Baby + 247
As we drove to Wales this week I speculated whether our daughter was happy about our choice of holiday destination.
It is rare to find English people who have not been to Wales. It is almost as rare to find English people who recount stories of uninterrupted sunshine and soaring temperatures. Wales is, in most people’s experience I expect, a place of notable wetness.
Our daughter travelled free from such preconceptions. In fact she travelled in a state of complete ignorance about where she was going, and why she was going there.
This is something that adults experience rarely, if at all, unless they have the good fortune to have a partner, husband, wife, or family who spirits them to an exotic or romantic location (Venice, for example). Not having a choice is good. It is very difficult to have expectations about something of which you are ignorant, and thus much harder to be disappointed.
It happened that our luck was in this week. It rained, of course, but as it would not be Antarctica without snow, so Wales would not be Wales without a good downpour.
This time, aside from one afternoon of rain, it was warm and dry, and our daughter was able to crawl about the lawn of the place at which we were staying and denude it of daisies and dandelions.
But bonding with the environment in this way has its drawbacks, and I would urge new parents to agree a policy as to which of Mother Nature’s creations they are happy to let their child consume. I consider myself fairly open on matters of diet, and unless a passing dog or cat has made use of grass or weed-type-flower-type-things they are fair game for junior’s digestive system. After all, primitive man managed on a lot less, and we haven’t done badly since these simple days.
Mrs McMahon is more cautious on such matters, and I was cautioned regularly to monitor the proximity of feral vegetable matter to our daughter’s gullet. I do not think she was wrong, but I do wonder whether it is odd to have a more liberal stance on smoking grass than eating it – particularly when one considers the nutritional value of freshly grown blades of the green stuff. For the sake of continued domestic harmony, though, I shall not explore such inconsistencies of thought in any depth.
I will conclude this entry by recommending Wales, or at least the Brecon Beacons. The Black Mountains are quite stunningly beautiful, and I experience great joy clambering up Hay Bluff with my daughter on my back.
It is rare to find English people who have not been to Wales. It is almost as rare to find English people who recount stories of uninterrupted sunshine and soaring temperatures. Wales is, in most people’s experience I expect, a place of notable wetness.
Our daughter travelled free from such preconceptions. In fact she travelled in a state of complete ignorance about where she was going, and why she was going there.
This is something that adults experience rarely, if at all, unless they have the good fortune to have a partner, husband, wife, or family who spirits them to an exotic or romantic location (Venice, for example). Not having a choice is good. It is very difficult to have expectations about something of which you are ignorant, and thus much harder to be disappointed.
It happened that our luck was in this week. It rained, of course, but as it would not be Antarctica without snow, so Wales would not be Wales without a good downpour.
This time, aside from one afternoon of rain, it was warm and dry, and our daughter was able to crawl about the lawn of the place at which we were staying and denude it of daisies and dandelions.
But bonding with the environment in this way has its drawbacks, and I would urge new parents to agree a policy as to which of Mother Nature’s creations they are happy to let their child consume. I consider myself fairly open on matters of diet, and unless a passing dog or cat has made use of grass or weed-type-flower-type-things they are fair game for junior’s digestive system. After all, primitive man managed on a lot less, and we haven’t done badly since these simple days.
Mrs McMahon is more cautious on such matters, and I was cautioned regularly to monitor the proximity of feral vegetable matter to our daughter’s gullet. I do not think she was wrong, but I do wonder whether it is odd to have a more liberal stance on smoking grass than eating it – particularly when one considers the nutritional value of freshly grown blades of the green stuff. For the sake of continued domestic harmony, though, I shall not explore such inconsistencies of thought in any depth.
I will conclude this entry by recommending Wales, or at least the Brecon Beacons. The Black Mountains are quite stunningly beautiful, and I experience great joy clambering up Hay Bluff with my daughter on my back.
posted by Jonathan McMahon at 2:40 PM
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