Thursday, January 05, 2006

We shop for baby clothes.

I realise that this opening sentence is likely to enthuse the punters about as much as a BBC announcer's "and now, starring Ross Kemp..." but I'm afraid non about-to-have-a-baby people will just have to get used to it.

I also realise that I have used that Ross Kemp analogy before, in relation to pram shopping. You see? It's not just the TV shows that he is involved with that are all merely the same idea just reworked over and over again. It is even the sentences.

"How about this one?" asks the LTLP, indicating a rabbit outfit.

I give it a look of the utmost disapproval. Whilst the all-in-one sleep costume things are clearly practical and snug and warm and all that, I just cannot get my head round the idea that they have to have extra 'cute' built in.

"I am not," I inform her, "dressing my child as a rabbit."

I am determined that the poor thing will go through life with some gravitas and dignity, i.e. follow in the footsteps of its father. We pass some that have been created like a Father Christmas outfit. These are heavily reduced, having had an original RRP, according to the lying discount outlet, of nine grillion pounds. Quite apart from the once-again unnecessary and nauseating cutesy-cuteness, having a Santa outfit is clearly last month's fashion, which is something kids immediately pick up on. I do not want it to be bullied in the delivery suite.

In fact there seems nothing that does not have some form of yeukky pictorial thing on it. Pooh Bear is the worst offender. He gets everywhere. As regular readers will have worked out, Pooh Bear has been a great influence on me over the years. But this is not Real Pooh Bear. It is the twisted, honey-coated Disney travesty version. Insurgent Pooh Bear. His image graces everything from clothes to bibs to baths to nappies. I wish to poke him in the eye and then vivesect him.

Meanwhile, Real Pooh Bear lives without any major marketing deal, probably eking out an existence back in the Hundred Acre Wood with Continuity Piglet and the breakaway paramilitary wing of Rabbit's Friends and Relations.

We leave the baby clothes shop. I buy myself a shirt.