I went to a meeting recently that was about as much fun as having hot needles poked into my eyes. Like many meetings, it was dominated by the person who called it. Unfortunately, she lacked the oratory skills of an Obama or Oprah and mumbled her way through a presentation in the manner of reading a telephone directory from front to back.
She wasn’t helped by her material, in fairness. It related to a directive which has come down to us from our global masters in New York instructing us minions in the far flung colonies to follow a new procedure. This involves a lot of pointless reporting which serves no purpose other than allowing a graduate trainee in the US to report that his project has been completed successfully.
Large corporations are full of this sort of internal balderdash, which keeps 80% of the staff busy while the other 20% try to service clients and earn revenue for the firm. Its capitalism, but not as we know it.
I do my best to ignore this sort of nonsense, in an effort to save my sanity. But occasionally I get dragged in unknowingly. I think accepting a meeting request might result in some nice pastries being placed on the table and a collegial chat ensuing between like minded people. Reality is cruelly different. Most meetings are called by lonely people in an attempt to bring a modicum of social activity into the humdrum emptiness of their lives.
They speak for twenty minutes (usually from a pre prepared text that they could have easily emailed to the meeting participants as an alternative to dragging them into a room) and then ask if there are any questions. I’m usually sleeping with my eyes open at this point, so I rarely come up with incisive queries. However, there are always those who need to hear their own voice at every gathering. They will ask the obvious and dumbest questions.
“Will we receive a copy of the presentation in soft format?”
“When will this be implemented?”
“Can you start again, I came in five minutes late and haven’t a clue what this is about?”
We managed to get through several of these dumb questions from all the usual suspects and this was followed by a pause when we hoped that paper would be shuffled and the host would thank us for our attendance. Instead she said “So does everyone agree that we should meet again at the same time next week?”
The collective sigh of the attendees was powerful enough to drive a sailboat. I thought about saying no, that another meeting would be a tragic vindication of the complete waste of time we had just sat through. But I didn’t, none of us want to tell the emperor that he is wearing no clothes.
I hoped that somebody else would protest but my fellow meeting attendees were busy examining the contents of their fingernails while chewing furiously on their lower lip. We all nodded agreement to this ridiculous suggestion and shuffled out and back to the solitude of our desk bound existence.
The following week was worse. This time we knew what was coming and had to fill ourselves with strong coffee beforehand to stay awake. Endless statistics were read out, acronyms that nobody understood were thrown around liberally and the previous week’s presentation was regurgitated in case we hadn’t enjoyed it enough the first time.
To amuse myself, I decided to watch the other attendees to see their reaction. Most were like me, bored to tears and searching for matchsticks to prop their eyelids open. There were the new kids on the block, furiously taking notes in blissful ignorance.
Then there were the ones who felt the need to say something every ten minutes just to prove that they were still awake. Their comments rarely extended beyond saying “Interesting” or “Is that a fact” and it did make me wonder if they were running an app on their iphones which transmitted a meaningless comment at regular intervals.
The worse participants were the ones who felt the need to make a constructive comment because this had implications for the rest of us. Overzealous control freaks like to take processes that are already bureaucratic monsters and add an extra layer of pointless paperwork.
“Why don’t we do a semi annual review to look at progress against targets”, one of them suggested while the rest of us exhaled loudly thinking about the two useless forms we would now have to complete each year. There is usually only one such freak at meetings, but at this one we were graced with two.
“Why don’t we do that in June and December” she said. For a moment, we thought she was joking, because 99% of semi annual reviews take place in those months and making that suggestion was akin to a proposal that a birthday party should be held on somebody’s actual birthday. If she’d suggested April and October, it would at least have been interesting, but no, she was saying it simply to have something to say.
We trudged out dolefully, clutching our handouts and mourning the hour of our lives that we would never get back. Perhaps the problem is that people don’t realise that the things that are important to them personally are not necessarily of interest to other people. I’d like to ask twelve people at work to attend a one hour presentation on the impact of jet engined aircraft on transatlantic travel in the 1960s. But I accept that anyone with a life would be reluctant to come along unless I dressed it up as a strategic planning session for 2013 expense optimisation.
That always gets people’s attention. Because while it will be mainly pointless and contain enough accounting jargon to lull a rave dancer into deep slumber, it will at least have pastries. Any meeting to discuss expense reduction has to involve pastries. Because cutting them from future meetings will always be on the agenda.
