Only just

Yesterday, Wednesday, T’s grandmother was looking after her for the day. I should give you a bit of background: T has been spending every Wednesday and Thursday with a childminder called Geraldine, who seemed very nice indeed and lived only a short walk away, albeit that most of that walk was spent going up or down one very large hill. But despite continuing the arrangement for several months T never quite settled with Geraldine, and towards the end she would spend most of her days crying. A couple of weeks ago Geraldine just gave up, tired of and upset at being cried at so much, and all of a sudden we didn’t have any childcare. My mum was just helping to plug the gap.

As for the future, we’ve put her name down with one particularly good (and good value) local nursery but they are predictably oversubscribed and we’ll be waiting several months before she gets a place. In the meantime,we’ve advertised for a part-time nanny. We interviewed some on Monday and others last night. It says a lot about modern London that our six-woman shortlist contained one Slovakian, a Hungarian, a Nicaraguan, an Italian, a Frenchwoman and an Englishwoman who lives, literally, down the road.

My problem with Wednesday is that I work a late shift on Tuesdays, which allows me to look after T in the day but means I don’t get home until not long before 2am. I’m therefore in no mood to do childcare on Wednesday morning. Yesterday I woke up and my mum was already loading T into the car. I snuck down to say hello, thereby stopping by a couple of minutes the day becoming the first in T’s life that didn’t feature me at some point in it. Phew.

~ by Simon on October 2, 2008.