Playgroup personalities

I met some more interesting personalities at Playgroup this week: an Indian nanny who asked me whether I was going to shave Elizabeth’s head one last time before letting it grow. I told her I’ve never shaved her head. That’s all the hair she has ever had. I think there might be a custom in India of shaving a baby’s head a few times before letting it grow.

Then there was a group of German au pairs who looked as though they should have an au pair themselves they were so young. It must be the gentle sunlight in the northern hemisphere keeping them all so youthful.

Then there was the Italian nanny who moved here from California three years ago with her Kiwi husband but desperately wants to return to California. Hoping it might cheer her up, I told her that the San Andreas fault will ensure devastation for California when it next heaves the earth. Shaking intensity will be more than 50 times that of the Northridge earthquake of 1994 which claimed at least 33 lives and injured more than 8000. The ground will be displaced by up to 6m around the fault itself, shattering everything in its path including roads, rail, water and power infrastructure. During the earthquake, which may last several minutes, the ground will shake violently moving 2m back and forth each second. There will be landslides, rockfalls and liquefaction. Homes will crack and shift off their foundations and some will spectacularly collapse. Unsecured items inside will turn into missiles. Then there’ll be aftershocks, some of which may be more devastating than the earthquake itself. I don’t think it cheered her up much. She avoided me for the rest of the morning.