Spring loaded

Spring has leaped in London and suddenly it feels like a wonderful place to live. Saturday night I went to a party (actually out of the house, on my own, in heels, to a real party, roll press) which was in a bar in the city. For those of you who don't know London, once Saturday rolls around, the actual City of London becomes a ghost town at night. The closest tube was St. Pauls and the route to the bar took me from the station right past the floodlights and the masonry and the dome pasted whitely against London's velvet sky. It was warm and bright and the streets were empty and between the heels and the floodlights and the 12 pounds I've lost recently, well I felt like someone should have been following me around with a string orchestra playing some gay, swelling melody with perhaps some dodgy tenor launching into a chorus of 'What a wonderful world'. Or maybe it was just that I was out and about to consume cocktails. Who knows?

Today, I had an actual latte in an actual coffee shop and I didn't have to whip out a boob in the middle of it, even though Charlie was there, awake and hadn't eaten for ages. Apparently, if I feed him enough rice and pear in the morning, boobs lose their mid-day appeal - and he is eating two or three times as much as the nice books suggest. I even tried on some shoes. Anyway, it was glorious and the daffodils are up, crocus blooms are everywhere, the magnolias are out, the man in the Brixton shoe repair shop was funny, the park smells heavenly and I could hear that chorus fiddling away behind me.

You can tell, possibly, if you've read this blog before, that this is a somewhat more cheery post than usual and I can give a simple explanation which has nothing to do with shoe repair men or cathedrals or daffodils. This explanation is two words: Teething Over. Yes, we have teeth, two of them, bottom front and centre thank you very much. With these teeth have come happy days, a laughing baby and, temporarily at least, a sense of calm. The fact that this coincides with the first days of true spring is just the aria on top of the concerto. Do concertos have arias? I digress.

The problem of course is that a baby's mouth grows 20 teeth and so we have 18 more of those sharp little ivories loaded up under the gums, ready to make our lives miserable whenever they want. But for now, all is well and even the fact that the skin under my nipples is being gradually eroded, much like the cliffs of Dover only more pink, means nothing. Charlie is happy, eating, sleeping and, a side benefit of all that rice, creating nice, tidy nappies.

Bring on the strings.