I've forgotten how babies work!

Who knew evolution happened this fast?

Hello, how are you? Are you dry January-ing? If so, LAST DAY TOMORROW!

(I realise this is a bad attitude).

I did consider joining my friends in their positive lifestyle endeavours because they’re exuding health. However, this particular January is going on for longer than a Christmas visitor banging on about the best way to get to XXX (I’d already stapled my ears shut so I didn’t know where he was talking about) via the M57, the A653 and B7355773 then up and over the Lancaster bypass.

That word - ‘bypass’ - triggers me. For how many millions of hours have I endured people telling me the best way to get to places? It’s enough to make me never want to go anywhere ever again. In all that time I could have gained myself a degree (something I do not possess), or hoofed the entire South West Coastal Path and written a book about it.

(I realise that Christmas 2025 already feels as deeply embedded in history as Elizabethan ruff collars, or at the very least taping Echo Beach off the Radio 1).

On top of this, I have unexpectedly spent the past three nights at my dad’s little flat. It’s been fine - but as I hadn’t expected to be staying over I had no moisturiser with me.

This is a national disaster. But I can cope, I told myself. It’s supply and demand, isn’t it, like breast milk? My skin’s ‘natural oils’ would soon kick in. However, I’ve watched myself become more and more ashen and crepey and so, to rescue my face from complete desiccation, I run to Asda (Dad lives two minutes’ walk from a giant Asda THANK THE LORD) and grab a pot of Simple Age Resist Day Cream, SPF 15.

Simple! I haven’t used this brand since about 1986.

I slather it on and expect to be instantly twenty-two, fresh of face and running around Soho in frosted eye shadow with my savagely peroxided hair all bouffed up, en route to Madame Jojo’s.

Sadly that doesn’t happen. Even Soho doesn’t have Madame Jojo’s anymore and there’s definitely nothing like that in Ardrossan.

Anyway, back to dry January. After many moons of pontification - i.e., three seconds - I decided NO! I’d swim against the tide of fancy non-alcoholic beverages made from herbs and roots and ground up bits from the insides of elderly handbags which inexplicably cost £375. So along with the moisturiser I bought wine. (This is not the first of my January wine).

I meant to write a short explanation for not writing a new column this week, and have gone on for nearly as long as the Lancaster bypass man. What I meant to say was, life is a bit messy right now so I’m sharing a column commissioned for the excellent Platinum magazine. So I’ll still do that.

Like the Simple face cream, writing it took me back to a time very long ago when my now fully grown kids were babies.

It’s about the first time I took my younger friend H’s gorgeous little babba out for a walk in the park.

****

Do I miss having babies?

I don’t think I do. It’s been a quarter of a century since I’ve had crumbled biscuits, loose Crayola crayons and leaking drinks cartons rattling around in my bag. Now I often don’t even bother with a bag at all. I just waltz out of the house with phone and keys stuffed into my pocket, breezy as you like.

Yet, when friend H has a baby, I’m round there like a shot. It’s thrilling, being around a tiny person again. I am also amazed to see H and her partner looking amazingly bright-eyed and chipper. Whenever I look back at photos of me and Jimmy as new parents, I see a couple of propped up corpses encrusted with dried baby vomit, with a backdrop of splattered puree and poorly assembled Billy bookcases.

Was it us who made an almighty deal of it? Are babies – at least, babies in 2026 – actually pretty easy? Hannah makes us coffee and we drink them like normal people. I don’t think I drank a single hot beverage between 1997-2004. This is such a doddle, I decide, that I offer to take her baby out another day – all by myself.

However, when the morning arrives I’m actually quite scared. His wobbly head is terrifying and what he if ‘goes off’ like a car alarm? I feel like a nervous driver forced behind the wheel again after a hiatus of several decades.

Do babies still work in the same way? Or have things moved on without me noticing? This can happen so easily. A friend’s daughter mocked me recently when she spotted me dabbing powder onto my face. ‘You still use that?’ she asked, aghast. Now it’s all twelve-step Korean ‘glass skin’ routines. She stared at my powder as if was dust I’d swept up from the road.

Before we set off, I make H give me a refresher lesson in babycare. As nappy changing is demonstrated I watch intently, like a medical student being shown how to operate on a human spleen. Nappies are different now – there’s a little strip that changes colour when they’re wet!

Even the buggy is modernised. This one has a vibrating device attached, to fool the baby into thinking you’re forever on the move. Armed with a bottle of milk and a headful of instructions I set off to traverse the Russian Steppes – I mean, take baby to the park.

And you know what? It’s easy!

One thing I’d forgotten about infants is that they love to sleep. For an hour he slumbers, at perfect peace. ‘People must think I’m the grandma!’ I muse as we stroll along (of course, no one thinks anything at all). Next time, I decide, I’ll adopt the Coastal Grandma look: loose linens in natural hues, plus a straw hat and a woven tote like Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond.

Baby and I circuit the lake. It’s a beautiful afternoon – sunny with a light breeze. The perfect day for a pale blue sweater draped over my shoulders. Must go shopping asap!

As I’m putting together the look in my head, the mood changes and the baby kicks off.

Then it’s all systems go: feeding, winding and a nappy change. I discover that the infant human hasn’t been totally reconfigured in the intervening twenty-five years since I last handled one. Poop still comes out of the same place, in a similar form. It doesn’t emerge as little odourless pellets - although you’d think that by now, Mother Nature would have sorted that out.

As we hurry homewards the baby cries again. What’s happening? I’ve done all the things! I’ve sung Wheels on the Bus and we’ve stopped for more milk (not wanted), pram jiggler on at full pelt. I cuddle him and beg him to be happy and, by the time we reach home, he’s all smiles.

‘Ah, he’s so happy,’ H exclaims. ‘So, how did it go?’

‘Nothing to it!’ I say.

Love,

Fiona xx

PS Just three weeks until my new novel, The Woman Who Turned Her Life Around, is out! Is it ever too late for an encore? How will two old friends and bandmates from the 80s survive a crazy road trip, at the request of the dead friend? Especially when Josie has always - secretly - loved Shane? You can pre-order here!

With thanks to Suzy at Platinum magazine. You can find out more about her beautiful magazine here.