I've recounted previously how I tend to stand in a particular place on the train if it's too full to get a seat. I've been commuting into London five days a week for about ten years now. I've been on the trains that are so early in the mornings that there's barely two people per carriage and they're both asleep. I've been on the 'Vomit Comets' late at night, when loud, loutish and mind-bendingly drunk people eat McShite burgers by the thousand and discard the wrappers on the seats, windows and emergency 'Help, get me out of here - I'm stuck in a train carriage with a bunch of fistmagnets' alarms, and where there's a one-in-ten chance that the only other person on the train being quiet and not causing a nuisance is only that way because he's choked to death on his own puke.
In all that time, I've never seen anyone change a baby's nappy. Until now; after yesterday, I've seen it done twice in about a month. Now you could argue that it's done all the time and I've just never noticed before now.
Perhaps I'm strange, but I'm not really down with the whole 'changing nappies in public' thing. Or rather, the whole 'changing nappies in an enclosed space' thing. The first time I witnessed a nappy being changed, it was a Special Ops mission - in and out before anyone even realises you're there. I was frankly in awe of the skill the mother in question displayed. It took under 45 seconds from start to end. The last time I saw it, yesterday, I was first alerted to what was going on when a miasma of particulate air-borne infant shit crept into my nostrils and napalmed the nerve endings. I'd seen there was a woman with a pushchair next to me, but I hadn't been paying her much attention because I was listening to music and reading a book. I was now. My eyes bleeding and my throat as raw as a mustard gas victim's, I stood, mouth gawping like a goldfish's, eyes wet and red and widened to stare ineffectually as the mother changed the Nappy of Doom(TM) with the tortuous lack of celerity usually associated with arthritic tortoises.
Our train are typically in multiples of four carriage units - an engine, and three passenger carriages one of which (I neither know nor care which - I am not a train spotter) has a toilet in it and then repeat the whole sequence two or three times. In these toilets there's a pull-down nappy changing table. Now, I don't know, but I would have thought it might have been better to carry out the removal of the toxic waste in there.
It's possible that I'm just being naive here. I don't have to look after a baby 24/7 and until I do, I'm likely to persist in having some naive views, I have no doubt. One of my friends has admitted that she was out with her first child and it had got food all over its face. My friend reached into her baby bag and... no wipes. Pants. So, what did she do? She looked about raised the baby into the air and... licked it clean. Much to the surprise of the two women who arrived in time to see this rather unorthodox face cleaning take place.
Now, don't worry; I'm not about suggest licking of poopy children. Euuuuuuww! Mingy! No, I just meant to make the point that being a parent tends to increase one's embarrassment threshold. When your child needs something, servicing that need is more important than retaining your dignity. However, if it were me, I would like to believe that I would take the kid to the toilet where there are designated facilities rather than expose the innocent to such foulness.
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