Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir) (19 page)

Tom likes the park, mainly because it gives him a chance to run around on those sturdy little legs of his, with no danger of head-butting any nearby obstacles such as walls, sofas or other people.

I’m fascinated by the way he makes the simple task of crossing a playing field into an action-packed adventure.

I think I envy him as well.

It must be wonderful to still live in a world where nothing is mundane and everything you see is a potential plaything.

He’s at that age (five) where he’s got the sense to appreciate the wonder of the world around him, but hasn’t had the magic of life knocked out of him yet by cold, hard experience.

Can you remember being like that?

If you can, you’re luckier than I am.

I meet people from time to time who are
always
smiling and drift through life with a happy go lucky attitude that means they worry less, stress less and live in the moment.

I’m convinced this is because they still remember what it was like to be that dreamy five year old, running across an open field, giggling at things only they can see.

I love my kid without reservation and without condition.

Yes, sometimes he can be naughty. He can be wilfully disobedient and will push the envelope of parental patience as far as it can go.

But he has this way of diffusing your towering rage after he’s put pen marks all over the new sofa:

As you’re about to give him a telling off of epic proportions, he’ll give you a slight, but winning smile. You try to ignore it as much as possible and keep on track.

Slowly though, the smile will start to work its magic and you find yourself trying desperately not to copy it.

The words coming out of your mouth may be
‘That’s very naughty, Tom’,
but the impact is ruined by the smile traitorously spreading across your face.

He’ll smile even more - and
you’ll
smile even more.

He’ll then start to laugh and so will you.

And when you’re giggling with him, you’ll decide its best to give up on the scolding and instead you’ll stumble into the kitchen, laughing for a few more minutes before realising you’ve just been neatly handled by a five year old boy – who’s gone back to drawing all over the sofa.

I find that both amusing and
deeply
troubling.

Like many men, I was thoroughly unprepared for fatherhood.

I never liked children and would throw menacing glances at the two brats wailing in the corner of the restaurant, their caterwauling ruining my chicken jalfrezi and pilau rice.

Squalling bags of mucus
was the way I’d describe babies, and indeed when Tom was born, he
was
a squalling bag of mucus.

But he was
my
squalling bag of mucus and that made all the difference in the world.

Sophie told me she was pregnant as I was eating a bowl of spaghetti hoops.

I didn’t spit them out in comedic fashion, but did sit there staring at the spoon for a few seconds.

I remember speaking to her from roughly ten thousand miles away:

 ‘Really? How far along are you?’

‘Two months. You’ll be a dad before the summer.’

‘B-b-baby.’

‘Yes, that’s right Nick. I’m having a baby.’

‘F-f-father.’

‘Yes, that’s right Nick. You’re going to be a father.’

‘S-s-spaghetti.’

‘Yes, that’s right, Nick. You’re eating a bowl of spaghetti.’

When I recovered from the shock, I was pleased to find I was happy about the whole thing.

Sophie was happy too. She put back all the sponges in the bathroom cabinet she had been planning to attack me with had I not been so enthused.

Neither of us are very patient people and don’t like surprises, so the first order of business was to find out what sex the baby was.

I was extraordinarily pleased it was boy.

I would have loved a girl equally I’m sure, but was glad that I wouldn’t be pulling my hair out in fourteen years, as she went out on her first date with the local teenage scumbag.

In the next seven months we attended to all the tasks future parents have to. We bought books, which we barely read because they were universally pompous, about the business of raising a child. They irritated both of us beyond measure.

We picked out a cot and redecorated the spare room. I wanted it covered with pictures of ninjas and soldiers for my brand new bouncing baby boy. Sophie wanted it a nice neutral lilac.

She won.

We bought lots of baby equipment. It all went in the downstairs cupboard and I had to shift my car magazines into the loft.

Grrrr
.

We went to classes for new parents, where Sophie learned a lot and I thought up some lovely new stories while I daydreamed and paid absolutely no attention to what was going on.

She got bigger and I tried not to make fun of the pronounced waddle she developed in the final stages.

I know women are supposed to
glow
and look healthy when heavily pregnant, but my wife was more inclined to scowl and look angry - mainly at me.

We talked to parents with babies, who all gave us their sage advice about how to handle the birth. Sophie and I both thought they were smug gits. We promised each other we wouldn’t turn into them once Tom was born and kept that promise for a whole two weeks after he popped out.

Tom’s birth was quick.

Sophie was only in labour for four hours and out came Tom: healthy, noisy and messy.

Very
messy.

No-one prepared me for just how messy the experience would be.

Sophie wanted me in the delivery room as Tom came into this world and who was I to argue? She was the one going through the agony, and the least I could do was to be there to suffer the insults and death threats she’d want to throw my way.

The death threats were mercifully absent by the time we got to the final stages, as Sophie was spending too much time breathing like a malfunctioning steam engine to do much more than throw me a few angry glances.

She’d also had an epidural, which took a distinct edge off her towering rage. This was good for both my eardrums and the bones in my right hand.

I knew the birthing process was not like it is in the movies.

The baby does
not
slide out like it’s on a greased ramp and is not a gleaming shade of pink, with a few small blood spots on its head. It does not cry for a couple of seconds before settling down into a soft cooing noise - and the mother does not take her new born child in her arms and look lovingly into its eyes.

What actually happens is that the baby arrives into this world covered in some of the weirdest looking shit you’ve ever seen outside the latest horror movie.

It doesn’t slide out, but emerges incredibly slowly from its home of nine months, eventually plopping out with an unpleasant squelching noise that wouldn’t sound pleasant in Dolby 6.1.

