Experts have their comforting predictions, but nobody, nowhere, is forewarned and forearmed about what’s comingEight years ago this Boxing Day was the first time I felt the baby kick. Although it didn’t feel like a kick, exactly: more the slow bubbling of porridge on a rolling boil. “He won’t be a rugby player then,” someone joked, and silently in my head I corrected he to she. For deep down, I already knew instinctively the baby would be a girl: I can’t explain how, but I just knew. And that’s the story of how I came to have a son.For the trouble is humans mostly can’t predict things for toffee. Not even when there’s an almost 50/50 chance of being right, not even when they are indisputably on the inside track. History is littered with supposed dead certs that didn’t happen – Greece leaving the Euro, the premature collapse of the coalition – and wholly unimagined events that came to pass. Continue reading...