April 16: life.still

I have a friend - RH - a very skilled and lovely documentary photographer (she also bakes great cakes and gets drunk far too quickly, which is always a good thing, I think. I cannot quite remember what it is like to be intoxicated but I know that I used to like it and was also very good at it.. easily on a par). RH is currently putting together an exhibition called life.still, which will be shown at Howies, on Clifton Triangle, starting May 21 (that's a shameful, shameful plug and I'm very sorry... I won't do any more).
Today, I met her in the park with a new-mum friend of hers who she offered to set me up with so we can be bum-chums when Bumpette arrives. New Mum friend seems to be my cup of tea. She laughs, doesn't seem at all neurotic about her tiny little baby and even cracked a few jokes about bodily functions. She told me how she - when pregnant and worried she would have to be induced as she was past her due day - began rubbing her nipples constantly as this apparently produces the hormone needed to kick-start the rumblings. It worked, apparently. I don't share my nipple story with her. Too soon for that. Don't want to scare her off.
Turns out though that RH actually takes portrait photographs of pregnant women. She's done about 20 of her friends, including New Mum a few months ago. I asked: 'What do you do? Pretend you're Demi Moore?' 'No,' New Mum said. 'Dawn French would be more accurate. A pregnant Dawn French doing the splits.' (I think she was joking about the last bit. I hope so anyway.) The muses, apparently, just take their kit off, usually in the last two weeks of pregnancy, and let RH do with them as she wishes (I hope they have the heating on). I say, 'I've got a big ugly bright-red brute of a scar all the way down my belly, that won't be nice in any photo'. New Mum says: 'Who cares? I was full of stretch marks.' And actually, maybe she's got a point. Big scar might detract from the cellulite, after all. And the cold nipples. Every cloud...