Very true. My friend's mum needed a blood transfusion when he was born, and the blood she was given was infected — her husband totally abandoned her and the child because of her illness and sent her back to England to die. Hardly anyone would visit her. The stigma of it still shocks me. (My mum used to take us over to…

We were recently in the very tiresome situation of really, totally needing towels/dishes/money/everything but I really didn't want to have a registry because asking for anything does seem incredibly tacky to me, like "come to my party but bring me something pricey"; we debated it a lot because I was really against it,…

Oh, totally! I think in the case of my editorial department, there aren't limitations in what we're "allowed" to say, but we definitely impose the limitation of not being boring on ourselves, just because we take delight in the creativity.

Right, but I was wondering if perhaps they were all freelance these days. I'm intrigued to know if town criers are usually staff or contractors. The some other town in the southeast of England you mentioned is half an hour from where I'm from, so it's interesting to me.

Are there non-freelance criers? Like, is it a staff position in some towns? I suppose so (and definitely traditionally). I can't imagine it's a full-time role anywhere anymore, though!

I've never heard of their being a crier for the palace so I would've been bewildered if I'd seen that on the news. How odd.

I would've thought it's already been quite popular for a while, actually. It's definitely one I've been hearing lots of babies are getting named in the last few years.

I've heard of lots of babies named George in the past few years, and I'm sure they were mostly fairly cute. It doesn't strike me as an unusual name at all — it seems to have been really popular for a while.

I think if people were watching it to see strippers, they'd have been really bored through a lot of it.

Yes please. I'm hot and my throat hurts.

Ok, I figured out how to get Kindle-only stuff on my phone and downloaded the first book just in time for a 12-hours-of-travelling day. Hurray!

That's good to know. I've never really properly addressed it — when I've tried to tell people about it in the past, they've always said "you're not pregnant, so stop worrying about it until you are" or "of course you're scared of labour; that's normal, it's scary". It would be good to be able to have a serious…

God, I basically drink that now. She was right: I *do* like babyccinos!

Exactly. Getting married didn't change my life at all (especially because we still couldn't live in the same country). I've tried to gently say that friends I've known pre- and post-pregnancy really haven't changed at all, to no avail!

YES! I'm 31 — over the years I've known tons of women who've been pregnant, and the majority of basically clearly the same person before and after (even after four kids). I've never known any of them to suddenly change their vocabulary or anything like that (one recent mum now has a Pinterest board that's cutesier…

I do want to have a baby — I think I just need to figure out a way to deal with it. And in the meanwhile we are definitely preventing it from happening for other reasons. I do need to discuss it with him; I know — I've just had the fear for so much longer than I've had the husband that it'll be hard. And it's hard to…

I think it's just frothy milk! And I was told that asking for a tiny cup of frothy milk was not enough, you HAVE to call it a babyccino.

Thank you. You're definitely right. It's been really worrying me because I know I have to discuss it with him… I've had this terror much longer than I've had the husband, so it's nerve-wracking. It's not really the pregnancy thing that scares me (although obviously it's a big deal and massive changes etc etc — I feel…

YES!!! I might say that next time. The word "babyccino" somehow came up once in a conversation and I said I wasn't fond of it, and someone insisted that I'd change my mind once I was a mother. I said, "actually, I really can't imagine myself ever seriously ordering one in a coffee shop under any circumstances…

My mum had caesareans for my sister and me, too… maybe that's why I'm so horrified by anything else? I've been freaking out about it really badly since I was 14 or so. I think it's incredibly difficult to get one unless there's a medical reason for it, though, so I'm a bit fucked.