It’s covered head to toe in horrible gunk and its head has gone lumpy.

It’s extremely pissed off and lets you know this by immediately launching into a blatting scream that rattles your eardrums and makes you wish you’d brought earplugs.

The child’s mother is
not
bathed in a rosy afterglow either, but is covered in sweat, eyes goggling out of her head. Her hair is plastered to her face and her skin is a disturbing combination of hectic red and pallid blue. It looks like she’s gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson at his most anti-social.

And
then
comes the horror of the afterbirth.

As much as I carry the lovely memory of my son entering this world with me at all times, it is irrevocably linked with the memory of seeing that placental sac sliding out of my wife like a harbinger of the apocalypse.

I could tell you all about it, but if you’re a woman you’ll already know - and if you’re a man, I wouldn’t want to spoil the glorious moment for you when you do eventually become a dad. Wouldn’t want to spoil it for you
at all
.

…yes, the face I’m making now is evil, isn’t it?

I didn’t faint during all of this, I’m very proud to say.

I looked away,
yes
.

I looked back and wished I hadn’t,
certainly
.

I felt nauseous and had to hide the look of horror on my face, so Sophie wouldn’t hate me for the rest of eternity.

Childbirth isn’t pleasant…

If it’s supposed to be a miracle, then I’ll take my chances without anymore in this lifetime, thanks.

It features elements you don’t want to know about if you haven’t been through it. Suffice to say that I’ve talked about bodily waste already in this book and won’t bring it up again here.

Yuck
.

Tom did not stop crying and make cooing noises as he sampled his first few minutes of life. He continued to cry, making it quite plain to all those in attendance that he was
not fucking happy
with being woken up and squeezed unceremoniously from the safety of the womb into the cold, harsh light of day.

The nearest I can get to that feeling must be when you struggle awake from a disturbed night’s sleep, knowing you have to get up and go to work - multiplied by a million.

I’d also like to think that when he came into the world, some part of him recognised the clock on the delivery room wall, knew the significance it would have in the next sixty-five years of life - and screamed with all his might.

He continued to wail as they wiped him down and wrapped him in a blanket, ready for depositing into the arms of his parents.

I was fascinated by the mechanical way the hospital staff did this.

It was such a huge event in my life, I fully expected everyone around me to act like it was too:

‘This is the birth of my son!’
I wanted to scream
. ‘He is more important than any other child! Treat him as such!’

But instead of viewing my boy as the second coming, the delivery staff went about their business in a methodical and professional way which I found very disappointing. I wasn’t expecting them to start a close harmony rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus, but a bit of joyous weeping and genuflection couldn’t hurt, surely?

Sophie took the baby in her arms once the doctor had decided he was healthy. This appeared to involve laying him on a table, poking him a bit, shining a torch into his orifices and squinting thoughtfully.

Sophie held the boy close and - miracle of miracles - Tom did start to quiet down as his mother rocked him back and forth.

There’s a moment when the enormity of it hits you.

For me, it was looking down at my son as he stared back with an expression of stunned confusion.

At that moment, I accepted that my life was going to be completely different from that moment on. I now had a responsibility to care for my son and make sure he was always safe and loved.

The little bastard still looked like Winston Churchill though, and didn’t do anything more constructive than cry and chuck mucus everywhere.

Sorry, but there it is…

I’m not going to sit here and wax lyrical about how beautiful new born babies are, because they
aren’t.

This has nothing to do with not loving him, but you have to be objective, even at times like this.

Tom was not a physically attractive proposition, what with the lumpy head, wrinkly skin and permanently baffled expression.

Also, new born babies aren’t the most exciting things when you get right down to it.

It takes a few months before they doing anything other than scream, shit and puke - and you often sit there wishing they’d at least try to do something more productive.

Maybe I’m being a little unfair, but I never said I was a saint, did I?

We took Tom home after a day and settled into the business of raising a child in this hectic, cynical world.

Having a baby around really makes you appreciate the small things.      

Sleep
, for instance.

Never someone who has taken to sleep easily, I found the nightly routine of feeding and changing to be a never ending nightmare.

There I’d be, just slipping down the slippery chute to kipsville and Tom would start crying. That ear-piercing scream - so natural to him at his moment of birth - became more perfected in the next few months.

I started to think maybe he’d formed an unholy alliance with the birds outside; that the wood pigeon was periodically flying in through the window and giving him valuable advice about the best way to drive me insane. Teaching him lessons on the timing, rhythm, pitch and resonance of his scream that would combine to turn his father’s brain into mulch as quickly as possible.

During the day, I’d start to enjoy the sound of silence more than ever.

Sitting in a quiet room, while Tom was asleep or his mother had taken him out, was a state of nirvana I appreciated at every opportunity.

Before my son, I would listen to pretty loud rock music as a way of relaxing. After he came along, the albums went into the cupboard and I grooved along to the sound of bugger all.

This hell lasted three months until Tom started sleeping through the night and my senses had become so deadened to the sounds of screaming I barely heard them anymore.

It’s a good job I never passed a burning building in that time. My brain would have tuned out the pleading cries completely and I would have walked straight past without noticing.

As Tom grew, he became more interesting. He stopped being a lump - sitting there doing nothing much in particular.

I’m sure he won’t go back to that kind of behaviour until he’s a teenager.

Tom came out with his first word at about seven months.

To this day he’s the kind of child that likes to be different. The first indication of this trait was the first word that came out of his mouth.

The usual words a baby says for the first time are along the lines of
mumma
,
dadda
or
nunna
. Easy words that require little effort - and make parents all misty eyed.