Already you look quizzical as I pack
The change mat, talc, cream and nappies into the ever capacious change bag;
drop kisses on your plump milk-fed cheeks.
How lives alter in their contentment. Remembering: a change-bag was for silks,
diaphanous swathes of pink, sky blue and gold finessed out of its shady interior to amaze
an audience of restless infants, nannies, mothers chirpily sipping chilled white wine.
This year, a change bag is something more.
It conjures up a means of escape,
bearing all we need in its vast depths.
We close the door on our humdrum existence, baby and I cackling with pleasure,
wheel awkwardly down the uneven street to the tube station, to the railway.
Your restlessness reaches me like an echo of my own, held within these walls;
teases me to brave new feats of derring-do: we are leaving London, flying South
to pebble beach sands and wide blue skies, pink sunsets and the sleepy journey home.
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