Wednesday July 23rd 2013: something happened yesterday, I'm sure...

Holy crap! If there was ever a time to have a baby it's now. The likes of Tesco, Asda, Wilkinson's etc are all having royal baby events which basically involve union jack bunting and lots of baby stuff slashed to half price. 

Poor Kate. Not only does she have to contend with supermarkets slashing the prices of their sudocrem, supposedly in honour of the new baby and not in honour of their cash registers, she also had the world's press waiting outside her door. The future Queen might as well have given a Twitter update every half hour on how far she had dilated because she was under that much scrutiny. The amount of photographers waiting for the new family outside the hospital probably meant that she turned down the customary Bounty picture and pack whilst inside. (A small victory for Netmums who are campaigning against pushy Bounty women; however, that does not mean they have won the war. No: even as I write,  new mothers up and down the country are having a Bounty pack forced upon them).

Thinking about this most recent Royal Birth has made me reflect on my earlier blogging, in January, about Queen Victoria's parenting skills. I have a feeling that our future Queen won't be a candidate for The Jeremy Kyle show like Queen Vicky would have been.

My top 5 companies cashing in on the birth of the new Prince are:

5. Clarks baby shoes (ahem) "Shoes fit for a prince!"

4. Mumsnet swears 'By Royal Decree'...A big vote for a Bundler at nighttime. When babies are tiny, they poo in their sleep and a bundler is easier to change than a babygro, so you don't wake them'. Somehow,  I can't imagine this 'decree' ending up on some board outside Buckingham Palace.

3. 'The Baby Show' fancy a 'Royal Trip'  (geddit) to Olympia in Kensington in October - I mean, October is nowhere near bloody July!

2.  BRITAX: A Prince is born..."The beaming couple were seen leaving hospital last night carrying the new prince in a BRITAX Babysafe SHR and Isofix base car" aarrgghh!!!!!

1. Thank the Lord for my beloved Cath Kidson who along with children's charity 'Banardo's' wanted to celebrate the Royal Birth by getting us thinking and digging deep in our pockets to help those children whose need for Clarks shoes, a trip to The Baby Show and a Britax car seat is low on their list of priorities.

Monday 7th January 2012

Insomnia.com...

I have had so much going around my head recently especially the prospect of going back to work :-( Rather than look at the ceiling and try to organise how everything was going to work in 6 weeks time, I decided to watch something on BBC IPlayer and then write this blog.

I watched a programme that was on BBC2 called "Queen Victoria's Children - a domestic tyrant". Ok, I didn't get the warm, fuzzy feeling that I was looking for at midnight but I must admit I was a wee bit intrigued. What was an Alpha Mum like at the end of the nineteenth century?

One word - scary!!!!

By the end of the programme I think we could safely assume that the first British Monarch to celebrate her Silver Jubilee was not a Julie Andrew's figure; in fact, she was more like a queen "Vicky" Pollard.

Let's compare the parenting of the woman who ruled at the height of the Golden Age of the British Empire (Don't even get me started on Colonialism) with the dark and dismal image projected about parenting (also, a world with Peppa Pig and the Ninky Nonk) by the media at the beginning of 2013.

1. In the 21st century, most Nurseries have policies where you can't say the word 'naughty' to a child. In Queen Victoria's Nursery that was the least of the children's problems. God help little Leopold or Louise if they even looked the wrong way. A trip to the naughty step would have seemed like bliss.

2. Queen Victoria liked sex, not babies. She said that babies were 'Frog-like'. Hmmm, I wonder what the NCT mummies would think about that analogy?

3. She despised breast feeding, insisted on using wet nurses for all 9 of her children and commanded her oldest daughters not to breast feed when they had babies. When they disobeyed her she wrote, "It makes me feel sick to think that my two daughters are being used as cows". The Queen took revenge on her daughter Alice by naming a cow after her. Let's see. How would this stand against the NHS Breast is Best policy?

To be honest, if Queen Victoria was on The Jeremy Kyle Show he would have told Albert to "stick something on the end of it" and referred Queen Vicky to Grahame and the after-care team. I wonder what these modern 'Parenting Authors' who appear on Lorraine and This Morning would think of Queen Vicky? I can just imagine the dulcet disapproval twangs of Denise Robertson who often points her finger when she's not happy. You never know, they might need to re-name the pub in Eastenders to "The Domestic Tyrant". Well, at least Bianca, Peggy and Old Mo would fit right in

Dearie me - maybe I need to re-assess my position of being a Royalist (again! It was precarious to begin with). Damn that Jubilee Concert with Gary Barlow and that emotive choir; for the first time in years I felt patriotic.

There is a ray of light; Princess Alice - Victoria's estranged second eldest daughter. Alice - it must be the name ;-)xx Apparently "she found liberation in nursing and medicine". A fact which horrified her mother. I really can't see Disney Pixar making a film about Queen Victoria anytime soon

And on that bombshell, it was 01:53am. Not long till my babes get up. Suddenly, living in the 21st Century doesn't seem that arduous at all. Just imagine, if that was the treatment of kids at the highest levels of society, what type of 'Parenting' would the poor blighters at the bottom of the social hierarchy suffer? Suddenly, Gina Ford seems like the mother in The Brady Bunch.