Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 (25 page)

First of all I have to find the lighting department.

Initially this appears to be on the first floor, so I head there in the lift. Ten minutes wandering around proves otherwise - there are no lamps to be seen anywhere. I’m becoming increasingly annoyed as the pushchair, a bugger to control at the best of times, is almost impossible to negotiate along the narrow corridors between ladies hosiery and
knitware
.

Luckily, Poppy is sound asleep through all of this. I think the addition of a wailing baby may have sent me over the edge.

‘Oh sorry, the sign hasn’t been changed yet,’ a skinny shop girl tells me by way of explanation, when I ask her where the lighting department has gone. ‘We’re being refurbished. It’s now on the third floor.’

Of course it is.

The third floor is right at the top of the building and will force me back into the lift again, with its inevitable slight smell of piss.

We eventually reach the third floor and off I go again, trying my hardest not to crash the pushchair into the myriad linen and glassware displays ranged in front of me like an obstacle course.

Poppy and I finally reach the lighting department.

It’s
enormous
.

How many different types of light does a person need? They all do the same thing, don’t they?

I spend the next ten minutes in a fruitless effort to find the bloody up lighter.

Elenora proves more elusive than the Scarlet Pimpernel.

I accost another skinny shop girl (they produce them in a factory somewhere I believe) and ask her where I can find one.

‘Two aisles up sir, on your left.’ She points a bored finger. ‘Close to where that lady with the pushchair is.’

I follow her finger to see a small oriental lady also negotiating a large pushchair along the aisles. I feel a pang of empathy for her. ‘Thanks very much,’ I tell the shop girl and make my way towards my goal.

Reaching what looks like the right aisle at last, I park Poppy and quickly beetle off down the narrow passageway between the lighting displays.

There’s no bloody Elenora up lighter to be found, naturally. Not immediately anyway. I have to take a right, a left and another right before I find the right area.

Cursing under my breath I pick up one of the lamps (which doesn’t come in a box of course, that’d be far too handy) and make my way back to where I’ve left my daughter.

Still muttering all sorts of dark opinions about the layout of the twenty first century department store, I grab Poppy’s pushchair and start to make my way back to the payment counter.

When I get there I have cause to swear once more as there’s a sign over it that reads: ‘Please use payment counter on second floor. We apologise for any inconvenience while we upgrade our store for you’.

I bet you don’t really.

I turn the awkward pushchair back to the lift, carrying the tall, heavy up lighter in the other hand.

I reach the lift and mercifully it opens to reveal an empty carriage. I reverse into it, press the button for the second floor, put the up lighter down, and put my head back against the wall and expel a loud sigh.

I only have to pay for the lamp and get out of here now with Poppy.

She’s still very quiet, so I pull back the hood of her pushchair to check she’s okay.

Yep, Poppy seems absolutely fine.

…apart from the fact she now appears to be Chinese.

My baby has turned Chinese!
I scream incomprehensibly in the vaults of my mind.
Why is my baby Chinese?!

I move quickly round the pushchair and bend down to take a closer look. Maybe my eyes are going… maybe I just need a closer look at her to –

Nope, she’s still fucking Chinese.

Icy cold panic overwhelms me. For a moment the sheer impossibility of it renders me immobile.

How can this have happened?

Is this some kind of bizarre disease I wasn’t aware of?
Chinesechangeyitis
?

Is Poppy a mutant, like in the X-men? If so, what kind of superpower is the ability to turn oriental? It’s not going to help you much unless you’re playing hide and seek in the middle of Kowloon Bay.

Then rationality does a great job of re-asserting itself.

It doesn’t make the situation any less terrible, but at least it helps to make it more plausible.

You grabbed the wrong pushchair, you twat.

I remember the small Chinese lady also in the lighting section – who
also
had a baby in a pushchair.

I’ve left my daughter on her own in the middle of a busy department store, while simultaneously kidnapping a Chinese baby.

I frantically bash the stop button on the lift, which comes grinding to a halt. I then hammer the third floor button so hard it splits my fingernail.

Sucking on my painful digit I hop from one foot to the other as the lift crawls back up to the third floor.

The door eventually pings open. I grab the Elenora up lighter again (because now I’ve found the sodding thing, I’m not letting it go no matter what) and rush the pushchair out of the lift.

Sadly the up lighter is unbalanced, tips over to one side and slams up against the walls of the lift, knocking me back on my arse.

Chinese baby continues to roll out onto the shop floor as the lift doors begin to close on me.

Oh great, now I’ve lost another fucking baby.

That’s two in the space of as many minutes.

