March 13: Knitting

I have an old friend from school. For the past few years, we have led parallel lives, but mine slightly in echo. We lived in Bristol, she moved to London. I followed a year later. She moved back, disilusioned with the 'wanky TV industry' that meant her driving 15 hours a day to deliver a video to some ungrateful tosser or other.
I followed her back a year later. Now we are both here and it is good. She has lots of friends, has a social network, invites me places, is kind.
I've known for a while that she goes knitting. Despite being friends, we are, in many ways, chalk and cheese. I go mountain biking. She goes knitting.
Knitting, I think - as she probably does to getting muddy on a bike. Who wants to knit? How dull is knitting? I have no desire to knit. Hear the word 'Knit' - and I think 'old people, and terrible Aran jumpers, and Easter chicks'. Knitting? Never.
This was before I became pregnant.
In the last week, I have looked around at my world, and my few-friends, and my non-existent social life, and thought: 'Fuck, if it's bad now, how bad is it going to be when Bump arrives?'
I rack my brains over things I can do with a tiny baby. I cannot go mountain biking, I know this much. Not unless I want to be jailed for causing infantile brain damage. Nor can I do any sport of an evening. Nor can I go to a pub.
'Ah,' I think, my forward creasing slightly in concern. 'But perhaps, just maybe, just perhaps I can go knitting.' I ring her up.

Knitting, it transpires, is not easy. There is something called casting on, like a fisherman should do, only it's not so much lobbing a rod into still water and hoping for a bite, but an active threading of needles and wool and trying not to pull too tight or let the little monkeys slip off the end.

It seems my needles do not like doing what my brain tells them to do. It seems my brain also has great trouble in following instructions. By the end of two hours, I have knitted two rows (and my friend did one) and this really was trying very hard. It takes a lot more effort than mountain biking.

The plan was to get into knitting, get to know this gaggle of girls and make some friends, to create something in my diary which I can take Bump to. The venue changes every week, flipping between the group's respective houses. Bump can sleep, I figure, in some upstairs bedroom while I knit.

Good plan, you might think.
Not so.
The lady who hosted this week has snakes. Not just one. But three. Big ones.
I sit on the sofa, my eye just glancing at the 'fish tank' the other side of the room.
I think, 'Ohh, that's a funny goldfish swimming out from behind that rock.'
Then: 'In fact, that's a very very long goldfish. It keeps coming.'
Then: 'Good God, it's a snake.'
There are two in the lounge tank, three-foot corn snakes of a Tipex white colour.
If that is not enough, I am told that there is also a four-foot python upstairs in the spare bedroom.
I think: 'There is no way on earth I am leaving Bump upstairs asleep while I knit among friends knowing that there is a wild hungry one-limbed monster in the house.'
Imagine the python escapes. I'm sure it would be extremely delighted to find a tiny brown baby asleep in a moses basket on top of a firm bed. What a perfect size for a one-gulp dinner.'
Perhaps mountain biking is a safer bet after all.