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Monday, 30 January 2012
On Fatherhood
I overheard a conversation in the lift today. A tired looking guy said to his companion “my wife keeps telling me that I’m asking the baby irrational questions like “why aren’t you sleeping, you’ve just been fed”. She says the kid can’t understand these questions, so you’re not going to get an answer”.
I smiled to myself because I’ve been asking the same irrational questions lately. You tend to speak to infants in two ways. The first is baby talk. Lots of Gooh, gooh, gooh etc. Although I’m not sure why this is called baby talk as I’ve never heard a baby talk like that. The second is adult talk such as “why are you screaming when I put you in your pram? You loved it last night.” You say this as though you’re expecting them to answer, “the climatic situation is significantly altered from yesterday and my dietary requirements have not been met in a consistent manner”.
To judge by most of the conversations Dads have with babies, you would think that we are all raising Stewie from Family Guy.
The truth is that we’re actually talking to ourselves in these situations. The presence of a small child allows us to avoid looking like a madman, which is what most of us are after fractured sleep and putting up with an hour’s screaming. Babies only have two speeds as far as I can see, absolutely beautifully angelically quiet and full throttle screaming at jack hammer level. And they can go from one to the other quicker than you can say “I think we have her settled”.
Before our daughter was born, I found myself drawn towards Fatherhood stories and books and songs aimed at us blokes. I should say of course that this a female dominated industry. Most of the parenting literature out there is aimed at them, and rightly so. They have to carry and deliver the baby after all as well as carrying round the mechanism for feeding the offspring once they are born.
Fathers are less well catered for. Our role is undervalued to a large extent. I’ve sat in meetings with doctors and nurses where my presence has either been invisible or given the impression that I’ve walked in with dog pooh on my shoe. After the baby is born, we men tend to go back to work while the mother stays at home bonding with the child and also taking on the lion’s share of rearing duties. It’s a tiring business all round but we men aren’t allowed to express this because there is somebody nearby who is clearly more exhausted than we are. As a result, it’s pretty hard to talk about the challenges of being a new father.
Thankfully, anonymous web postings give me that opportunity. The first thing I’d say is that being a new Dad is the most physically exhausting thing I’ve done since I passed down my own Mother’s birth canal and came kicking and screaming into this mad world. I’m a pen pushing accountant and the hardest physical labour I do is reposition my oversized posterior in my non ergonomically designed office chair every hour or so.
These days, I do my non physical day at work and come home to an evening of lifting the baby from one place to the next. 4.5kgs of wriggling muscle is harder to transport than you might think. I pick up nappies, wraps, clothes, toys, dummies (damn, I’ve outed our family as dummy users, which in middle class circles is akin to admitting you feed your baby cocaine), all of which mysteriously find their way to the most awkward recesses in the house.
But the mental exhaustion is far worse. Babies are genetically designed to cry in a manner that can’t be ignored. Our baby doesn’t cry much, she’s a good little girl most of the time but when she does it’s impossible to ignore and it changes your mood instantly. I’d like to say I’m ice cool but the truth is I get frustrated and highly strung in these situations, mainly because I’m a rationalist and 6 week old babies aren’t rationale. You can feed them, change them and put them in the same clothes in the same cot with the same temperature as the night before and you’ll get a different reaction.
And I get frustrated because I don’t know what to do. Except hand her back to her mother, which to my shame is something I do too often.
One thing that seems to help though is music. We’ve been playing white noise at a high volume, which seems to sooth the baby and annoy the parents in equal measure. I’ve noticed that normal music seems to work just as well (by which I mean it is perfect some nights and a complete waste of time on other occasions). When she’s particularly growly I play her Tim Minchin’s “lullaby”. For those of you unfamiliar with this Australian comic genius, I’d recommend you hot foot it to Youtube immediately. His song is a melody he wrote to his daughter to encourage her to sleep. It’s pretty cruel to be honest, but I get a giggle out of playing it to our little one when she get’s hysterical.
She’ll no doubt read this and hate me for it in twelve years time but Dad’s will do anything to try and stay sane.
Having said all that, she is, as we Irish would say, a wee dote. She recognises me and stares into my eyes and smiles, which is just about the most heart-warming thing you’ll ever experience. When she’s good, she’s very, very good. When she’s bad...well she’s still the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Babies change you for the better. The stop you from being self obsessed and force you to look outward into the bigger picture of family, friendship and love. It’s a long journey along a bumpy road but we now have someone in the back seat to make us laugh.
