Pram-Cam

I am setting up a camera on the top of Chickie's pram to highlight the plight of all parents. We are an under-represented demographic who need more consideration by shop planners and more patience from other shoppers.

I used to love shopping but, sadly, those days are gone. Why? - because I push a pram. I'm officially a social leper. When you push a pram you are, very simply, a nuisance to everyone. Wherever you stand, you’re in the way. Wherever you move to get out the way, you’re in the way. If you stop to look at something, a queue of tutting, disapproving non-prampushers instantly forms behind you and expects you to move at once which means leaving whatever you wanted to look at behind, doing a complete lap of the shop to get out the way and then back to what you were originally looking at by which point another queue is forming behind you.

All the kids stuff is upstairs so you’re always waiting for lifts which are located furthest away from wherever you are. The button to call the lift chemically reacts to the pushchair wheels and administers a 250v electric shock when pressed. You then have to wait for people, who have no obvious reason for needing to use the lift other than pure laziness, to travel up to the top floor and back, before you, someone who actually needs the lift, can get in.

You can’t hold a basket and push a pram at the same time so items are balanced precariously on the hood above your child’s head. The easy answer would be to put purchases in your pram basket but you can't do this as bored security guards follow you around sensing an opportunity to apprehend could be imminent. When you then have to physically lift a two stone baby plus a one stone pram out of the way of the people who can’t wait two minutes to get past you, everything falls off.

Then, some shops (like Woolworths!) add a Shrek style chicane queuing system just for fun. I can picture the shop planners sat round their meeting table. “Let’s see those mummies negotiate this one! Bear in mind, they have bags hanging from the pram handles which make their prams approx. 3ft wide, they’ll have to singlehandly weave their three stone prams round bend after bend without dropping their purchases. They'll eventually reach the line of tills and their number will be called. We’ll make it Till No 1, then they’ll have a 3ft wide aisle filled with 2ft wide shoppers paying at Tills 2 through 6 to get past plus we'll throw in a pillar at Till 3 just for fun, that will narrow the aisle by a further 1ft. They must do this without hitting the other shoppers with their bags, allowing their baby to be hit in the face by their bags, running over anyone's feet and ensuring the other shoppers don’t unexpectedly step backwards and sit on their child. Then, just to make it interesting, we’ll raise the shop temperature to tropical climes and watch them sweat!”

I’ve learnt that shopping during torrential rainstorms, hurricane force winds and at dawn make it a more bearable experience.

To those of you who shop freely skipping from store to store with all your bags of goodies that you took ages fondling and deliberating over, please bear a thought for those of us who can't. We don’t want much, just have a little patience, leave the lift or the big changing room if you don’t need it, look before you step backwards and give us just a few minutes to browse before barging us out of the way. Give us back the gift of shopping x