Never do a good turn for anyone. What was I thinking, asking the lady if she’d like a lift up the Tube steps with her pram? I wasn’t even going in the same direction as her, for goodness sake. She was at the bottom of the steps looking up at the gargantuan climb ahead. I had just skipped happily down the steps on my way into town to have a nice, carefree night out.
The mistake I made, as I caught sight of her standing helpless and alone with her buggy, was to allow my instincts to take over before my brain could say, ‘Whoa there, that’s got to be heavy, leave it to a passing man to lift. Look, there are about 37 of them walking towards you right now…’ Too late. My instincts made me leap at her shouting, ‘Oh, no, you’ll never get that up the stairs on your own, you poor thing, let me help you!’
As soon as the words were out of my mouth and I was standing in front of the pram I knew I had made a grievous error. It was one of those monstrous affairs that overprotective parents seem to be fond of putting their offspring in nowadays, apparently in a bid to shield them from oncoming rhinoceroses. The damn thing was practically an armoured truck. It had huge tyres with incredibly elaborate treads, as if mummy was planning on nipping into Helmand province on her way back from M&S. It was big enough to put about five babies in by my reckoning. It had a huge hood covering a vast and luxurious sleeping, and indeed living, area and, worst of all, an enormous luggage rack underneath which was loaded up with coats, jumpers, lunch boxes, bags, children’s games, food shopping, blankets, bottles of water, tins of rations, helmets, that sort of thing.
Whatever was inside the pram was covered in so many protective layers of swaddling and bullet-proof pram flaps it was impossible to tell what I was, in fact, helping to lift. I could just be carrying this woman’s shopping, I thought bitterly. Or a dog. Taking a deep breath, and reciting ‘’Tis a far greater thing I do now, etc.’, I grabbed the reinforced rubber footrest and attempted to lift. The noise ‘hurrrrrrrrrrrrghhhh!’ escaped my mouth before I could do anything about it.
As it did, 37 men walked past and let me get on with it. I noted with chagrin that the young mother had maintained her place at the handlebars, doing the lighter-lifting, backwards-walking bit. This is pram-lifting etiquette, of course. The volunteer always has to do the grunt work. And so she edged nonchalantly back and upwards as I hurrrrrrgghhhhed and aaaaaggghed my way up the first set of 12 steps. As the blood drained from my brain, I started hallucinating about what I would say if the thing in the pram turned out to be an Alsatian.
After 12 steps we had to stop. The sweat was pouring off me now. Another load of useless men sauntered past. ‘You’re going to have to wait a minute,’ I gasped, ‘while I get my breath back.’ I bent over double to speed the blood to my head. I decided it wasn’t a baby, or a dog. It was bricks. As I started heaving up the last 12, I thought, I’m really going to have to ask her if she minds exchanging insurance details. And then I’m going to have to go to one of those no win no fee personal-injury firms with a name like a pair of pants. ‘Have you had an accident while selflessly carrying a pram full of bricks up the Tube stairs? Call BGR Pantaloons now — for all your “slipping over by accident on purpose” needs!’
At the top, I could barely move. I could feel bits of my left shoulder sliding about and sections of my spine popping in and out in a way they had no business doing. I looked at her, shaking my head as if to say, ‘No, no, please, you mustn’t upset yourself, really, don’t fuss, I’ll be OK, I’ll probably walk again quite soon, after extensive physiotherapy…’ But all she said was: ‘Thanks!’ Thanks? I was looking for more of a ‘I really don’t know what I can ever do to make this up to you, but as it happens I’m a top hair colourist so please take my number, and if you ever need your highlights doing for free for the rest of your life…’ No. Just thanks. And then she swanned off down Balham High Road, pushing her Mine Resistant Ambush Pram (MRAP) in the direction of Lashkar Gah. I never saw the baby.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
Comments