I smiled to myself because I’ve been asking the same irrational questions lately. You tend to speak to infants in two ways. The first is baby talk. Lots of Gooh, gooh, gooh etc. Although I’m not sure why this is called baby talk as I’ve never heard a baby talk like that. The second is adult talk such as “why are you screaming when I put you in your pram? You loved it last night.” You say this as though you’re expecting them to answer, “the climatic situation is significantly altered from yesterday and my dietary requirements have not been met in a consistent manner”.
To judge by most of the conversations Dads have with babies, you would think that we are all raising Stewie from Family Guy.
The truth is that we’re actually talking to ourselves in these situations. The presence of a small child allows us to avoid looking like a madman, which is what most of us are after fractured sleep and putting up with an hour’s screaming. Babies only have two speeds as far as I can see, absolutely beautifully angelically quiet and full throttle screaming at jack hammer level. And they can go from one to the other quicker than you can say “I think we have her settled”.
Before our daughter was born, I found myself drawn towards Fatherhood stories and books and songs aimed at us blokes. I should say of course that this a female dominated industry. Most of the parenting literature out there is aimed at them, and rightly so. They have to carry and deliver the baby after all as well as carrying round the mechanism for feeding the offspring once they are born.
Fathers are less well catered for. Our role is undervalued to a large extent. I’ve sat in meetings with doctors and nurses where my presence has either been invisible or given the impression that I’ve walked in with dog pooh on my shoe. After the baby is born, we men tend to go back to work while the mother stays at home bonding with the child and also taking on the lion’s share of rearing duties. It’s a tiring business all round but we men aren’t allowed to express this because there is somebody nearby who is clearly more exhausted than we are. As a result, it’s pretty hard to talk about the challenges of being a new father.
Thankfully, anonymous web postings give me that opportunity. The first thing I’d say is that being a new Dad is the most physically exhausting thing I’ve done since I passed down my own Mother’s birth canal and came kicking and screaming into this mad world. I’m a pen pushing accountant and the hardest physical labour I do is reposition my oversized posterior in my non ergonomically designed office chair every hour or so.
These days, I do my non physical day at work and come home to an evening of lifting the baby from one place to the next. 4.5kgs of wriggling muscle is harder to transport than you might think. I pick up nappies, wraps, clothes, toys, dummies (damn, I’ve outed our family as dummy users, which in middle class circles is akin to admitting you feed your baby cocaine), all of which mysteriously find their way to the most awkward recesses in the house.
But the mental exhaustion is far worse. Babies are genetically designed to cry in a manner that can’t be ignored. Our baby doesn’t cry much, she’s a good little girl most of the time but when she does it’s impossible to ignore and it changes your mood instantly. I’d like to say I’m ice cool but the truth is I get frustrated and highly strung in these situations, mainly because I’m a rationalist and 6 week old babies aren’t rationale. You can feed them, change them and put them in the same clothes in the same cot with the same temperature as the night before and you’ll get a different reaction.
And I get frustrated because I don’t know what to do. Except hand her back to her mother, which to my shame is something I do too often.
One thing that seems to help though is music. We’ve been playing white noise at a high volume, which seems to sooth the baby and annoy the parents in equal measure. I’ve noticed that normal music seems to work just as well (by which I mean it is perfect some nights and a complete waste of time on other occasions). When she’s particularly growly I play her Tim Minchin’s “lullaby”. For those of you unfamiliar with this Australian comic genius, I’d recommend you hot foot it to Youtube immediately. His song is a melody he wrote to his daughter to encourage her to sleep. It’s pretty cruel to be honest, but I get a giggle out of playing it to our little one when she get’s hysterical.
She’ll no doubt read this and hate me for it in twelve years time but Dad’s will do anything to try and stay sane.
Having said all that, she is, as we Irish would say, a wee dote. She recognises me and stares into my eyes and smiles, which is just about the most heart-warming thing you’ll ever experience. When she’s good, she’s very, very good. When she’s bad...well she’s still the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Babies change you for the better. The stop you from being self obsessed and force you to look outward into the bigger picture of family, friendship and love. It’s a long journey along a bumpy road but we now have someone in the back seat to make us laugh.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Sleep well my Angel
I lived in Luxembourg years ago in the dark ages before the Internet was invented. Or at least in the years before it became publically available and wasn’t just the preserve of members of the Industrial, Military machine and geeky University researchers.
