Sunday 14 March 2010

Breast On Show.

Here's the dilemma: do you pretend that nothing is happening or do you tell them that this is all just a bit weird. I mean, it's not like they're doing anything wrong. Well, certainly not illegal anyway. It's just that I don't know them, I've never once spoken to them, we haven't been introduced and I just don't want the first thing that I say to anyone to be "Please stop breastfeeding, I'm trying to eat my lunch".

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be invited to the wedding of my good friends Tara and Carl. Two people more suited to one another you could not imagine. Genuinely. They're almost too good to be true. They're both very creative and very beautiful and, if they had any decency in them at all, when they have sex they should let us all watch. We might learn something. Look, the point is that it was a really lovely ceremony. Father Dara O'Briain did an absolutely incredible job of being both funny and touching. He said some very sweet things indeed. Carl got teary eyed during his vows but, of course, Tara HAD to upstage him by singing to him during hers. It's fantastic being in a room full of comedians watching something that is just lovely with not one comic deciding that it needed a joke to be shouted out. I mean, obviously I thought of loads but I think we are all just enjoying how nice it all was and realised anything added was just taking too much away. Hooray for shutting the fuck up.

Then after the ceremony we all sat down to a beautiful meal while we all pretended that the woman directly opposite me wasn't breastfeeding her baby.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-baby. I like babies and me and this baby were definitely getting on. I had yet to speak to either of his parents but I had briefly said hello to him and he seemed to like my many stupid faces. And waving. He loved it when I waved. The food arrived and I started eating. The starter was goats cheese and beetroot tartlet and it was delicious. I was really enjoying it. Then I saw it. Her tit.

Her tit was feeding a baby while I was eating goats cheese and beetroot tartlet. I haven't said hello to her yet but I have seen her tit. In a baby's mouth. The table conversation was just so strange at that time. We talked about Irish actors who cling on to their one Father Ted appearance, restaurants in Germany, Bad Play, not being physically able to stay awake to watch the Oscars, Matt Smith and travelling to the wedding. In fact, the only subject that we seemed to miss was "that woman is breastfeeding at our dinner table".

I know what you're thinking. "Breastfeeding is a natural thing". I agree. So is having a shit but I feel that soiling myself before I've even been introduced to someone might put that person off me a tad so I go to the toilet and do that in there instead. And I know what you're thinking now. "Oh, I see, Michael. If we want to breastfeed we should just go into a tiny stinking dark room and do it then, hmmm?" Calm down. The answer is simple: yes.

It doesn't even need to be a dark room. I'm not a monster. Ladies, have as many candles as you want. Even scented ones. That takes care of the dark and the stinking. I don't even insist on a tiny room. It can be huge. I don't care. I just think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, if you CAN be discreet about breastfeeding a child then maybe you should take that opportunity. I realise that we're all mature, middle-class, modern people but not everyone is totally cool with seeing a child getting twatted in the face by your udder.

Of course, that's not a problem. It really isn't. What I thought was way weirder than knowing more about that woman's breast than I do about her is the fact that NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. No one at all. Are we that hopelessly mature that we can't even point and giggle when we see boobies now? Shame on all of us.

Babies n' tits were all soon totally forgotten about because it was time for me to utterly embarrass myself by getting very, very drunk and acting like a big arsehole. I danced and sang the night away like I was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers all car-crashed into one. I apologise to anyone who was anywhere near me. But I'm not that sorry because I loved it. It was a great fun night and I'm very, very happy that my two friends are very, very happy. It's all lovely really, isn't it?

www.twitter.com/michaellegge
www.preciouslittlepodcast.co.uk

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh dear. I do hope no-one takes you seriously on this. That so-is-taking-a-shit argument doesn't work at all, especially when you're at a tableful of adult humans all feeding, just like the baby was. If you are serious, please grow up a bit or at least move to Scotland where there's now a law preventing people from preventing women from breastfeeding wherever the hell they like.