Gas & Air

After looking through old school friends’ photos on Facebook (oh the joys of a wasted hour or ten doing this) I’ve started to feel a little humbled. Where I’m from, teen pregnancy is not uncommon - in fact it’s a career choice for some - and having a baby at 15 is for most the end of an education; end of career prospects; end of their chance to break out of Croydon and see the world. But increasingly I’m starting to think that it’s this attitude towards teen mums that is in fact more detrimental to the mother than the having the child part.

Perhaps not teen mums, but girls of 19, 20, 21; not children but young people lacking the benefit of years of true life-blood, are being labelled Young Mums in a derogatory sense. Just because they haven’t trod the traditional path to parenthood, they plus child, are looked down upon as second-class citizens of society - why?

For me, getting too close to 23 for my liking, my priorities in life are beginning to change. Most people by the time they’re 21 have finished uni or have been working for a good few years, find a partner, settle down, marry, have kids, get a people-carrier, dog, caravan, colostomy bag - that’s the way it’s programmed into us to do it. But what if you shake up the mix a bit? Turn the series of events on its head and create your own passage to parenthood around the needs of life as they arise? Dawning on me that the number of girls in my year at school with kids and shock-horror, husbands, is increasing rapidly, I realised that having such a happy family set-up earlier in life is becoming more and more appealing. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I want a baby now, AT ALL. I find it hard to organise my workload, social life and eating schedule let alone the needs of a real screaming alien thing, but I reckon that push come to shove I’d find a way. As every mother does, doubting their ability until their little one is thrust into the world and they have to somehow, as if by psychic ability, know what to do and how to look after it. I’m just saying that the pessimist in me means I’m convinced I will be married twice and that although true love may be real - with today’s loser morals, grass is always greener attitude and general disregard for the institution of marriage - it’s certainly not strong enough to bind people together forever.

On this note I’m thinking I may as well get the children bit out the way sooner rather than later so I’ve got plenty of time to actually enjoy their company throughout life. With less emphasis on following your heart, following instead your bank balance, I’m wondering if this is the right way to go about things?

I digress: for my group of friends the lastest “Oh my god have you seen? So and so’s having a baby, god could you imagine? Nope me neither” type conversations were rife up until a few months ago until one of us confessed she could imagine getting engaged and having children with her current boyfriend. Not in a fairy-tale story way but in a real, heartfelt I-think-he-may-be-the-one kind of way, and we respected her for it.

What I’m trying to say is that yes, I do want a career and I’m working my upmost to get there so that when the time is right for me to start popping out those screaming - and largely adorable - critters, that I’ll have the financial standing and resources in place for baby, family and house to give the child it’s best start in life. But just because that’s my way of doing things; a pre-planned strategic attack on parenthood, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. 

What people have to understand is that it can actually all backfire for career girls; they may focus so hard on reaching that financial security that once there, the distinct lack of male attention due to all those texts they didn’t have time to reply to, phone calls they were too busy to take and dates that were postponed/rearranged/forgotten, that the the baby-making element of the family has dropped off the radar. 

So for those school friends who are looked down on by society for not approaching the family conundrum the traditional way, I salute you. In fact I’d go so far as to say I envy these young mothers and the sterling job they’re doing, having someone in the world that they love more than life itself and know they’d give the world for at the drop of a hat (and other such cliches); it must be a pretty powerful feeling. 

They have the rest of their lives to do the getting wise bit and as long as young mums are not sponging off the state and supporting their families the legitimate way, surely parenthood is an education in itself that the National Curriculum would be hard pushed to teach? In a time when university tuition fees push the possibility of higher education out the window for a large proportion of society; it brings the option of having a young family just that little bit closer to home. And who’s to say that’s wrong?

Images: utreja via Instagram/ angiec via Instagram

Why oh why do these Van toting, American Apparel hoody caped round their shoulders, headscarved specimens insist on wearing leggings that you can see through. See-through! 

So our landlord just came round for our 6 month check on the flat, a slightly anal but amusing experience, presumably to ensure we hadn’t a) burnt the place down b) graffitied the walls with our own shit or  c) failed to lift up the shampoo bottles to wipe underneath, ‘limescale’s really hard to remove, you know’. Yes thanks, I had to clean the bathroom yesterday for your royal visit so I’m pretty much at one with the whole procedure.

His control-bitch of a girlfriend lolloped in all North Face and knitted Intarsia hat, sliding herself down in front of the film we were deliberately half way through to convey some kind of interruption (Human Traffic, with the bass up loud, just to be controversial). Shooting us perplexed looks as to why we both had no make up on and were kitted out in bottoms of the jogging variety in convict-esque grey – standard Sunday attire – her Howie recited the ins and outs of his legal battle with the leaseholders.

Feigning interest and avoiding as much eye-contact as my hangover would humanly allow we shuffled them around the flat in some sort of farcically inverse guided tour.

This is my sorry room:

This is the state of Bo’s:

Some sharp intaking of breath later pretty much on par with a mild asthmatic too lazy to get up for his inhaler, Howie awkward-turtled his way out to the hall. After some niceties that I’ve evidently deemed insignificant enough to forget, we ushered the two house invaders out the door.

Craange. I bet they bitched all the way home.

Bo decided she didn’t fancy the landlord, that his pointy ears weren’t that cute and that illusions of some kind of sordid ‘oh our microwave’s broken, can you come and show me how to use the defrost button’ sexy-time vanished as quickly as my attention span.

But there is only so much shit you can give when your knickers are hanging 2 metres away from a near-on stranger’s face. Lesson of the day? Flash the landlord for instant limescale overlookability.