To feed my voracious appetite for news, I subscribed to the Irish Times. This cost an arm and a leg, so I only got the Monday edition, because if I’m really honest, I’m only interested in sport. It was delivered to my work post-box every Monday lunchtime by a man who made his living driving up and down the motorway to Brussels airport. That road bored and fascinated me during my time in Luxembourg. It rolls in a straight line over the Ardennes mountains with nothing to see except the monotonous countryside of Southern Belgium.
In summer, it was a little more interesting as the road would be filled with a never-ending procession of Dutch caravans heading to the South of France. To amuse myself and my travelling companions, we would try to be the first to spot a Dutch caravan coming towards us and you’d accumulate points for correct spotting but lose ten points if the caravan turned out to be Belgian, twenty if it was Danish and elimination from the game if it turned out to be Irish.
The complexities of that game would easily pass the two hours it took to get to the airport and it also spawned the title for my upcoming novel. “Counting Dutch Caravans on the Road to Brussels”. I have the title, now all I have to do is come up with a plot and a narrative.
Having finished the sport, my favourite destination in Monday’s Irish Times was the TV review section. This was strange in that I hadn’t lived in Ireland for eight years at that point and was in country where none of the shows being reviewed would ever be shown. It was like I had a basic need to reconnect with a life I’d previously enjoyed. Or maybe they were just funny.
I find myself in a similar position now as a new Father. I pour over cinema reviews with the intensity of a forensic scientist. And yet I know that I will never get to see these films, unless I can wangle a plane trip to an overseas destination. There are many things you have to sacrifice when you become a parent, sleep being the obvious one, but it’s the little things that strike me most. The cinema, pub and sporting outings will all have to be put on the back burner for a few months, until we get our little angel into some sort of routine that will allow her parents a modicum of a social life.
But it’s a small sacrifice to make for all the pleasure a child brings. It’s hard work for sure, particularly for Mammy who has to do all that breastfeeding and has sole responsibility while Daddy is at work. But when a three week old girl smiles at you for the first time, you would happily gave up all those material things that filled your previous child free life.
Many people have asked me if our baby has changed much since she was born. She has gotten bigger that’s for sure and after some initial weight loss problems is now stacking it on. But really she hasn’t changed much at all. They reckon kids have to adapt to the environment, but actually I think the environment adapts to them. The real change is in the Mother and Father. We start to learn cues, we become comfortable with changing a dirty nappy in darkness so as not to wake a sleeping baby and we change our sleeping patterns. The kid just eats, poohs and sleeps her way through most of this madness.
As an Accountant, I have become fascinated with the numbers involved. She’s gone through approximately 324 nappies so far, at an average of 10 a day. She wants to be fed 8 times per day, which means that her Mother has to produce about a litre of milk every 24 hours. She averages 3 clothing changes per day and throws up or poohs on enough blankets to warrant her own washing machine, which would run on a permanent cycle.
But while her Father is fascinated by numbers and averages, she is proving to be an independently minded baby. Just when we think we have her on a nice three hourly cycle of feed, play and sleep, she can decide to stay awake for 4 hours or to sleep for so long that we have to wake her up (something no parent ever wants to do as a sleeping child is like manna from heaven). The hours of 5pm to 9pm are a particular problem and when you mention this to other new parents, they nod in sympathy and talk about the “witching hour”. She needs more attention that Paris Hilton during this time and her Mother and I have already accepted that we won’t be having dinner together for a long time.
Every day gets easier though and every day she becomes more beautiful and develops her own personality. She doesn’t like socks or mittens and has learned how to remove these herself. That’s something I reckon she inherited from me, as I’ve slept with nothing on but a smile since I was six (which led to a few embarrassing sleep walking incidents when I was teenager and started staying over at friends houses).
She likes clouds and trees and seems fascinated with the world. And she can grip your finger and stare into your eyes in a way that makes me teary just writing these lines. I guess there is a scientific reason for all this. Kids need feeding and nurturing, so they need to develop an emotional bond with their parents. But who cares, it’s just the loveliest, most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Sleep well my angel. Outside the storm is howling but you’re safe here.