I stagger to my feet, still holding the now hopelessly bent up lighter, and throw my arm between the doors before they fully close. I wrench them open, catching Chinese baby before he or she is lost in the small crowd of people waiting for the lift. They are all looking at me like I’m the ghost of Frank Spencer.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ I wail and push between them as fast as I can, taking off in the direction of the lighting department.

Chinese baby has had enough of this little adventure and is crying his or her bastard head off now, attracting even more attention.

God knows what I must look like: pushing a screaming oriental child along, bumping in to everything in my way – and brandishing a bent up lighter, which is swinging around everyone’s heads in an extremely dangerous fashion.

As I reach the lighting section my heart leaps and drops at the same time, in all defiance of the physical universe. It leaps because I see Poppy, still sound asleep in her pushchair. It drops because standing behind her is a Chinese woman in tears and a burly security guard speaking into a walkie talkie.

‘Wait! Wait!’ I scream. ‘Everything’s fine!’

Everything is obviously
not
fine. As far as the poor Chinese woman is concerned, the man who kidnapped her baby is now thundering back towards her, using her poor screaming child as a battering ram and wielding a massive metal lamp with which he no doubt intends to strike her mightily about the head.

‘He got my baby!’ the woman shrieks and points at me, jumping up and down.

I’m glad I don’t live in America. The security guard would have been armed and shot me on sight.

As it was, I come grinding to a halt in front of both of them, fling down the stupid up lighter and begin to babble my apologies, attempting to explain what has happened.

The legendary crowd of gawping onlookers forms around us.

The security guard listens, digests everything I have to say… and tells me he’s still going to call the police because my story is obviously far too outlandish to be true. I simply must be some kind of evil sexual predator, who has decided he’s had enough of one baby and fancies a Chinese.

My salvation comes from the distraught mother, who, throughout my convoluted explanation, has been looking at me in a very funny way.

‘I know you!’ she exclaims. ‘You Jamie!’

I am, needless to say, completely fucking non-plussed.

How the hell does this woman know me?

‘Yeah! You Jamie. You with Laura!’

She knows my wife too!

I look around the store, trying to spot the hidden cameras. When none are in evidence I turn back to her. ‘How do you know my name?’ How do you know my
wife
?’

‘You at Trish’s class!’

Visions of whales being sexually molested fill my brain. ‘It’s Lolly, right?’

‘Yeah! Yeah!’

‘You know this man?’ the security guard asks her.

‘Oh yeah! He funny guy. I hear him fart out loud once!’

The guard looks at me with an expression that suggests his sanity is rapidly failing. ‘So… you two know each other then?’

‘Apparently,’ I tell him, putting my head in my hands.

‘Yeah! Yeah! He make joke about whale fucking!’

I have to shut this woman up. Her voice is carrying over the crowd of massively entertained on-lookers and she’s making me sound like a bloody lunatic.

‘I’m sorry about the mix up with the babies, Lolly.’

She waves a hand at me. ‘It don’t matter. Now I know you, I don’t think you a big, fat old sex granddad any more.’ She points at me. ‘You whale fart man!’ This makes her collapse into giggles again. Her Chinese baby (sex still undetermined) joins in with its mother. Poppy remains fast asleep.

Great… the girl wakes up in the middle of the night if a mouse farts two doors away, but in a noisy department store where her father’s just avoided a kidnapping charge she’s dead to the world. I suppose I should be grateful.

The guard speaks into his walkie talkie, assuring his colleague that there is no reason to call the police.

…the nearest mental hospital
maybe
, but not the police.

‘Well, now that’s all cleared up, I think Poppy and I will be leaving,’ I say, trying to bring this horrible episode to a close.

‘No! No! You come have coffee with me and Ling!’ Lolly screeches. ‘He like your kid. What you say her name was? Poopy?’

‘Poppy. It’s
Poppy
.’

‘Ha ha! Poppy and whale fart man. You come get coffee, we chat about babies.’

I have to go of course.

The spectre of my baby theft still hangs over us and I feel guilty for making Lolly panic. The fact she also apparently took care of Poppy in the few minutes I was gone makes it even worse. I simply have to spend half an hour drinking awful Debenhams coffee with this woman, there’s no way out of it.

I nod and smile at the guard, who gives me the stink eye and walks off towards the bathroom section with a swagger his position doesn’t really justify.

Lolly and I take our babies (the right ones this time) across the shop floor to the restaurant at the back.

We sit and chat for about an hour. It turns out that while Lolly’s grasp on the English language is a tad fragmented, she also has a degree in biochemistry from one of China’s leading universities and only came to England after falling in love with Brian while he was over there on a fact finding mission for GlaxoSmithKline.