Friday, November 21, 2008

I'm back, for real.

I know I say this periodically. But I really am.

The last few months have been.. mammoth. Aside from running my business (with my great team), and having a very annoying pregnany complication which meant I couldn't really walk, or could only walk in quite a lot of pain, and getting everything ready for The Baby (who turned into Zaphod) and having a lot of fun and games with my show at 36 weeks... let's just say, I didn't have a huge amount of spare bandwidth.

The strength of a blog, the thing that I think draws you in, is someone talking about their experiences (I realise this is not all blogs, but the kind I mostly like to read), and I remember when I first started blogging, there was a great.. Dutch I think blog that I used to read all the time. She was smart, funny, sassy (takes one...) and then suddenly she had a baby and the blog was all about nappies and sleep and suchlike and I didn't understand.

Like, a few months ago, a friend had a baby, and made this big palaver about coming over to visit me (I was already pregnant and not that mobile) and she was all, how wide is the gap at the side of your house? Will it fit the buggy? Where can I park? And I was all (not to her, obviously) get over it girlfriend. ALthough not exactly like that because I'm not from the Bronx. But I was thinking, what's the big deal, you're a smart resourceful person. Deal with it.

So am I (generally) and now I know exactly how she felt. So I've started a couple of companies, run big divisions of Plcs, travelled all over the world, negotiated deals with the toughest... and all of a sudden, I'm thinking, how will I get to Kilburn on the bus?

It's like a whole new life. And for Zaphod, it is. And for me and D it is, but on top of our old life. Less so for D - he has all the excitement/drama of parenthood, but gets to go to work in his old life, too. He just has to fit it all in, that's his challenge.

My challenge is that my old life is - temporarily at least - on hold. I'm not so much about email and phone calls and doing business and talking to customers. I know this because I got my Blackberry out of my bag yesterday because I was out and needed to get someone's phone number, and it had RUN OUT OF BATTERY. That has never happened to me. Before, my crackberry was my lifeline - incidentally, Jonny Freedland wrote a cute piece Tuesday about Barak and his - and I left it uncharged at my peril. Even on my honeymoon, I did check a few times because we were closing some deals and it didn't make sense to be out of reach.

Now I'm out of reach in oh-so-many-ways. First, because I had to have a c-section, I can't drive for another two weeks and my world is really small. It's kinda like the 1950s - I ask D to pick things up on his way home, and if I need to go anywhere, he has to drive.

I mean, I still have the same serious taxi habit I had throughout the pregnancy. Basically, the only way I could get around was door-to-door cabs, so my local taxi firm became my preferred provider and frankly I saw them more often than I saw my family. I think I must be their biggest customer, because even when there were bus strikes and crazy-taxi-needs, they always looked after me. In fact, I was thinking of getting them a seasonal gift, as they've been so nice, and chatting with one of their drivers Wednesday, asking about how religious they all were, he confirmed that "they don't really drink whisky". It might have to be a banana bread, then. Imagine the irony: a Jewish customer bringing a Muslim taxi company owner a banana cake for un-xmas. This is the same driver who told me that children are a gift from Allah.

Anyway, must go to Brent Cross. The joys of motherhood. Back, later.

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