My cousin and his wife have just had their first baby. A girl called Jessica. I mostly see my cousin at major family events. He is a nice chap, but he is half a generation younger than I am, busy with his career (he is an accountant), and lives a longish and tedious drive away. So far as I know he is not especially interested in gardening, let alone beekeeping, does not have any pets, and spends his holidays in exotic foreign places rather than visiting museums around Stoke on Trent. Families are like that. You get the neat and tidy Home Counties branch, and the wild and woolly Bohemian side.
However, I wish him and his wife well on the birth of their daughter, who stands in the same relationship to me as I do to my father's cousin. I wanted to send them a card, but on looking in the box of cards I keep for thank you notes, last minute birthdays and so on, decided that a stock William Morris design would not really hack it for the birth of a baby. The least I could do was go and buy something appropriate for the occasion, that would look as though I'd made an effort.
I went to Tesco. Maybe that was not making enough of an effort, but I needed to go to Tesco to collect some dry cleaning from the in-store Timpson. I feel safe using Timpson, on the grounds that it is a well-established national chain. I have been suspicious of small independent dry cleaners, probably unfairly so, since one round the corner from the office that I entrusted an especially favourite suit to for cleaning and to have the skirt re-lined managed to lose it, and soon after went out of business. I feel that Timpson will be there tomorrow and the day after, and I like their vibe. The founder's wife has fostered dozens of children, notwithstanding the fact that the family business makes her a multi-millionaire, and their Tesco shop-in-shop has adverts for fostering and adoption, and a notice saying that all employees get their birthday as a holiday. I don't know when else the chap who works in the Tesco branch takes off, as he always seems to be there not matter what day of the week I go. He is a chatty bloke, and told me that demand for resoling is up forty per cent year on year, as the rain has made people notice that their shoes are leaking. Plus last year's figures were depressed by the snow.
I digress. There are racks of cards in Tesco for almost every conceivable occasion. Minority religions seem under-represented, or at least I didn't notice any cards saying Happy Bar Mitzvah or Eid greetings, but all other bases seem to be covered. Valentine's Day, obviously, at this time of the year. Birthdays, by age and relationship. Moving house. Moving job. In Deepest Sympathy. Get Well Soon. Thank You. Good Luck with Your Exams. Well done on passing your Driving Test. Christenings. And Births.
Turns out that births are colour coded. Pink for a girl, blue for a boy. Facebook may now have fifty shades of gender, but Tesco has just two. I realised that I could not buy a pink card for Jessica. OK, the possession of XX chromosomes determines that we are going to develop female primary and secondary sex characteristics as we grow up, we are statistically likely to be shorter and lighter and have less upper body strength and a higher pitched voice than the average holder of XY chromosomes. But it doesn't mean we need to be channelled into the role of little pink princesses from birth. Jessica might want to be a pink princess when she grows up, that's up to her, but she might want to be a nuclear physicist, or an accountant. Or Prime Minister, or Director General of the BBC, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Marks and Spencer have just announced gender neutral toy packaging for children, a tiny step in the right direction, but there is still a mountain to climb. Tesco are not helping.
It was very difficult to find a suitable gender neutral card. There weren't many left blank for your own message, for starters, and half of those were views of National Trust gardens, which were perfectly nice but had as little to do with the birth of a baby as the William Morris wallpaper cards I'd already rejected. That left a choice between a kitten on a lime green background dressed in a sweater, and a puppy reclining in a miniature deckchair. Eventually I found a black and white photo of a teddy bear, which was at least child themed and sexless. All I need to do now is remember to post it.
No comments:
Post a Comment