A deficit of wonder

Our trip to the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Barts was rather a let down. It turns out that making a baby is quite a long process. Who’d have thought? We were very nervous. So much so that we both managed to get our ages wrong when the doctor asked. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t 36 but it was hard to believe that I was actually 37. My bumbling confused Matt who knows for sure that we are always 9 years apart so he declared himself to be 45, before realising that we are both in fact a year older. The quack looked bemused but our fuckwittery didn’t seem to have an immediate bearing on whether we were deemed to be fit to raise kids or not so we blundered on. He was not the brightest spark I’ve ever met and kept asking how long we had been trying for a baby. “About 20 minutes” was the truth of the matter but he eventually put an entirely random “Two years” in his notes. An hour later we left feeling a tad violated (some things just shouldn’t ever have to be said out loud) with handfuls of chits for various stomach-churning tests.

I decided to take the bull by the horns and embark upon these at the earliest opportunity. Waiting for blood tests (for Rubella, Hepatitis and HIV) at the Royal London, I was seated next to a sweet little girl, early to mid teens, who was with her Dad. Like me, she was clutching the referral form for the tests and I noticed with some sadness that in the box headed “Reason for Investigation” her GP had scribbled “Depression”.

We have kittens. Tip Little and Poodle Murphy. We went to Worcester past burning fields and blue-bummed sheep, through Autumn mists and one-way villages to pick up two little black kitten boys. They were teeny and timid and sat on Matt’s lap all the way home. Poodle puked silently – a shiny clay-coloured regurgitation the size of his head – over Matt’s fleece, car sickness presumably, but we didn’t mind because they were so damn cute. I have since discovered that these kittens were actually spawned in the depths of hell and are determined not to rest until our flat has been completely destroyed. Minnie and Madge are nervous wrecks, afraid to sleep or eat or pee or poo. These big old tabby cats have no sanctuary from the trails of havoc and devastation wreaked by the tornado twins. Meanwhile, us lumbering humans look on speechless, at once enchanted and horrified, wondering where it is all going to end.

There are some photos of the little buggers here.


Tom Waits says: "This is what's wrong with the world. "Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now."