‘It’s a sporty number… designed for a fun and functional lifestyle.’ The catalogue of Mamas and Papas reads like an Aston Martin brochure. I was totally sucked in… these travel system/pushchair things are engineering masterpieces… and I never knew? After several days researching online and making detailed notes (did I ever mention I was a geek?), I was ready to go for a test drive.
When the day arrived I was genuinely excited. Off we went, detailed notes in hand. As we walked into the first shop, I can only assume that we just looked out of our depth, because within 10 seconds a smiley saleslady was offering us assistance. What I saw next was quite breathtaking. Transformers met origami…one minute it was a car seat the next a push chair, then and pram, then it folded so small you could fit it in your pocket. As the lady effortlessly created new shapes out of the frame, it resembled some kind of Olympic event.
At one point we took the travel system to my car to see if it fitted in. I was thankful that it did and that the saleslady resisted making any snide comments about our obviously less than ideal mode of transport.
To my surprise, we eventually narrowed it down to a choice of two in record time. But two was too many. A quick two hours later and, with the help of the financial backing team (my parents), the sales staff, and random passersby we’d drawn up a list of pros and cons for both travel systems – but were still none the wiser. The test that clinched it was the ‘one-hand-fold test’… my wife tried folding each system in turn whilst holding a teddy bear (playing the role of our baby) in the other hand. One was slightly easier than the other and all that remained was to choose a colour. By this time I’d lost the will to live and what should have been a straightforward decision almost turned the day sour.
As extreme fatigue set in, we made our final decisions and handed over the money.
Unfortunately, after all that, our travel system of choice was not in stock but we’ve been assured that it will arrive in plenty of time…four weeks and counting.
