So it seems that the great British summertime, that fickle friend, may finally have arrived. I say this whilst crossing all my digits, as I am well aware that in the UK we can go from bikinis to galoshes in the space of 24 hours (obviously I will not be wearing a bikini. No one deserves to see that. There isn’t enough mind bleach in existence to erase such an image). So as the mercury hits 24 degrees I have unveiled my pallid, nay blue flesh. My legs look like uncooked turkey thighs complete with thickets of unshaved hair. Despite my hirsute unreadiness I have always LOVED summers and I particularly enjoy them in London. They are so very different to the summers of my ‘youf’ spent up t’north.
In SW17 you know summer has landed when you head to the common and there are a wealth of neon inflatable chairs, far too many people playing that inexplicable game where you lob sticks at other sticks and some dude flying a drone, who you suspect is somehow looking up girls’ skirts. In Blackpool we knew summer had arrived when we got sent to Gran’s house to play next to the canal with the feral cats whilst she cooked us liver and chips in Trex followed by a generous helping of Neapolitan ice cream. And maybe if we were lucky after all that we got a trip to Kwik Save followed by a game of Spot The Ball.
Summer with a baby is fraught with all sorts of new conundrums. Foremost amongst them is protecting Bella from the sun. Being out in it is fine for my chamois leather skin (when I am proper old I want to resemble a shrivelled tan handbag) but she must be shielded at all costs from the FIREY ORB. Added to that she has a vampiric reaction to sunshine, shrinking back in her pram seat, squeezing her eyes shut and growling like an angry Shih Tzu. Growing up in the 1980s we had a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to being in the sun. My parents used to lather themselves up with sunflower oil and vinegar before hitting the beach; yes they were one piece of tinfoil away from actually frying themselves. Sun tan cream was for pussies. We even had a sunbed in THE HOUSE. Once on a family holiday to Spain I burnt my shins so badly I could see my face in them. I am determined this fate will not befall Bella, so I smother her in layers of Factor 50 until she looks luminous. Her big-gal pram also has a woefully inadequate sunshade (it seems to cover her forehead and that’s about your lot) so I end up darting swiftly from shadow to shadow like I am the only player in some weird, shade hunting game. When we go on holiday and it gets even hotter I am going to have to pour her into a head-to-toe wetsuit, like a neoprene baby ninja.
As well as what to dress Bella in, another issue is what on earth to dress my post partum body in when the sun comes out. Straight after having Bella I lost loads of weight quickly as the water left my body and I deflated like a sad lilo at the end of the holidays. But then I reached equilibrium and since then I can’t seem to shift the post labour “gunt” (an unholy union of gut and… yep, I don’t have to say it), a wobbly, pendulous, needs vacuum packing into jeans, gunt. What to dress this new body part in when the temperature soars is a problem. Thus far my answer has been dungarees and I own ten near identical pairs with varying leg lengths. I basically have the wardrobe of a 90s children’s TV presenter. I half expect Ed the Duck to launch out of my closet every time I open it to bemoan my lack of sartorial choice. I tried to buy a playsuit, the slightly flashier cousin of the dungaree, to hilariously awful results. I ended up looking like a big fat baby with a camel’s hoof.
Then there is summer’s rampant insect population, all of which seem to make a beeline (see what I did there) for Bella. The worst are those limp bluebottles the size of baby birds who act like they have had a few too many tequilas, crashing into everything and sliding to the floor in a heap. And then there are the bees. We have all seen My Girl. Macaulay Culkin’s character was killed BY A BEE. Our flat also seems to have been hit by a coordinated attack from a moth army, who, when not eating holes in my favourite items of clothing, are leaping out from behind the nursery curtains, flapping their massive moth wings with what seems like gusto and scaring the bejesus out of me. This all means constant vigilance when it comes to protecting Bella from these vicious and ubiquitous creatures. (Thank god I am not raising a baby in Australia, or somewhere with ACTUAL insects, I would probably lose my mind.)
So although I bloody love summer, I fear that I may spend this year in a state of high alert, ready to leap into action. Ready to apply sun cream, dive for the shade or defend from rogue insects at any given moment. Summer, summer, summertime, time to sit back and unwind? Not so much.
Mumz in the hood 
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