Trotters, and downward mobility

On giving my child less than I had.

We woke up yesterday morning to discover that it was raining. Which presented something of an issue because I’d spent the entire week telling a two-year-old that we would be going to the zoo at the weekend. After a long conversation where I suggest hundreds of other activities and then rule them all out and my long suffering boyfriend listens to me, we end up back at the original plan. The zoo was advertised and the zoo will happen. No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. With the right clothes we can still have a lovely, wholesome time.

Obviously we don’t have the right clothes. Well, Margot and I don’t*. She’s got a new coat from Mini Boden which I very proudly bought this year, having always got her coats second hand from friends or charity shops. It’s lovely, but it’s a winter coat, not a coat for 19 degrees and raining. I have a similar problem. I own a sexy black Zara coat which makes me look polished at meetings, a leather jacket for pretending that it’s Camden in 2007, and a parka which I bought during a rain shower in Edinburgh in 2018 which I believed to be waterproof at the time but in fact is not. Neither of us own the Rains / Polarn O. Pyret light but waterproof outfits that you need tran-seasonally.

* Mark has a Barbour with a hood and a pair of wellies because he’s smug like that.

In my case because when it comes to shopping I have a limited budget and I only ever want to buy dresses, because I think dresses are fun and sexy and are an entire outfit so therefore answer the entire question of what am I going to wear. It would require the acceptance of what my life looks like these days to order a sensible Rains coat suitable for layering and playground visits, instead of spending the money on a medium-slutty dress to wear with tights and pointy boots. In M’s case the oversight is purely because this is first Autumn where she hasn’t been cocooned in a nice plastic pram bubble most of the time.

Also, I’ve left her wellies at her childminder’s. But by the time I’ve realised all of this we’re reaching the point of the morning where if we don’t leave the house then we’ll all hate each other (it’s always 9.40AM) so we all get in the car and listen to the Jungle Book soundtrack and my boyfriend very kindly parks in a bus stop on the bouji pseudo-village high street near where I live so that I can go into Trotters and buy her a pair of wellies.

Trotters is baby Harvey Nichols. They sell Liberty print dresses for £74 (age 2-3) and double breasted princess coats for £170 (age 2-3). Usually I walk past and sigh wistfully at the window. Today, I go inside. But only because it’s the only shop open on a Sunday morning stocking wellies in the right size.

I pay £25 for them (they are £16 on Debenhams) and while the nice lady is finding me the correct size I wander around picking things up and looking at them. I linger for a while on a pair of pink striped pyjamas in an incredibly soft brushed cotton, displayed beneath racks of little pink slippers and pink and white striped dressing gowns. It’s a combination I remember very clearly from my own childhood - there’s a picture of me and my sister, about five and three, clearly freshly bathed and wrapped in what would now be at least £100 worth of pyjamas, beaming at the camera. I pick up the label and realise that the pyjamas are £44, so they go back. Then I notice that they’ve got the exact rain macs I we need, so I look at the label again. £50. I put it back.

I leave Trotters feeling sad, and feeling stupid for feeling sad, and feeling like I’ve failed, a bit.

There’s a fairly significant cost of living crisis going on, and there are women shoplifting baby formula to keep their babies from becoming malnourished, so I say this very carefully, and very much in the knowledge that I’m fair from hard done by. These are enormous, staggering first world problems. Not being able to pick up a pair of pyjamas, slippers, dressing gown and rain coat alongside the wellies and chuck them down on the counter before ticking off autumnal supplies from my mental checklist, is not a form of oppression. Having to save up is not a sacrifice. I can buy all of these things dramatically cheaper from Vinted, or Sainsburys, or anywhere that isn’t Trotters, and anyway Trotters is often a bit naff and gives Prince George cosplay vibes. But still.

My ninties/early noughties childhood was boom time brilliant, full of holidays and days out and presents. My clothes were always new and usually from Mini Boden, everything was clean and warm and safe. I had so much - an amount that I’m a bit embarrassed about in adulthood - and I am abundantly aware of how lucky I was. But the single downside of having been so privileged is knowing that I might end up giving my daughter less than was given to me. I am, by dint of my career choice and the economy and my divorce, a lot poorer than my parents were.

I want to buy my child the same things I had. Really, really nice things. I want to live in a house with a bath so that I can do bath time with her before putting said pyjamas on, rather than having a perilously slippery shower together.

Growing up I always assumed that wealth and achievement worked on an upward trajectory, that children always grew up to have as much, if not more, than their parents. The idea that I could be dramatically poorer than them just never occurred. And I’m not pessimistic about the future, I’ve still got a lot of good years to make more money and find more success, but that won’t change the fact that during the early years of her life, my daughter lived in a slightly damp house on an electric meter and wore clothes donated by family and friends.

In the noughties they’d occasionally make a BBC3 documentary about women who spoil their kids madly, dressing them in head-to-toe Gucci and throwing them ten grand first birthday parties, and I used to watch and judge like everyone else, but now honestly I get it. There is a very natural urge to want to give your child more than you had. I think it’s probably something biological, about trying to keep them safe, and the wires have got crossed and instead of feeling like we need a nicer cave to keep the baby in we feel like bad mums because we buy most of our clothes from the Fara Charity shop.

In the end we got to the park post Trotters, found a parking space immediately because it was raining (this was the highlight of Mark’s weekend) and put the wellies on the toddler. She jumped around delighted within minutes we’d found a puddle about half a meter deep and the wellies are flooded and she didn’t care at all. I walk around the zoo worrying about her wet tights and wet skirt until eventually I change her into the emergency clothes from the nappy bag. She looks feral and then I worry about that. She obviously doesn’t worry about any of it. She didn’t care about having wet feet, or wet tights, or wearing a mad Nappy Bag outfit, or not having £44 pyjamas from Trotters.

She did care that I wouldn’t let her have a second squeezy yogurt, that I made her take her Elsa outfit off for nap time and (I hope) that we all piled onto the sofa and watched Frog Princess together before we made our own pizzas and had five stories before she got into her freshly made bed.

(I’m not sure I am quite sold on my own very neat conclusion there - but I’m working on it).