To feed my voracious appetite for news, I subscribed to the Irish Times. This cost an arm and a leg, so I only got the Monday edition, because if I’m really honest, I’m only interested in sport. It was delivered to my work post-box every Monday lunchtime by a man who made his living driving up and down the motorway to Brussels airport. That road bored and fascinated me during my time in Luxembourg. It rolls in a straight line over the Ardennes mountains with nothing to see except the monotonous countryside of Southern Belgium.
In summer, it was a little more interesting as the road would be filled with a never-ending procession of Dutch caravans heading to the South of France. To amuse myself and my travelling companions, we would try to be the first to spot a Dutch caravan coming towards us and you’d accumulate points for correct spotting but lose ten points if the caravan turned out to be Belgian, twenty if it was Danish and elimination from the game if it turned out to be Irish.
The complexities of that game would easily pass the two hours it took to get to the airport and it also spawned the title for my upcoming novel. “Counting Dutch Caravans on the Road to Brussels”. I have the title, now all I have to do is come up with a plot and a narrative.
Having finished the sport, my favourite destination in Monday’s Irish Times was the TV review section. This was strange in that I hadn’t lived in Ireland for eight years at that point and was in country where none of the shows being reviewed would ever be shown. It was like I had a basic need to reconnect with a life I’d previously enjoyed. Or maybe they were just funny.
I find myself in a similar position now as a new Father. I pour over cinema reviews with the intensity of a forensic scientist. And yet I know that I will never get to see these films, unless I can wangle a plane trip to an overseas destination. There are many things you have to sacrifice when you become a parent, sleep being the obvious one, but it’s the little things that strike me most. The cinema, pub and sporting outings will all have to be put on the back burner for a few months, until we get our little angel into some sort of routine that will allow her parents a modicum of a social life.
But it’s a small sacrifice to make for all the pleasure a child brings. It’s hard work for sure, particularly for Mammy who has to do all that breastfeeding and has sole responsibility while Daddy is at work. But when a three week old girl smiles at you for the first time, you would happily gave up all those material things that filled your previous child free life.
Many people have asked me if our baby has changed much since she was born. She has gotten bigger that’s for sure and after some initial weight loss problems is now stacking it on. But really she hasn’t changed much at all. They reckon kids have to adapt to the environment, but actually I think the environment adapts to them. The real change is in the Mother and Father. We start to learn cues, we become comfortable with changing a dirty nappy in darkness so as not to wake a sleeping baby and we change our sleeping patterns. The kid just eats, poohs and sleeps her way through most of this madness.
As an Accountant, I have become fascinated with the numbers involved. She’s gone through approximately 324 nappies so far, at an average of 10 a day. She wants to be fed 8 times per day, which means that her Mother has to produce about a litre of milk every 24 hours. She averages 3 clothing changes per day and throws up or poohs on enough blankets to warrant her own washing machine, which would run on a permanent cycle.
But while her Father is fascinated by numbers and averages, she is proving to be an independently minded baby. Just when we think we have her on a nice three hourly cycle of feed, play and sleep, she can decide to stay awake for 4 hours or to sleep for so long that we have to wake her up (something no parent ever wants to do as a sleeping child is like manna from heaven). The hours of 5pm to 9pm are a particular problem and when you mention this to other new parents, they nod in sympathy and talk about the “witching hour”. She needs more attention that Paris Hilton during this time and her Mother and I have already accepted that we won’t be having dinner together for a long time.
Every day gets easier though and every day she becomes more beautiful and develops her own personality. She doesn’t like socks or mittens and has learned how to remove these herself. That’s something I reckon she inherited from me, as I’ve slept with nothing on but a smile since I was six (which led to a few embarrassing sleep walking incidents when I was teenager and started staying over at friends houses).
She likes clouds and trees and seems fascinated with the world. And she can grip your finger and stare into your eyes in a way that makes me teary just writing these lines. I guess there is a scientific reason for all this. Kids need feeding and nurturing, so they need to develop an emotional bond with their parents. But who cares, it’s just the loveliest, most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Sleep well my angel. Outside the storm is howling but you’re safe here.
