My weekend, or at least my Saturday, was a bit like that episode of Sex and the City when the unlikely quartet of friends hoofs off to the suburbs to see a friend who's had a baby. And are surrounded by Other Women With Babies. And there's a bit where someone puts a baby on a sofa next to Samantha, who merrily lets it slide off the sofa and clunk onto the floor. I spent years feeling like Samantha in this respect (certainly not in any other respect - imagine having that much sex, it'd be exhausting). I was totally phobic about babies - and they felt the same way about me. People would always be thrusting babies at me, assuming that because I'm female, and don't have any of my own, I'm desperate to 'have a cuddle'. The option was to take hold of the baby or let it drop on the floor (I found the latter didn't go down very well), so I'd grab it under the armpits, at which point the baby would scream its head off and I'd hand it back.

People refused to believe me when I said I was phobic about them (what if their neck snaps and their head falls off?), didn't like children and didn't want any. I don't know why people find this so hard to believe. Babies are boring. They are noise machines who also dispense noxious fluids. I'm sure it's lovely if you've had one, and congrats on that (current newspaper articles would seem to suggest that it's a miracle if you're over 35 and you've managed to successfully procreate), but it'd be great if I didn't have to interact with them till they can speak. I make an honorable exception for Sonny, the baby from the barge trip, who was a delight. A smiley little fellow, he was easily amused by A/ rocking about in his baby chair and kicking his legs like a footballer with epilepsy - I found I could rock the chair with my foot, whilst also reading the paper, which was a good start; B/ having faces made at him, or waving; C/ burbling any old nonsense at him in a googly voice. I monitored his mood by keeping a careful eye on the angle of his eyebrows: up or level was fine, but if they started to dip down in the middle, urgent action had to be taken - really intense faces and some manic burbling, or an appeal to his mum to come and fix him.

Saturday's selection of babies held no such joys - after a morning of unsuccessful burbling with one friend's baby, I moved onto a barbecue at which there was a selection of ankle biters. One baby bore an alarming resemblance to the baby in Trainspotting, that crawls across the ceiling when Renton is hallucinating. It had a disconcertingly massive head. It wasn't a good look. I tried to rescue it as it crawled through a selection of nuts, bolts, screws and washers that were lying around on the floor as various guests tried to actually assemble the barbecue in the sitting room. 'Don't want you swallowing any of those!' I thought (babies bring out my inner Disaster Monitor) and picked him up. He screamed like a malfunctioning car alarm. I hastily put him down. Luckily his mother appeared, and reassured me that he was 'a complete mummy's boy' and would scream if anyone went near him other than her, which, for the next two hours, proved to be irritatingly and ear-shatteringly true. I left suburbia later that night thanking God I could rush back to the city and my lovely, silent flat.

Sunday's children were much better. A few of us convened in a pub garden to belatedly celebrate my sister's birthday, as she's back from France for the weekend. Sonny was there - someone else was holding him, so I just had to tickle his feet. I was then ambushed by a pair of twins, who must've been about two and a half and appeared from nowhere. They were blonde and cherubic little boys, who offered me a shard of plastic that looked like part of a disposable fork, and an empty raisin box. I'll confess, I'm shameful when it comes to children: if they're pretty, cute and chatty, I like them. (Repeated exposure to children now most of my friends have them has mellowed me). Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that as a child I was chronically shy and looked like a bag of potatoes, I can't get along with the unchatty, lumpy ones. This is mainly because I've discovered that with small children, the key to engaging with them is just to ask them loads of questions. You start off with the easy stuff, like what's your name, and how old are you, and then you just ask them what they're doing, or how their toy works, or if their teddy has a name, and what their teddy likes doing. And then you carry on till one of you gets bored (it's generally them - they come to the conclusion that you're an idiot who doesn't know anything).

The boys decided the buttons on my cardigan needed sewing on with the plastic shard. Good start! I tried sewing on the buttons on one of their T-shirts (one was sporting a T-shirt with a campervan on it, the other some sort of skull with writing; at two and a half, they were more fashionable than I've ever been). The other one got a bit upset that he didn't have any buttons to sew on. 'Life's not all about buttons, kid', I told him. He looked bemused, and offered me a cigarette butt from the ground. I declined his kind gift, at which point his brother offered me one as well. I distracted them by giving them packets of sugar. Not a great gift, but then they had only given me a broken piece of plastic, a very small empty cardboard box, and two fag butts. I then caught sight of a drain with a perforated cast iron cover over it, ideal for posting leaves and other detritus down. Their father came by just as I was suggesting that they find things to offer to 'the drain god'. 'The drain god?!' he asked. 'Yes, the drain god', I replied, not to be deterred, making a scary face and going 'RAAAAR' at one of the boys. 'RAAAR' the boy replied, hitting me in the face. I realised I didn't really have anywhere else to go with that. It was starting to get a bit complex. Luckily at that point they decided they had urgent business elsewhere and ran off, possibly to converse with people who weren't going to make up complicated theological systems located in London's sewage networks.

Their mum wheeled them round in a double buggy to say goodbye when they left and I was kind of sad to see them go. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a two and a half year old and a lot more fun. After all, it's not every man who's going to go along with you when you suggest making sacrifices to underground deities you've randomly made up, more's the pity.