Ben Machell on how his children’s maladies are remapping his London

“You spend years trying to convince everyone you’re not one of those gentrifying middle-class bastards”

5 July 2018

Last week, my almost-two-year-old daughter, Willow, got a pomegranate seed stuck up her nose.

I know, I know. You spend years trying to convince everyone — not least yourself — that you’re not one of those gentrifying middle-class bastards. But then the next thing you know you’re in the Royal London in Whitechapel having to explain to an A&E doctor that you’re terribly sorry but little Willow has a pomegranate seed wedged deep in her sinuses.

My girlfriend and I both felt a deep sense of shame at the prissy bourgeois diet we inflict on our kids. Say what you like about turkey Twizzlers, but they don’t fit up toddlers’ noses.

As we all trudged home, I knew that I would never again be able to pass through Whitechapel without instinctively thinking of pomegranate seeds. There’s something about mild childhood medical emergencies that sears their locations into your mind. I can pretty much map London by these incidents. The Science Museum? Most people associate it with, well… science. But to me, it will forever be the place where my son’s first major ear infection really kicked in. I knew it was serious when Thomas fell asleep on my shoulders, despite being surrounded by actual spaceships.

Likewise, the Golden Hind. Most people hear those words and immediately think of Sir Francis Drake’s heroic circumnavigation of the world. Me? I just think of my son desperately struggling with constipation. If I had the heart, I’d make a poop deck joke. But you should’ve seen his poor face. Every time I walk past, I hear my GP’s grave voice intoning the haunting words, ‘compacted stooooooool’, and I quicken my step.

A few days after her birth, Willow spent 10 days in Homerton Hospital with viral meningitis, which means that whole area will forever be intimately associated with an odd feeling of weightless wandering as Thomas and I explored every playground within a mile radius. And I can tell you the exact — the exact — location of the nettles Willow toddled into a year later. They’re in Victoria Park, near the pagoda. I could go on. Grazed knees. Possible concussions. All commemorated by little blue plaques in my mind. When they’re older, I’ll take my kids to visit them all on a walking tour. Although at this rate, it could be a long one.

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Ben Machell

Ben Machell on how his children’s maladies are remapping his London

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