Friday, 30 December 2011
Hello World
Hello, I’ve taken over my Dad’s blog this week to introduce myself to the world. I made my grand entrance at 12.22pm on Friday 16th December. I was a bit late, my parents were expecting me to turn up on December 5th but I figured that my future birthday parties would be more fun if they were closer to Christmas. But don’t even dream about getting me one present in the future and telling me it covers both Christmas and my birthday. I’ll be expecting to be treated like a princess on both occasions.
I think my Daddy was secretly hoping for a boy and I played a little trick on him when I popped out by placing my umbilical cord between my legs. The expression on my Dad’s face was a mixture of pride and astonishment that his offspring had an extremely long willy that happened to be green with yellow stripes.
Anyway, it didn’t take my giddy parents long to realise that I’m actually a girl, a result that would have been obvious had anyone studied my Mother’s gene pool.
I arrived into the world weighing 3.226 kg and was 42 centimetres long, which gives me a better BMI index than my Father, a statistic I intend maintaining for the rest of my life. I was born in the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, a fine establishment that welcomes several thousand babies into the world each year, but still found time to make me feel special. Mammy and Daddy bought some chocolates for the nurses, but I think they would have been better off joining the campaign to have those nurses paid a decent salary. I’m only a couple of weeks old but already I find it strange that nurses get paid less than bankers. I’ll change that when I take over the world (more of that later).
My Dad is Irish and my Mother is a Kiwi and it turns out that I now have both these nationalities plus that of my birthplace. As the only Australian in the house, I expect to be awarded special privileges, such as pavlova on demand or vegemite on my toast.
I am assured that my parents are in the process of obtaining three passports for me which will be allow me to commence my inaugural world tour. I can’t be bothered with queues and having lots of passports will allow me to get into Dublin, Auckland and Melbourne quickly.
I guess over time I’ll develop a favourite among my three nationalities. At the moment I’m happy to be a citizen of the world but Australia will have a head start as the place of my birth. Mind you, I was under the impression that this was a modern country that had fully embraced the metric system. However, when you’re born, people want to know what you weigh in pounds and ounces. Are we living in medieval England, people? Anyway, for the benefit of all those old fashioned fuddy duddies out there, I was born weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces, which in the immortal lines of Roddy Doyle in the Snapper, is a decent size for a baby but would be small for a turkey.
I know I’m a girl and all that but it seems that I have arrived into a weight-obsessed world. I intend stacking it on for here on.
While I was still inside Mammy, I heard Daddy talking about his anxieties. He gets a bit weak at the sight of blood and was nervous about taking the wrong route on the way to the hospital. In the end I decided to help him out. I waited long enough so that Mammy was booked in for an induction and then decided to make my grand entrance three hours before this was due. As a result, Daddy already had the bags packed (why do people take more stuff to hospital when a baby is due than they would take on a two week holiday?) and had the car filled with petrol.
The dash to the hospital was much more straightforward than anticipated, although it did include three forks in the road in quick succession. Left, left and right is how I remember it, although I was swinging around in amniotic fluid at the time. Dad thinks all these forks in the road are a metaphor for something but he hasn’t had much sleep lately and can’t think what it is.
I’m two weeks old now and starting to find my feet. At least I think they are feet. They are two odd shaped things that seem to wave uncontrollably in front of me when I lie down. I’m getting eight meals a day, sometimes from grumpy parents at 3am (they’ll just have to suck it up, I’m the new boss around here) and I’m getting lots of cuddles and sleep. Oh, and isn’t it nice to have someone change your nappies? I’m getting through around twelve a day at the moment, about the same as my Dad does when he goes for beer and curry. Except I can do mine without the need for a newspaper or other reading material.
I went for my first spin in my pram yesterday. That was fun, but there are a lot of shadows out there in the big wild world and I found it all a bit too fascinating at first. But gradually the motion got me to sleep. I think Mammy and Daddy have discovered a quick way of settling me down and something tells me that I’ll be spending a lot of time in that pram in the wee small hours of the morning.
That’s my story for the time being. I wish I had more to report but it’s true what they say about Bubbas. Pretty much all we do is eat, sleep and pooh. But I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me for everything else. Time for a snooze folks. I’ll talk to you in 2012.
I think my Daddy was secretly hoping for a boy and I played a little trick on him when I popped out by placing my umbilical cord between my legs. The expression on my Dad’s face was a mixture of pride and astonishment that his offspring had an extremely long willy that happened to be green with yellow stripes.
