Helena Bonham Carter’s Pregnant Pause

The wonderfully unpredictable co-star of Sweeney Todd is expecting her own Rosemary's Baby. So do not mess with her (although we know her littl'un will be quite adorable).

Matthew Strmiska

November 18, 2007

Here is my knee-jerk list of the little things in life that irritate. (I'm pregnant, so basically everything annoys me.) Such as:

1. People-particularly men-saying with surprise, "You're still drinking caffeine?" as if I'm performing a criminal act on my unborn as I tuck into my treasured one-a-day cup of tea/coffee. Yeah. You try nine months of gestation and self-abnegation before you start censoring my diet. Your mother was probably on vodka, and do you have three heads?

2. People who say, "Is there another in there?," or, "Wow, you are soooo big!!!" One might not be technically fat, but still "big" does not work for me.

3. People I don't know who, unsolicited, guess, with absolute conviction, what sex of child I'm going to have. (I have no idea.)

4. Seeing actresses in films and models in catalogues pretending to be pregnant with a solitary neat football of a bump on an otherwise unchanged body. Haven't they noticed that everything inflates... boobs, bum, legs.

5. The congestion charge in London. And the fact you can’t buy a bulk amount of credit in advance, which means that if you forget to pay, you get charged for your amnesia.

6. London’s fanatical parking-meter wardens who will start writing you a ticket a minute exceeding when your time expires, so that if you are a bit on the slow side walking back to your car (because you are heavy with child), or if your watch is one minute slow, then you pay £80. They have no humanity.

7. The luggage trolleys at New York’s JFK airport that demand coin change, which I never have, because, duh, I have only just arrived and haven’t had a chance to break into my notes yet.

8. The time difference between Los Angeles and London. Living in London, one always gets the work calls at the end of the day when you are either putting the kid to bed or are too bushed to talk work, make any decisions, or commit to anything. I would have had an entirely different career if there weren’t any time difference.

9. Kids’ toys that come with no batteries, thus delaying instant gratification of both parent and child. (Also demanding extra excursion for adult.)

10. Kids’ toys that require more than 20 minutes-and an engineering degree-to assemble.

Photo by Lorenzo Agius.