Size matters, and sometimes you just have to ship the big stuff in

Continuing on from my popular 'everything is bigger in America' thread from previous years, I have a new 'everything is smaller in Britain' discovery to share.

TLOML regularly asks his mother to send drugstore items to us here. She very kindly shops for him, packs it up and ships it over - which is more than a little inconvenient, I imagine. She's a good mum, of course, and doesn't complain.

But I do. 'You know, you can buy all the same stuff here. You don't need to ask your poor mother to go to all this trouble,' I say.

Then the shipment arrives, and we do the side-by-side comparison, and I eat my words.

One of these body lotion bottles is from a UK retailer, and cost about a fiver, so we thought it was a fairly standard size. The other was sent from the US and cost also about a fiver, and is probably considered a standard size there. Can you guess which is which?

As for the painkillers, no prizes for spotting the tiny Boots packet, which cost less than £1. The giant bottle of US painkillers cost ten times as much but will last thirty times as long.

Sometimes, bigger really is better. That's clearly not the case with fruit, or cars. But where drugstore essentials are concerned, our American cousins are really onto something. And thankfully for us, TLOML's mum is kind enough to keep shipping on request.

We really do have the best of both worlds: sensibly sized apples and access to enormous bottles of body lotion.

On babies and punctuality

I stopped work at 38 weeks, which is just two weeks before the baby is due. I figured if she comes on time, two weeks will be plenty of time to relax and prepare. Especially if I spent my last month at work mainly resting while working from home. Which I did.

Plus, people always tell you that first babies are always late.

And yet... some instinct inside me insisted she might come early. Hence our state of extreme overpreparedness: the bag has been packed for weeks, I avoid going South of the river for fear of being stranded in labour, and we are careful to ensure it's never been more than a week since our last date. Oh, and that we are never low on milk or bread.

In fact although first babies are more likely to be late than second babies, they are still predisposed to arriving a smidge ahead of their due date (week 40). Find the stats here, in this fascinating blog. To save you the detailed read, here's a chart I pilfered from it.

Courtesy of Probably Overthinking It by Allen Downey

The chances of a baby - firstborn or otherwise - arriving in week 39 is higher than in any other week.

TLOML's attitude is that since she has a date scheduled, she should just arrive on that date. He's a stickler for punctuality.

Personally, I think it would show a certain proactiveness if she arrived, say, a day early. But please, no sooner. I'm due a few more days of Special Time yet.

One thing neither of us will countenance is a late baby. There's only so long we can maintain this state of high alert and constant readiness.

Our final last ever date night

A little over a week ago, TLOML and I went for a 'Last Ever Pre Baby Date Night' dinner. I was just 38 weeks pregnant, but we wanted to be prepared and have had a good date night in the bank in case the baby came early. We are, I think, the world's most overprepared parents-to-be.

We went to La Patagonia, an Argentine restaurant in Camden, which TLOML declared mucho authentico. He should know, given the amount of time he spends in Argentina 'on business' (eating steak). They have a proper parrilla grill to cook on, which the waiter proudly told us has already started several fires. TLOML had entrana, and I had grilled vegetables with sides of morcilla and chorizo.

All week long we talked about how delicious that dinner was.

6 days passed and still no baby. Delicious though La Patagonia was, we weren't sure how much longer we could savour the memory of that date night. So we went for another 'Last Ever Pre Baby Date Night' dinner. This time we went to Chicken Shop, a ten minute walk from Fox Corner. It's a hip rotisserie chicken place from the people behind The Electric and the gaggle of hip members' clubs and restaurants they have spawned.  It was quite the buzz when it opened in Kentish Town last summer, and we've been waiting for it no longer to be the hot new spot so we can try it. (We don't like to be ahead of the curve, with all the teething problems that entails).

The menu at Chicken Shop is beautifully simple. We ordered everything on it.

Well, excluding puddings, of course. That would be greedy. A whole chicken and four sides, by contrast, is just the sensible thing to do. The food was excellent, as it should be when the menu is that small. It is up there with Porchetta for making a virtue of only selling one thing, and doing it so well that that one thing is all you want to eat.

