Waiting for swallow

Sometimes it feels as if my life is being scripted by Samuel Beckett. Perhaps I should read one of his plays to find out if I’m right? No, that would be ridiculous.

All I know is that strange existential episodes are punctuating my increasingly weary days with growing frequency. I'm feeding the baby in her high chair. I offer up a spoonful of pasta and peas. She studies it with a furrowed brow and prods it with her index finger. After about three or four minutes I manage to cajole her into picking it up. She holds it aloft and stares at it with forensic wonderment.

The flickering nuances of her eyes tell me she is thinking big thoughts. Thoughts like: 'Does that pasta actually exist?' 'Am I even here to eat it?' And, of course, 'I wonder what's for afters?'

She tentatively brings a buttery piece of fusilli to her gob. Oh Jesus, is this really it? Is she actually going to eat the bastard thing?

No. She drops it at the last minute and the cat (always hovering nearby) gobbles the pasta down without any recourse to such lengthy intellectual preambles, greedy fuck that he is.

I scoop up another spoonful and start the whole frustrating experience all over again. It takes 40 minutes to get three pieces down her throat. Will this be enough to stop her from dying? I can only cross my fingers and hope she fills up on SMA later. Fate will take care of the rest.

Someone should film one of these dinner times. We could slap on a jazz soundtrack and enter it for the Turner Prize. Or at least You've Been Framed. ·