years because I like to think of the history, both personal and social, behind the item and the quality of vintage items can be so much better than modern goods.

I've never really had a particular aesthetic that I've adhered to. I recently realised that the one thing I tend regularly to admire is something that is very 'of its time'. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm always attracted to tasteful, ultra-chic, iconic pieces like the Mies Van Der Rohe Barcelona chair, for example. Actually, that's precisely the sort of thing I take an 'I can appreciate the classic, timeless and yet ground-breaking design of this piece' attitude towards but I would never buy it and put it in my home. I'm a sucker for thirties dressing table sets, forties floral jewellery, fifties meringue-meets-Fairy-Princess-Barbie dresses, sixties psychedelia, and the kind of thing that Margot Leadbetter would be seen snobbing around in at a dinner party. In other words, I'm quite open to finding charm in a splash of kitsch weirdity and a touch of ethnic oddness.

To return for a moment to a previous pet topic, I noticed today that Kirstie Allsopp has a line of soft furnishings in an oldey-worldey, heritagey, vintagey style. Interesting. So, Ms. It's-always-better-to-buy-vintage-because-modern-is-a-load-of-tacky-balls-that-everyone-else-has-got-anyway, explain that one!

What was I on about again? Oh yeah, vintage being popular. Ok, so this is not exactly a new thing; it really got going around 2003/2004 when all the magazines went a bit gooey over pre-war English heritage and fifties prom styles and took on a dressing-up is the new dressing up look. It was around then that I noticed grubby retro clothing stores started dry-cleaning their garments and 'arranging' their brickabrack, and putting up the prices accordingly. This stage wasn't too bad because it was still possible to pick up fabulous things for a fraction of the equivalent high-street cost. I used to supplement my vintage shopping with routing around in the family dressing up bags and cleaning up my Mum's lovely old dresses and skirts. If I went to a party, I would almost invariably be wearing something old. Nowadays, it's hard to track down decent, truly vintage pieces, rather than random bits of rubbish from a few seasons ago.

I've recently purchased two fifties style dresses from River Island (somewhere I've hated for aeons because their stock is usually entirely vulgar) and I was honestly shocked because they are pretty well-made, 100% cotton and have a properly full circle skirt...all for forty-odd quid a pop. I would never, ever find a vintage dress that good for that kind of money these days. That's a bit sad. I've been routing around in the odd charity shop now and there just aren't the golden finds of yore to be had or at least they've become much rarer. Maybe that's it though: when I do find something, I will treasure it more because of its rarity. Or maybe I'll just be secretly seething at all those utter bastards who've got 'a little man who goes around and finds things' for them, and consequently have a wardrobe full of Dior New Look style pieces, floral brooches and tapestry handbags. Feckers.

Check mate?! Hmm, bollocks to this!

I cannot quite put into words how utterly, gobsmackingly enraged I am that we are, yet again, in the thralls of some evil, poxy, bastard disease that has rendered one of us utterly useless. But I'll try. The reason I am especially indignant at the affrontery of this particular, randomly malicious viral bleurghch is that the afflicted one and I are meant to be going to L'Ortolan next Friday to make up for all the times over the last fifteen months that we've been unable to celebrate all the things that we've felt were celebration worthy: a happy conclusion to my horrid, horrid pregnancy and my ghastly, ghastly childbirth; the advent of my 30th Birthday a year ago; Rob's no longer having that piffling, bothersome gall bladder, and me trying to feel good about having to finish breastfeeding earlier than I'd wanted by putting a positive spin on the whole affair (the return to some semblance of freedom, no more hideous maternity bras, my boobs belonging to me again rather than a tiny little ravenous goblin). The last straw came when a big deal was being made about his work Christmas do, for which I had bought a lovely, expensive (for me - no H&M here, I tell you!) dress and an arsenal of Estee Lauder products to ensure I made a fabulous post-baby, post-breastfeeding debut. I even had a really proper fascist skincare regime leading up to it that included Eve Lom masks and preparations for my hands and nails. This was a big deal. Are you getting that? Good. So you will begin to understand the impending sense of injustice I have at the threatened cancellation of YET ANOTHER big night out and a chance for us to simply enjoy each other's company and feel like a couple again who...errr...like spending time together in a grownuppy way and that. Yes, I know I'm a giant middle class whingy pants but I'm afraid I simply am not of the school of you-can't-have-had-it-that-bad-because-you've-never-been-stuck-in-a-desert-with-fifteen-children-no-limbs-and-a-pack-of-hyenas-awaiting-your-demise-with-only-a-pipecleaner-to-defend-yourself. Having a big fat whinge is everyone's constitutional right (probably) and I feel that it's rather cathartic after the catalogue of bollocks we've ploughed our way through recently. Get pissed off, rail at the gods or hamsters or beetles or whoever's running the show these days, get over it, move on. Bourgeois Petulance, over and out. For now.