Rugged

Gosh, I have been quiet. I had meant to boast about carrying Sasha back from Whittlesford station the other night, but needed to gather statistics - we don't have scales in the house. We finally visited a well-equipped friend and I discovered that my very solid child weighs 16kg. (You have to remember that children are always much heavier when they're asleep, but then the differential increases with their age.) According to Google the distance is 1.7 miles. I had a sling, and tried to arrange Sash to be vaguely symmetrical, as it's asymmetry that does your back in. It was partly that I didn't want to pay for a taxi, partly that it was after 10pm when all the Sawston taxi drivers go to bed anyway, and partly sheer bloody-mindedness to know whether I could do it. It wasn't too bad at all, in fact, and of course I felt gloriously rugged too. Self-reliance is very satisfactory. But is it universally so, I wonder, or do some people just not find it to be so? Is there also pleasure in being a parasite - well, that's a little harsh: does it feel good to be a wuss?

Last week I was at the Church Hall, about four minutes' walk away, and asked a woman with a baby of about six months old if she'd like to come back to my house for a cup of tea. She wasn't sure, because she'd parked her car somewhere else and didn't have her pram with her. I stood there and just nodded because it took me about five minutes to work out what she was saying - she couldn't carry a tiny baby a few yards. But in any case, words would have failed me.