Anyway, it didn’t take my giddy parents long to realise that I’m actually a girl, a result that would have been obvious had anyone studied my Mother’s gene pool.
I arrived into the world weighing 3.226 kg and was 42 centimetres long, which gives me a better BMI index than my Father, a statistic I intend maintaining for the rest of my life. I was born in the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, a fine establishment that welcomes several thousand babies into the world each year, but still found time to make me feel special. Mammy and Daddy bought some chocolates for the nurses, but I think they would have been better off joining the campaign to have those nurses paid a decent salary. I’m only a couple of weeks old but already I find it strange that nurses get paid less than bankers. I’ll change that when I take over the world (more of that later).
My Dad is Irish and my Mother is a Kiwi and it turns out that I now have both these nationalities plus that of my birthplace. As the only Australian in the house, I expect to be awarded special privileges, such as pavlova on demand or vegemite on my toast.
I am assured that my parents are in the process of obtaining three passports for me which will be allow me to commence my inaugural world tour. I can’t be bothered with queues and having lots of passports will allow me to get into Dublin, Auckland and Melbourne quickly.
I guess over time I’ll develop a favourite among my three nationalities. At the moment I’m happy to be a citizen of the world but Australia will have a head start as the place of my birth. Mind you, I was under the impression that this was a modern country that had fully embraced the metric system. However, when you’re born, people want to know what you weigh in pounds and ounces. Are we living in medieval England, people? Anyway, for the benefit of all those old fashioned fuddy duddies out there, I was born weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces, which in the immortal lines of Roddy Doyle in the Snapper, is a decent size for a baby but would be small for a turkey.
I know I’m a girl and all that but it seems that I have arrived into a weight-obsessed world. I intend stacking it on for here on.
While I was still inside Mammy, I heard Daddy talking about his anxieties. He gets a bit weak at the sight of blood and was nervous about taking the wrong route on the way to the hospital. In the end I decided to help him out. I waited long enough so that Mammy was booked in for an induction and then decided to make my grand entrance three hours before this was due. As a result, Daddy already had the bags packed (why do people take more stuff to hospital when a baby is due than they would take on a two week holiday?) and had the car filled with petrol.
The dash to the hospital was much more straightforward than anticipated, although it did include three forks in the road in quick succession. Left, left and right is how I remember it, although I was swinging around in amniotic fluid at the time. Dad thinks all these forks in the road are a metaphor for something but he hasn’t had much sleep lately and can’t think what it is.
I’m two weeks old now and starting to find my feet. At least I think they are feet. They are two odd shaped things that seem to wave uncontrollably in front of me when I lie down. I’m getting eight meals a day, sometimes from grumpy parents at 3am (they’ll just have to suck it up, I’m the new boss around here) and I’m getting lots of cuddles and sleep. Oh, and isn’t it nice to have someone change your nappies? I’m getting through around twelve a day at the moment, about the same as my Dad does when he goes for beer and curry. Except I can do mine without the need for a newspaper or other reading material.
I went for my first spin in my pram yesterday. That was fun, but there are a lot of shadows out there in the big wild world and I found it all a bit too fascinating at first. But gradually the motion got me to sleep. I think Mammy and Daddy have discovered a quick way of settling me down and something tells me that I’ll be spending a lot of time in that pram in the wee small hours of the morning.
That’s my story for the time being. I wish I had more to report but it’s true what they say about Bubbas. Pretty much all we do is eat, sleep and pooh. But I’ve got a lifetime ahead of me for everything else. Time for a snooze folks. I’ll talk to you in 2012.
Friday, 9 December 2011
Waiting For Godot
Our child is now four days overdue and as a result, we have started calling him/her Godot. If nothing else, this gives us a consistent name that we can use in public. To date, we’ve been calling the kid by the names we have decided to announce to the world once we know if it’s a boy or girl. But we don’t want to announce these in advance, so we can only use these when nobody else is around.
When others are in earshot, we become very impersonal and call the poor unborn child “It” or “The Thing”.
So we’re waiting, waiting, waiting. We’re waiting to find out if it’s a boy or girl. Waiting to find out what colour hair he has (for the purposes of laziness, I’m going to assume it’s a “he” in the rest of this posting). Ironically, my wife’s family provide a risk of ginger to this equation, despite the fact that I’m the Irish one in the gene pool.
We’re waiting to see if he will have my ears. My mother’s family have ears like dumbo, so I risk passing on this recessive gene.
