I had the trip into town from hell today. It was the first time I’d ventured out into town with the two of them, though thinking about it retrospectively, a Saturday probably wasn’t the best time for our maiden voyage even though Akra was around as a result.

First of all, we popped into the library to get some new books for Akra Jr and sign up Li’l Bhaji for a library card (well, you can never start them too young, can you?!) This was when Akra Jr decided to throw a full blown wobby. Have you noticed how kids manage to do that in the quietest place possible in order to attract the most stares? Mummy and Daddy severely Not Impressed[tm].

We are obviously gluttons for punishment, as we decided to follow that up with a full-blown tour around the shops – we needed to buy a present for a friend, use some vouchers that we’d received as a present and Akra needed new slippers. Shouldn’t be too long. Oh, but it felt like eternity.

You see, the biggest problem is that Worcester is not geared up for prams or pushchairs. Having more than two parent and child parking spaces in the multistorey might have been useful for a start. With one child, you can just about wing it in a narrow space by getting really close to the car one side of you, leaving a bigger gap on the child’s side. Extracating two children from their carseats in a normal space though is rather more interesting and time-consuming. Public transport not an option as even on the disabled access buses, they won’t let you leave the pushchair up, unlike London Transport which positively encourage you to make full use of these areas.

Then we battled our way around town. You can understand the smaller shops being a bit narrow and pushchair unfriendly, but in general you expect the larger chains to be more amenable to parental shopping. Debenhams seems particularly terrible for this – you could hardly get past the racks of clothing, let alone let someone through walking the other way. Their coffee shop (which is supposed to win awards for child friendliness) was so narrow and packed there was feasibly only one table you could park a pushchair nearby, and guess what, that was taken. We then got stuck on the lower ground floor because there was only one lift and every time it arrived it was packed due to people getting on at ground, but wanting to go up. Five missed lifts later we finally got out of the building.

And people move out of London to get a better quality of life for their children… *shakes head in disbelief*

Long live internet shopping.