Best of all, we sat next to the Norfolk chicken farmer who supplies their chicken. We clocked him and his friend as soon as they walked in because they didn't look like the other clientele. In as much as they were 20 years older and, well, looked a little agricultural. He proudly told us that he supplied the chicken, and that Chris Martin (the singer, they helpfully clarified, not the football player) had eaten his chicken in this very restaurant. They were very proud, and rightly so.

So, now we have another great date night to reminisce about once the baby comes. She's due in about a week. If she's late, this could be a rather expensive month.

Transatlantic Television

This weekend Americans will consume 1.2 billion chicken wings.

No, that's not what they normally consume as a nation. It's at least 3 times the number of wings eaten on a normal weekend.

It's the Super Bowl: second biggest day of food consumption in the US after Thanksgiving. On Super Bowl Sunday Americans all over the land get together in large groups, to eat wings and dogs and chips, and watch the two league-winning football teams play for the title of Super Bowl champions. It's kind of a big deal. To the point where streets are quiet, because everyone is indoors watching. Even people who don't really care about football. (I know, because I was one).

Indeed, 'tis the season of outstanding televised events, of the sort that America does so very well.  I'm talking about the Super Bowl, the Oscars and the Globes, and I'd even throw in the Inauguration Ceremony too. All of these events are staged on a grand scale, fully star studded.

The Super Bowl on telly

By contrast, we have... what? The FA Cup Final? Easily 50% of the people I know don't watch that, or even really notice it's happening. And they don't have Beyonce singing at half time. The Baftas, similarly, is rather small scale and somewhat lower on glamour than the Oscars.

The best British TV event I can think of was the Royal Wedding. But we may have to wait another 30 years for such pageantry. And the Jubilee was just an afternoon of sheer misery, watching jaded TV presenters interviewing sodden jingoistic lunatics going on about how brilliant the Queen is. Lame.

The Diamond Jubilee on telly (image from BBC)

But that's all right. We do brilliantly at many other things. Like insightful radio shows, quality TV news, and good documentaries. And thanks to the joys of cable TV and the internet (and a rather useful proxy service that allows us to pretend we're in the US when we need to), we can have the best of both worlds. I pepper my diet of The Archers and BBC News 24 with E! red carpet coverage. And TLOML can enjoy the Super Bowl.

The only downside is that our wings won't be the real thing, and we won't be surrounded by cheering Americans. But since I got used to listening to Radio 4 on a sunny deck in Malibu, I'm sure TLOML can cope with watching the Superbowl in rainy old London.

Tea time

Last weekend I went for a lovely afternoon tea with some girlfriends. It was a mini baby shower, replete with a sweepstake on when the baby's due, tiny sandwiches, and cupcakes with nappy pins on the top. (The pins were inedible but at least were made of plastic, so not as dangerous as they sound). It was a real treat. I love a good afternoon tea.

TLOML, by contrast, is baffled by the concept. He has been ever since we first spent a weekend with my parents. On Sundays my mum always does a big roast for lunch, and then later we'll have afternoon tea. The table is laden with scones, crumpets or tea cakes, egg salad sandwiches, cakes and some little sweet things like brandy snaps or millionaire shortcakes. We eat it at about 5, maybe 6pm at the latest.

'What is this?' whispered TLOML to be, as we sat down for tea that very first time.
'Tea', I said, leaving the 'you idiot' unspoken.
'But... it's not just tea, there's all this food. What meal is this?'

The penny dropped. And it's a fair question. After all, this is a meal named after a hot drink, one which you consume as part of the meal. It's your last big meal of the day, and yet it's clearly not dinner. And it consists predominantly of cakes, which we have been raised to know is not a proper meal.

Still, in our family at least, it is a regular part of the repertoire. Not just for special occasions in fancy hotels, but for everyday life when you've had a big lunch.

As it happens TLOML rather likes this kind of tea. But he is still rather confused by it, and refuses to consider it a proper evening meal. The clarion call 'what's for dinner' will still cry out at about 8 or 9pm.

To add bewilderment on top of confusion, any evening meal in the North is 'tea'. That's just what they say instead of 'dinner'. (They eat dinner at lunchtime, but let's leave that for another time). Living as they do in North Yorkshire, my family have 'tea' every night of the week - whether it's cakes at 5pm, or chicken casserole at 7pm. Quite how TLOML will cope when we move up there in the spring is a bit of a worry.