Barefoot, Pregnant and Bathing in a Bucket

I thought I had accomplished my exit from London with considerable aplomb. No long speeches or those icky farewell emails copied to All Staff Global where half the recipients have no clue who you are. Nope, some cheerful "see you laters" and a typically chaotic exit from MH with Charlene yelling at taxi drivers and my nearest and dearest colleagues milling around in the lobby waiting to wave me goodbye and retire to the pub.

It all went according to plan until we were about to board the plane at Heathrow the next morning and I realised I had forgotten my Kindle in the airport hotel. I cried from Heathrow to Schiphol with KLM flight attendants pressing water and tissues on me and no doubt wondering whether the crazy pregnant lady would do something unpredictable and force an emergency landing.

After being very supportive and concerned, once daughter had established that I had recovered she did not omit to point out "when you put me on a plane at the airport I never see you crying but you lose your electronic book and look what happens." Ah! Nine-year-old emotional blackmail, nothing like it!

So here I am in Lima missing my coven and my 3rd vice and getting used to being unemployed.

Spent the first weekend trawling round maternity clinics trying to get signed up to give birth to the baby Inca. They all say "ah señora, you're eight months pregnant? We're going to need all the monthly payments in advance..." I felt like Mary being dragged round Bethlehem on a donkey on Christmas Eve. And them fuckers at the NHS never put proper notes in my records. Every time I went for a blood test they just scribbled "bloods" instead of putting what the test was for so now I have to do a whole set of them again. I guess there's a reason the NHS is free.

We are staying with my in-laws, the three of us living in a bedroom painted pumpkin orange with matching curtains and sheets. The climate here is weird, coldish in the morning and hot in the afternoons but always either foggy or smoggy. It is officially the tail end of winter here and Limeños seem determined to insist on their seasons. Despite the temperature never dropping below 12 degrees they all walk around in boots and jackets. At home my father-in-law, a teeny tiny fellow with cheerful bushy eyebrows, walks around in fuzzy pyjamas and one of those knitted caps from the Peruvian highlands with ear flaps and strings, looking like an ethnically correct Santa's Helper.

My mother-in-law follows us around anxiously begging us to put on socks. She is convinced that we have arrived in Lima after a life of extraordinary luxury involving deep-pile carpet. "I know in the Caribbean you are used to warm weather, but you must wear shoes in the house here. The floors are dusty. Put on socks! You will catch a cold!" In vain do I remind her that we have spent the last six years in London where the depths of a Lima winter is often equivalent to a breezy summer's day.

My efforts to prove that my background and lifestyle is as middle-class as hers have been somewhat interrupted by the fact that, while Limeños would not dream of leaving the house without well-layered protection, they seem to think nothing of bathing every morning in bloody cold water! I, on the other hand, would laugh in the face of anyone who suggested that I put even a toe in the water at Brighton Beach at the height of summer. Since the heater in the house is broken, my in-laws now labour up the stairs every morning with a pot of boiling water so I can bathe in a bucket. Of course they won't let me carry it - I'm pregnant. My embarrassment is only very narrowly outstripped by my utter refusal to freeze my ass off even for hygienic purposes.

I am not allowed to leave home alone because, according to my husband, Lima is terribly dangerous, particularly for people like me who look so obviously foreign - by which I suppose he means that I am taller than most people and don't have straight black hair. Since he is working all week my mother-in-law accompanies me everywhere.

My mother-in-law is very nice but all mothers get a bit much after a while, particularly when one is pregnant. My own mum is a hoverer...circling around the periphery of my tolerance, occasionally seizing an opportunity to rush in and snatch shopping bags from me or put a hand on my forehead in a futile effort to take my temperature before I snap her hand off.

My mother-in-law is more of a clinger. She captures my arm and gives me lectures on pre-natal nutrition (Nada de grasa. Nada de gaseosa. Nada de condimentos. Nada de sal. ¡Mucha leche!); and marital relations (¡Tienes que poner reglas! ¡No gastes tu proprio dinero! ¡El tiene que mantener su propria familia como hombre!), stroking my hand all the while, gazing at me with great concern and sighing "¡ay hija!" by way of punctuation.

Since I no longer have the excuse of having to check my blackberry every five minutes, I am having to adjust to life with only one functional arm.