ABOUT MUMMY HAZEL

In response to requests, this is a 'potted version' of how I became Mummy to thousands of Adult Babies!!

Once upon a time, I was a primary school teacher. When my own three sons were aged 3yrs, 2yrs, and just one month old I started the first multiracial nursery school in Gravesend, Kent, England. When my youngest son was 5yrs old I returned to full time teaching, specialising in children with reading difficulties and behavioural problems. At the same time, I began a University degree course, beginning with Social Science and Education, and finalising in Organic and Inorganic Chemistry, for which I obtained first Class Honours, and left the teaching profession after 14 years.

I was offered the opportunity to study for my PhD in Protein Crystallography at Birkbeck College, London University. My husband of 15 years decided he would divorce me if I went ahead with this, even though my student grant amounted to more than my teacher's salary! I took up the offer and obtained my PhD 4yrs later, studying the tertiary structure of an enzyme from the fungus, Mucor pusillus, now used in the making of hard cheeses. Then the stringent government cut backs began to bite, and there were no jobs in the UK for protein crystallographers, so I took a job in the Biochemistry Department of King's College, London as a post doc., researching into chloroplasts from spinach, peas and barley, until a vacancy arose in the Physics Department at Imperial College, London. The contract was for 4yrs, but fell through after just 6 weeks, because the structure I was working on had been solved by an American group, and my grant was withdrawn.

At this time I had a boyfriend who used to take me to drag clubs in London, where I was quite appalled at the quality of clothing worn by the drag queens on stage. He suggested that as I was good at making clothes from my own patterns, I could advertise to make clothes for drag queens, however, the people who answered my first advert were transvestites, and among them were about 20 adult babies.

I changed the wording of my single advert from 'drag' to adult babies, and included my 'phone number, with the result that my phone hardly stopped ringing and I had to buy an answer phone to cope with the demand!

This is a picture of me taken in the nursery in 1996. Don't look too closely at my wrinkles!!
 

And only two years later - I've gone grey!! Its the worry of all you babies!

So I gave up my career and began to make clothes for adult babies. They demanded a catalogue, so I had a thousand printed in black and white. They had all been sold in 3 months so I got a second one ready! But they really wanted a full colour catalogue, with real adult babies modelling my designs, so I borrowed £3,000 from the bank and produced one. It sold out really quickly, so I had a re-run, and then produced my 2nd full colour catalogue with different designs.  These have also all gone, and a third one is NOT likely, as I now have a CD catalogue instead - see below.
 

During this time, the Hush-A-Bye club for adult babies had been growing steadily, and the Babies were clamouring for a nursery setting in which to try on their new outfits, but the house I had at the time was far too small, so I looked for somewhere larger, and found this large house in a very dilapidated state - so it was comparatively cheap. We organised working parties at the weekends to decorate the nursery, put in a kitchen and a bathroom and generally make the place habitable.
 

And now there are two nurseries and I have planning permission from the Department of the Environment to "provide facilities for adult babies in association with bed and breakfast accommodation". And in the meantime, I've met literally hundreds of Adult Babies, and in some cases their wives and girlfriends too, and made dozens of wonderful friends, some of whom have appeared with me on television shows here and in Japan, Sweden, France, Germany, Holland, Australia and Norway in an attempt to educate the public about the AB scene.

I'm not having a 3rd colour catalogue printed because the cost is prohibitive. Instead I've had about 100 photo transparencies put onto a photo CD to take advantage of modern technology! And now I'm organising a catalogue on CD, with rhymes, jingles and stories as well as a great new range of clothes for my Adult Babies to drool over!

Right now I have a young, black, labrador retriever puppy for my AB's to play with then they come to stay, and a younger playmate to keep him company whenever I'm out.  This means I won't be able to go on holiday until they are both well trained!

This is Kazak at 6 months old (his tail is longer than this - really)!

And this is Ladakh at 4 months old.  They have the same father, so they are half brothers, and are exactly 2 months apart in age, to the day.

They have very different temperaments, with Ladakh, the younger by 2 months, being much more assertive & he will be the guard dog, and possibly challenge Kazak for the position of top dog when he's a little older.  Kaz is the brainy one who loves learning & enjoys training classes, and looks forward to agility classes.  Ladakh is more interested in food, being a lazy dog, and getting his own way.  But they are both gorgeous, and now that they are house trained I can look forward to buying a nice new carpet!

Both Labs are now 3 years old, love agility training and are learning to do all sorts of "moves" which can be linked together to make a short display which can be put to music.  They also enjoy swimming , and chasing after balls, retrieving them and returning them to us.  In this way, we get to walk about a mile every day, out in the countryside, on the North Downs, or in old woodlands and wild flower banks,  and the dogs each run about 3 miles.

  IWS puppy at 4 months old, among the wild flowers.  

Now I have an Irish Water Spaniel, whose coat is made of long ringlets which behave like velcro.  When we walk him in one of the nature reserves around here, he brings home a wonderful collection of plant specimens! He's now 10 months old, is as tall as Ladakh and weighs the same as Kazak.  He's still growing!

Now I'm semi-retired, and cashing my state pension.  I no longer work at weekends, or on Bank Holidays, take only one Adult Baby at a time for overnight stays, and they are restricted to Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays leaving me free to go dog training every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning.
So that's about all there is to tell. Why not write a little about yourself and E-mail it to me so that I can put your story online, too!!  Or even send me a picture of your dog!

E-mail: mummyhazel@hbenterprise.co.uk

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June 8th 2005