Wimbledon

Today I went out for the first time without Cletus. I've been needing to do this for some time. I haven't been away from him for more than 30 minutes - except the time I had to have my legs scanned for clots at the local hospital.

I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to do. As I'm breast feeding, I couldn't go too far or stay away from Cletus for too long. I thought about going to a museum, but by the time I got to any of the ones in central London and looked around for a few minutes - it would be time to head back. I could have gone for a walk - but that's generally something the Vol-in-Law do together.

I'm not much of shopper, really - but I decided to go to Wimbledon. In Wimbledon, they have a mall. It's not a big mall, it's not terrifically crowded, but it's a mall. They also have a high street with the usual retail suspects, plus a department store, bookstores and art supply stores and so forth. And Wimbledon is full of consumerist, aspirational to upper middle-class types - so the shops are pretty good. (The stores for the very wealthy are bit up the hill in Wimbledon Village)

Up until recently, a trip to Wimbledon meant a ridiculously long walk, a ridiculously long bus ride, or a really, really short trip by car but with high parking costs and low convenience probability. But within the past month, a new bus route has started which I can catch almost outside my front door (well, it's maybe a two minute walk) and takes me to the heart of Wimbledon in under ten minutes if the traffic's not bad. So I took the bus.

I poked around the shops and browsed the book store and bought some books. And then I took the bus home.

It's great that a new, easy to access, urban center is open to me now. But what was even better is that I left Cletus and when I came back there were no marks on the baby, he didn't seem traumatised, and I was even happy to see him.