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Thursday 4 December 2008

New York comes to London

New York comes to London in a nursery queue

Manhattan's strangest practices are arriving here

I recently had lunch with two university friends who had just become fathers. Over sushi and sake, they started comparing parenting stories â” the sleepless nights, the projectile vomit, the curtailing of social lives and pre-schooling. Mark’s wife had decided to go back to work, so they were looking for a day-care option. Being conscientious parents they did their homework and found the local option that seemed best. At the headmistress Meet and Greet they were told that places were very limited and in high demand, so registration would start at eight. Great, said Mark, it meant an early morning, but he would get there at 7 a.m. to make sure that their daughter got a place. ‘I think that you misunderstood me’, said the head slowly, ‘parents usually arrive at 8 p.m. the night before in order to get a place at our nursery.’Â

All the way home Mark fumed. I’m not camping out all night so that our one-year-old can go to a bloody nursery, even if the children of a British rock star and his American actress wife are pupils. It’s ridiculous! But just after midnight on the eve of registration, Mark awoke, racked with guilt that his own selfish behaviour was denying his only child the best start in life. He walked down in darkness to the local nursery ashamed. Outside the door was another father, shivering with cold. Congratulating themselves on being first in line, and thereby ensuring that their children would one day end up as Nobel Prize-winners, the two fathers bonded and settled in for the night.

At 2.30 a.m. my friend got bored, asked his new father-buddy to keep his place in the queue and went to explore. On tip-toes Mark peered over the walls of the nursery. What he saw took him by surprise, ‘It was like Glastonbury, the whole courtyard was covered in tents!’ After shouting, ‘You’re all mentalists’ (or words to that effect), he ran back to the front of the school, told them they were not in fact first in the queue and anxiously pulled his coat tight around him and waited for dawn.

At about 6.30 a.m. there were rustlings from this urban-Glastonbury. Rubbing their eyes and checking their BlackBerrys, fathers were emerging from the tents. Within minutes the courtyard was buzzing with the sounds of bankers on conference calls to Tokyo. It sounded utterly surreal. The Alpha-fathers secured almost all the places, Mark and his new best friend got the last two. The other 50 were turned away. It sounds like a Manhattan pushy parent story. But this wasn’t the Upper East Side. It wasn’t the West Village. This was London, but not a posh part like Notting Hill or Primrose Hill. This was Kensal Green!

When I left London for New York in 1999 things like all-night parental camping sessions for nursery places, baby-showers and £800 Bugaboo prams just did not feature. Our capital city has changed enormously. It’s not just the way that Londoners obsess about their children, it’s apparent in the way that Londoners eat (sushi), drink (cocktails), dress (well) and socialise (expensively). It can even be seen in the way that they treat their pets, another typical NYC obsession.

More articles from: Amelia Torode | this section

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