Were baby seats always this bad?

IN the interests of being a good new granny I have bought the baby a car seat for my car. It came in a cardboard box so vast that I may end up living in it comfortably if the writing career tanks. It also came with a 64-page booklet of installation instructions in many languages including Old Norse and most of the 832 languages they speak in Papua New Guinea.

It is the seat that my son told me to buy and he was pleased to tell me that it will accommodate Miss Nina until she is 12. “Twelve?” I said. “She’ll be wearing lip gloss by then. If you tell her to sit in it she’ll laugh.” He sighed.

I had car seats for my children. Of course I did. But they weren’t as fiendishly complicated as this one. So many flaps, poppers, belts, buckles. An astronaut strapped into it could re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at Mach 5 and come to no harm. And where oh where was “4a” marked on the diagram and how did the car’s seat belt go through it?

My husband trailed out to “help” and we tugged at opposite ends of the unspooling seat belt like squabbling children. “WHERE IS 4A?” I howled. He said he didn’t bloody know and he didn’t have his bloody reading glasses. Tempers were lost. The cardboard box was kicked. Divorce papers are pending.

But let’s draw a veil. The seat is installed and later today Miss Nina will be introduced to it. I can picture her look of displeasure and the furiously rigid little limbs. The image of her father at that age. Wish me luck.