Week 154- Angry Anderson, wee stops and pickled onion Monster Munch...

I’m sitting in the back seat of our car wedged so tightly between two car seats that I don’t think I’m ever going to get out.

To my left is a three-year-old who claims she desperately needs a wee. I know she doesn’t because we’ve only just pulled up on the hard shoulder where she virtually filled a whole potty. That was the third wee stop in an hour.

I know long car journeys are up there with hearing someone tell you about their dreams on the boring scale, but still. We’re not going to get to our destination any faster if we have to stop every 10 miles for a phantom wee.

But on the other hand, she could be genuine.

And if that’s the case and we don’t pull over again, doesn’t that make us the worst parents ever?

So there’s that.

Then, on my right, I have a four-month-old baby who is screaming himself purple because he’s hungry. I’ve left his bottle of milk on the worktop at home. I can picture it, it was right next to a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

Which I have remembered to pick up, so that doesn’t bode well on the good parenting front.

Hence I’m sitting in the back of the car, having squashed myself into a space so titchy that I’d give a professional contortionist a run for their money.

And now, I’m trying to do the impossible.

I’m attempting to breast feed my baby without;

a) removing my seatbelt

b) moving him at all in his baby seat
or c) showing my tits to the men in the white van next to us.

Because, we are, of course stuck in standstill traffic and have been since rejoining the motorway after wee three, so I have a captive audience.

It is also knocking on 25 degrees so I’m sweating my face off.

I remember how I used to enjoy long car journeys. How I’d stock up on Diet Coke and pickled onion Monster Munch and spend the entirety of the drive listening to air-punchingly good songs.

But Angry Anderson’s ‘Suddenly’ feels like a distant memory. It’s ‘Wind the Bobbin  Up’ a capella all the way these days.

Just as I think I’m going to crack a rib, the crying stops. He shuts his eyes in protest, sucks his fingers, and falls instantly to sleep.

I look to my left and my daughter is rubbing her eyes, and moments later, she too is asleep.

We turn off ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ in favour of a Gardener’s Question Time, I open the packet of salt and vinegar, and momentarily experience something like peace.

Until I realise I am squashed into a space the size of an old 50p, parked on the M1 with my breast out.

I guess you can’t have it all.