CleverBlogName

…needs braaaaaaaains.

I watched Lipstick on Your Collar when it was on TV; I think it may be the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen on TV. Time has, if anything, made it even more so, especially given where the actors have popped up since then.

I would not believe Baz Luhrmann hadn’t seen the first of these clips before doing his version of Like a Virgin.

…in the run-up to becoming a Dad, but this must win the prize for the most obnoxiously stupid and offensive thing I’ve read about childbirth:

“A labouring woman needs first to be protected against any stimulation of the thinking part of her brain - the neocortex. This part of the brain needs to take a back seat and allow the primal ‘unthinking’ part of the brain connected to basic vital functions to take over. A woman needs to be in a world where she doesn’t need to think or talk. “We need to smash the limits of political correctness where fathers’ presence at birth is concerned. In his desire to ‘share the experience’ the man asks questions, offers reassuring words and denies his partner the privacy that is one of her most basic needs. ”

That it seems gloriously unconnected with any actual evidence.

Source: The Times.

This is… profoundly odd.

I believe I’ve now experienced the loudest coherant noise my daughter can make.

Sunday morning I was discussing with Maire if, and how much, chocolate Ada could have for Easter. After some bargaining the answer was: a 50 cent piece sized bit of my egg. In accordance with best parenting practises, haggling over what she was allowed was in one room, while Ada and the egg in question, safely out of her reach, were in another.

You can, of course, see where this is headed.

Enter Rodger, to the scene of an ecstatic daughter with a staved-in egg, and a mouth full of chocolate and wrapping foil, hollering “YUMMY!” at ever-increasing volumes until her little lungs and voice box reached their peak.

Chocolate was quite the success.

‘Why Maiden?’ says Payal Rameesh, gnawing corn-on-the-cob before making his way through the corrugated iron ticket barrier. ‘Because they sing about things that matter, serious things. Because they sing about what is happening in the world, like war and famine, not “I love you, baby”. And because it is a big noise.’

Iron Maiden in India.

OK, so only for four or five steps at a time, but Ada is now happily standing up and walking.