You'll Never Walk Alone

Where is the most inappropriate place you can take a baby?  I am certainly testing the boundaries.

The trouble is I don't have anyone close by we can leave her with, so wherever I go, my daughter comes too. She is joined to my hip. Well, actually my bosom most of the time.

There was the pub of course. 

After our old favourite barred us for daring to bring a child into the world, we have found other drinking establishments that will allow us in.

And so I have been know to sit flagrantly breastfeeding and drinking a small glass of wine - or iron-rich stout - at the same time, while other patrons cast disapproving glances. At least it feels like they do.

Then there was the dental check-up with her strapped to my chest, asleep, in the baby carrier. That certainly felt awkward.

But we were just getting started on our journey of unsuitable destinations, it seems.

It probably wasn't wise to take her to my eye test.

The sweet optician did her best to keep her distracted with coos and bright coloured objects, but I had to divide my attention between squinting at the bottom line of letters and trying to shush her as she wailed in the pram next to me.

Perhaps my eyesight would not have been deemed to have deteriorated quite so much if I had been able to give it my full concentration.

At a recent visit to the GP, it felt rather ill-fitting to break off from a discussion about contraception to return my baby's smile and waggle a squeaky toy in her face.

Since she hasn't actually moved into her own bedroom yet, she's doing her own job of family planning precaution anyway.

I think perhaps the most inadvisable - and in fact illegal - location to have taken my daughter was the bookies.

We didn't actually go in, although it was her father who reminded me that we would have to loiter in the doorway while he went and placed my bet on the Grand National for me.

But as I stood wheeling her pram back and forth and asking if she thought Morning Assembly was going to be the best horsey in the race, the manager appeared.

"Excuse me madam? Could I ask you to move along the street a little? We have to be very strict these days and I can just imagine the story on Panorama next week if someone got a picture of you in front of the shop!"

So I wandered off obligingly, leaving the reputation of the bookmakers in tact, while mine lay in tatters in the gutter right outside.

Odds are I'll still find somewhere even more unbecoming to take her.