Be Still My Beating Heart

Monday

Woke up to find that we're living in a police state, a sort of Latin American banana republic (just watch the politicians slipping on banana [expenses] skins....) but with shit weather and less competent leadership. It would seem the police have been keeping secret databases on 'domestic extremists', i.e. individuals who are prone to protesting but who haven't actually done anything illegal... they might, however, have a predisposition to antagonise the state in the future, and so the police felt obliged to document these reprobates (in secret, to protect their privacy, naturally) as a potential threat to the smooth running of the country by big wigs who don't want to worry themselves with minor details such as electorate interference in things they don't fully understand. But the innocent have nothing to fear from finding their name and mugshot on a database leaked to the press by police officers who will be disciplined once they've been identified (and no doubt added to the database of domestic extremists).

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but don't we have a policy of innocent until proven guilty under our legal system? And the last time I looked we had the right to protest and express our opinions. Isn't that why that man from the BNP got to appear on Question Time with his sweaty disposition and abhorrent political viewpoint? And also why Abu Hamza got to rant his abhorrent political viewpoint into a sweaty disposition?

For fear of sounding like a 'domestic extremist', can I suggest the public wake up from their recession-induced comas and start to look at the fact that Lech Walesa's name and photo was probably also on a list before he became the face of a democratic Poland... and perhaps the names that should be on a database of those threatening our society and future existence might just be found amongst the board members of blue chip companies and those bankers hastily transfering their six-figure bonuses off-shore, ooh, right about now.

Political dismay over with, Mr Singh and I jumped on the 73 bus to UCH for our first scan of the Singhlette. This was undoubtedly the most exciting day since we found out we were expecting. Possibly more exciting as we've now got our respective heads around the idea that our lives will change forever and we will cease to be able to consider ourselves with it, cool or in control of our destiny (or, in my case, my density). After the relatively short waiting time of 45 minutes, we were ushered into a darkened room and warm jelly was rubbed onto my expanding midriff. Ever the film director, Mr Singh asked the sonographer to hang on whilst he got the camera phone into video mode to record his future offspring in motion (he was dismissed with the curtness of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa [Polish secret service] when asked whether Lech could organise a small get together at the Gdansk shipyard).

And then the most amazing thing happened - we saw this fully formed little baby appear on the screen, rolling around waving its arms and opening its little mouth. For the very first time, our little Singhlette became a real person, separate to us but connected. We saw its brain and heard its heart beating at 155 bpm. It kept wriggling out of the picture and so it took some time to get the money shots, but there it was for us both to see. Have to say, it didn't look hugely impressed at having a giant roller thing pressing into its head taking snapshots, but frankly, life will be more challenging once it's out and it looked happy enough tucked up in the human duvet that is its mother's uterus. The romance of the moment was deflated somewhat by the fact the computer wasn't working properly and they couldn't save the images so had to do it again and asked us to come back in an hour to get the definite results that we were low risk deformity and to confirm that there really were two hands, two feet and an umbilical cord in the picture.

We took our three slightly grainy images of 7.17cm of unborn child off for lunch, a double celebration given it was also our first wedding anniversary, exactly a year since we sat at the top of a castle in Rajasthan and promised everlasting fidelity to the lilting prayers of a Nihang priest surrounded by friends and family giddy on the romance of it all. We raised a glass of champagne (very decadent considering Mr Singh's abstaining due to extended exposure to Holsten Pils and I'm up the duff) and forgot for an hour or so the impending doom of defaulting on a mortgage the size of a third world national debt and a visa bill Paris Hilton would be ashamed of. Instead, we remembered how much we loved each other and how exciting it was to have a small creature on its way that would be a bit of both of us....and a lot of itself.