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| Is it a jogging pram? |
Gerard tolerated (Claude) with a careless good humor which annoyed her, and when the opportunity occurred she had, in a roundabout way, tried to discover the reason for this. But he had only laughed and shrugged his great shoulders. 'A little sharp in the tongue, perhaps,' he conceded, 'but we have known each other since our pram days, you know.' --Stars Through the Mist
I don't even use baby carriage, come to that, unless I'm reciting that old primary rhyme: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.
Pram is a really nice word but I live in Portland, Oregon, where, if young hipsters condescend to have children at all, they manage to do it in a named-my-unique-snowflake-of-a-child-Apple-and-bought-a-pram-and-let-them-snack-on-six-dollar-tofu-bites-that-they-will-urp-up-onto-hand-embroidered-nappies sort of way that makes me want to floss my teeth. For the love of Gwyneth Paltrow, I'm a bought-a-minivan-and-own-a-stroller-I-have-backed-over-no-less-than-five-times-and-if-I-have-to-repeat-myself-to-you-so-help-me-I'm-going-to-pull-this-car-over-right-now kind of mom.
In my neck of the woods, pram is too heavy with the weight of nannies, tabloid pictures of Madonna (along with captions of 'How she lost her baby weight') and a charming lack of aerodynamics. So, stroller for me.
Stroller for me, too - the umbrella kind that (at that time) cost about $8. Bright yellow nylon. Used it hard for over 3 years. Can't beat that with a stick.
ReplyDeleteMy sisters both had strollers (umbrella) AND carriages, except we called 'em buggies. My sister Helen's buggy for her baby was Deluxe and really deserved to be called a pram. Kim's was used, scrubbed hard and did the same thing.
Now they have those "systems" where the seat lifts out of the brackets installed in the backseat of the car and can be put onto a base with wheels for use as a carriage/buggy/pram/stroller, or on a high base for ease in feeding baby. Not quite a high chair proper, but kind of. All of my great- and great-great-nieces and -nephews have had these, of those born in the past 10 years or so.
Required equipment, don't you know. Right up there with that wonderful device (I truly do think it's wonderful, btw, despite how snarky this probably sounds) the baby monitor. Thousands of years of babies born and successfully reared without baby monitors and today's baby seems unable to survive without one. At every place they ever take a nap. Every grandma has one, in fact.
me<><
A pram is not the same as a stroller - it's that boat like thing in your illustration and heavily associated with nannies. The Brit term for a stroller is a push chair. (Ubiquitous these days. Prams are really hard to throw into the car)
ReplyDeleteBaby monitors - that's so LAST CENTURY, doncha know. Now you have to have a camera over the crib and closed-circuit TV to watch what baby is doing.
ReplyDelete(For reals -- I've seen it.)
My sister just HAD to have a British pram for her daughters (the elder is over 30 now) and it's completely stupid: the baby's only little enough for the pram for about a year, and then the rest of your life you've got to store the pram somewhere because it doesn't collapse. My sister lives in Brooklyn, in a pre-WWII apartment building, so storage is a sore subject. She had the pram in the communal basement storage area, and the local hooligans would steal the wheels for making go-karts.
I was the last of my mother's children and she bemoaned that she didn't have the baby-seat with handle -- that came out just after I was too old for it.
No kidding, Betty Magdalen! MY BIL has a video feed from the baby's room!
ReplyDeleteAso, Thanks Betty Miranda for the correction. Push chair sounds nice and cozy...
Oh, I understand that pram and stroller aren't the same thing - that was my point about my sisters - they had to have BOTH - and yes, both sets of wheels eventually became go-karts.
ReplyDelete:)
As regards the camera thing - yes, silly me, I should have realized, but my family is still "low class" (read "poor") to be stuck with sound only monitors. ;-)
me<><
Betty Debbie, do you have these in Oregon? Or, Betties Keira and Kylene, I expect they'd be even more likely in Seattle. I used to see them daily in Dublin (where it rains every day, or did in the 90s), and having never seen them before was astounded by what always looked to me like a rolling baby terrarium.
ReplyDeleteI'm the one from Seattle, and YES, they do have those plastic stroller cover thingys...My daughter had one for her jogging stroller - it worked just fine and is a necessity if you want to go for a walk with a baby in Washington during the rainy season (which was about 10 1/2 months this year.
ReplyDeleteWhooops...
ReplyDeleteFor completeness, "pram" is short for "perambulator". Originally alls prams were like the one in the photo, but now pram is a generic term covering stroller, buggy, push chair and kid cart. Norland Nannies (the trained, uniformed nannies that were the ones used by upper crusties for their baby crusties) used to only push proper prams, perhaps on the principle that propriety and prestige made it a prerequisite.
ReplyDeleteOh those Ps! Hat's off!
ReplyDeleteHurrah Henry's Hupmobile.
Deleteused by upper crusties for their baby crusties - that is so cute. Whoever wrote this sure has a way with words.
ReplyDeleteBetty Anonymous