38. Milo, the red nosed baby [Chorlton Waterpark]

It’s freezing but we’ve decided to brave the chill air for a walk. Milo is tottering along at top speed, giddy with joy at being let loose amongst so much wide, open space. He stops to point at a leaf (‘dat’). He totters for a bit, then stops to point at a tree (‘dat’). And [...]

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33. You can’t watch them all the time, part 1 [Head Over Heels, Chorlton]

Before I had Milo, I never knew that there was such as thing as a Soft Play Centre. Marvellous things they are, too: Head Over Heels, a brightly coloured, toy-enhanced padded cell, is the only place where Milo can’t add to his substantial collection of bruises, and the fact that it’s practically at the end [...]

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20. I know nothing about anything [Our garden, Chorlton]

Milo plays quite happily by himself these days. It’s lovely. He sits in his highchair or wedged on the sofa and bashes the c**p out of his assembled toys. He looks up occasionally to check I’m still there and then gets back to the job in hand (or hand in gob, as he’s teething again). [...]

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10. Calpol at the ready [The Barbakan, Chorlton, Manchester]

I’m perched on a stool in the Barbakan, Chorlton’s Polish bakery-cum-deli, tucking into teacakes and strong black coffee. Jo and I are talking about all sorts: weddings, babies, childminders, sleepless nights, a two year-old who wraps herself around her sleeping mother’s neck at 2am every morning, galleries in Berlin, Peter Saville and plans for a [...]

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2. Do wishes come true? [Egerton Road South, Chorlton]

So there I am, wheeling Milo through Chorlton with the kind of grim determination that only sleep deprivation can bring (‘you will have your nap, goddammit, you will have your nap…’), when I happen to pass a house with a wishing tree. I mutter under my breath something about wishing I had a baby that [...]

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