All flesh is grass

[ailbhe]

We got up a little later than the original plan, due to lacking the motivation to go into London to do a full 8-hour day of concentrated work at a weekend, and dropped into the Farmer's Market on the way to the station. We picked up breakfast there - I had a yesterday's egg in a roll for 50p - and decided that in future we should go early on a Saturday. It's really the season for Farmers Marketing now; all the root vegetables are showing up, and my favourite greens.

Train and tube to Whitechapel was uneventful; I dislike intensely managing a lively toddler on a narrow Tube platform with electrified rail and crowds and so on, but we all managed. We parted in Whitechapel; Linnea and I went to wards the exit while Rob vanished downwards towards the East London Line. Linnea leaned over the stairwell calling "Daddy? Daddy! Daddeee?!" for a while but recovered quickly.

We emerged into Whitechapel market. Linnea spotted the gherkin and headed that way, past stalls with clothes and scarves and polyester shalwar kameez flapping in the breeze, and plastic baskets full of glitzy sequinned shoes and sandals, and a little boy buying a fully automatic machine gun with real lights and noises, and a big stack of very sleazy Bollywood soundtrack adverts, and women in burkas with huge keyrings and a man with only one leg and all sorts of other exciting things.

After the market, things calmed down enough that I was able to put her in the buggy and walk back the other way, away from the gherkin, towards Dave's flat.

The flat is up many many stairs. Linnea enjoyed going up - and stopping at the returns to look out the barred windows at the windoboxes on the sills - but it made her somewhat out of breath. I accepted a cup of tea with the desperation of an uncaffeinated mother who has been awake half the night with a baby who is feeding to alleviate sinus discomfort (the swallowing helps). Then we toddled up to the roof and Linnea leaned against the railings and looked down and out over East London. It was very interesting - a pleasant place for lunch, I should think, with radio four in the background and a little windbreak.

Stepping Stones Farm was next; we walked there through a green in Stepney, past a most excellent playground and a game of football and the former dwelling places of a couple of famous anarchists I'd never heard of. As soon as we got to the farm, Linnea stroked a couple of sheep (big lambs, really), talked to a pig, played inverse fetch with a confused dog (she can't throw veyr well. The dog could. The dog threw her a stick about a metre, for her to throw back; she picked it up carefully and pressed it to the dog's mouth to return it) and climbed in some manure. The she was introduced to a donkey.

I like donkeys a lot, and this one was a particularly sweet little one - not a new foal, but not a proper adolescent either. Dave showed Linnea how to hold the back of her hand out to be sniffed, to make friends, and Linnea presented the donkey with a closed fist. He bit.

Yes, today my baby's hand was bitten by a donkey. At first he seemed to be just lipping her, looking for treats in her fist, but he drew her hand into his mouth and closed his teeth on it. I don't rememeber what happened next very clearly. I said, in a presumably high-pitched, panicked tone, "Dave he's got her hand in his teeth" which took about a week to come out, and I held her still so she couldn't pull away and hurt herself worse, and then the donkey began to pull backwards, and I screamed "Dave!" and her hand was released and she cried and I cried a little and I checked her hand for damage and sat on a tree-stump and fed her and checked her hand again and there was only a small area of broken skin and a good deal of swelling.

There were tooth marks in a semi-circle over the back of her hand and her wrist. Her knuckles and wrist seem to have some bruising - they were pretty swoll up - but she could move them all and didn't seem distressed when I played with her hands.

We went to wash her hands in the stinkiest prefab toilet I have encountered in a long time, and then met some goats, a goose, lunch, and home-made marmalade. Much of the marmalade on sale was Best Before End June 2005, but I found some good until December.

We returned to Dave's flat, because Linnea seemed almost ready to sleep, and I lunched on peanut butter on toast, more tea in real china cups with saucers, and Linne had a feed and some exciting, stimulating play. Rob and Gideon arrived with a shower of rain, just in time for Linnea to sleep - 5 pm is an excellent time for a nap - and we sat and chatted pleasantly until time to head off to dinner.

Ever since we left Wapping, I have longed to eat dinner at Le Spice again. We went there a lot when we lived in London, and we held our engagement party there, and when I had RSI they used to cut my meals up for me in the kitchen so that Rob didn't have to do it in the restaurant. I have firmly dealt with this inconvenient wistfulness. Tragedy! RiverSpice., as it is now known, serves reasonable food, but with extraordinarily poor service, weird decor (like Le Spice but less friendly and open-feeling, so it's not even original weird decor - and we could see visible dirt on the hangings) and London prices. They apparently have a full corporate service and free delivery for orders over £15.

Sadly we discovered this while introducing Jos and Kim to our favourite haunt, but I think they forgave us and will remember not to bother going there again.

We almost had a drink at the Captain Kidd, where Rob andI usde to eat upstairs at the Gallows, but it was too crowded; no seats and no no-smoking area unless we went outside, where there was no heating.

So we parted ways - Gideon, Dave, Jos and Kim went north, and Rob, Linnea and I went south, home via the Jubilee Line which has nice, safe platforms and plenty of space for a buggy. On the mainline train home, we were accompanied by drunkards who sang a charming wee wee song; as I recall, the lyrics were something like this:

You do a wee wee in the toilet, do a wee wee on the train,
do a wee wee in the toilet, do a wee wee on the train,
do a wee wee [something], do a wee wee on TottenHAM!

It was most instructional, and I could only regret that Linnea was too far away to hear it properly.

We were briefly trapped in the exit lobby with one of the drunks, who admire dLinnea, admonished her - drunkenly - to Be Good, and asked her age. When we said "17 months," he responded that his daughter is three and she's a little cow. Which must be a terrible burden for a fine upstanding (he was, more or less, up and standing) citizen like himself to bear.

We got a taxi home - Rob held the door to stop takeoff before all straps were secured and buggy-brakes on - and Linnea had her teeth brushed, her face washed, her nappy changed, and went to bed happily enough.

London always makes me feel filthy. We've put lots of decongestant smelly stuff in Linnea's room to help her breathe through her cold and her polluted lungs, and I'm drinking clean-tasting tea.

I knitted another two and a half inches of coat today. Another 42 rows or so and the back is done. One of my needles is broken, however, so I may need to buy a replacement. I'm tempted to see how I fare using the damaged one but I think I'll just lose stitches off the back as fast as I knit them on the front.

Comments

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

Stick a big blob of Blu-Tack on the end of the damaged needle!

When people say things about their children like that drunk did to you, it makes me want to cry....

[ailbhe]

Well, I think it's an appalling thing to say about a child, particularly one so young.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

The dog threw her a stick about a metre, for her to throw back; she picked it up carefully and pressed it to the dog's mouth to return it

awww. :)

i hope the donkey bite is quickly forgotten.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Knitting needles seem like quite a Freecycley thing...

cniteail

[ailbhe]

I like bamboo