We’re waiting to see if he will sleep like me or his mother. I could sleep for twelve hours during a nuclear holocaust, whereas my wife would wake up if a feather fell off a duck in Alaska.
Sleep by the way, is the first thing people mention to you when you talk about an upcoming arrival. “Get as much sleep now as you can” they’ll say, as though sleep could be stored up like a battery. The truth is that if you slept well last night, it only affects how you’ll feel today. You can’t carry it forward.
Sleep deprivation, baby blues, post natal depression, SIDs, messy nappies and colic are all terms we’ve heard recently. Nobody talks about smiles and the way babies smell after they’ve been bathed. Or the way they run to meet you when you come home from work. There is almost a conspiracy to talk down the benefits of parenthood, even though none of us would be here without it.
It will undoubtedly be tough, particularly as I’m no longer in the full flush of youth. But the benefits will more than outweigh the costs. I’ll have somebody to pass on my silky soccer skills to. I can teach him how to steal apples from the orchards down the road and to fashion pieces of plastic into the shape of fifty cent coins for use in slot machines and pool tables. Basically, all the tools he needs for a happy childhood.
One of the key objectives all prospective parents have is to ensure that they don’t repeat the same mistakes their parents made with them. I have to say up front that our parents (and I speak for the missus when I say this) did a thoroughly outstanding job and we wouldn’t swap it for the world. But there are a couple of teeny, weeny things that I’d like to improve on.
The first thing is clothes. Mother’s should be banned from choosing clothes for boys. They don’t have a lot of experience after all, apart from encouraging their partners to wear pink more often and to ditch the beloved t-shirt he’s been wearing for the past ten years. I wouldn’t be so bold as to choose suitable clothing for a small girl, apart from suggesting that black goes with everything. For the record, I should point out some of the sartorial massacres to which I was subjected as a small boy.
Skin tight trousers with a loop that went under your feet were not trendy in the 1970s and never will be until gravity disappears. A velvet suit would have looked well if I was embarking on a career as a 1960s pimp in Harlem. But it did not look well on the day of my confirmation. Tailored short trousers look good on a Bermudan businessman but work less well in the chilly November days of an Irish childhood.
I hope our child will grow up with the freedom to make his own decisions and if he wants a velvet suit, he’s welcome to one. For now though we’d like him to make one major decision and that relates to coming out into the big wide world. It only struck me recently that we all get to choose our birthday. It’s the baby who decides when to come out, not the mother.
I wasn’t to know it at the time but my birthday has a better than average chance of falling on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. So many of my childhood parties were held on days when everyone was fasting or gouging themselves on chocolate eggs and ignoring my celebration cake.
We’re just hoping he picks his birthday soon. We’ve had the bag for hospital packed for weeks and the nursery decorated and the baby stuff assembled. All we’re missing now is the baby.
Packing the bag was interesting. The web and baby books are full of instructions, including the suggestion that you bring your favourite pillow and duvet. I know cutbacks in the health system are a problem, but surely hospitals still provide bed linen? There is even a list for what the male partner is supposed to pack into his light overnight bag. This includes energy drinks, protein bars and instructions on how to remain the emotional rock that your wife requires during this traumatic journey.
As part of my final planning, I’m reading a book called “cheers to childhood” which is an instruction manual for blokes. I’m on the chapter titled “Practical ideas for pain management” which to my disappointment is not a guide to the best pain killers the father should take when he gets a headache.
I feel rather helpless it must be said. The woman does all the work and we men are there for “support”. It doesn’t fit the alpha male need to be in charge. But it’s better than waiting. Over to you Godot. It’s time to choose your birthday.
When others are in earshot, we become very impersonal and call the poor unborn child “It” or “The Thing”.
So we’re waiting, waiting, waiting. We’re waiting to find out if it’s a boy or girl. Waiting to find out what colour hair he has (for the purposes of laziness, I’m going to assume it’s a “he” in the rest of this posting). Ironically, my wife’s family provide a risk of ginger to this equation, despite the fact that I’m the Irish one in the gene pool.
We’re waiting to see if he will have my ears. My mother’s family have ears like dumbo, so I risk passing on this recessive gene.
We’re waiting to see if he will sleep like me or his mother. I could sleep for twelve hours during a nuclear holocaust, whereas my wife would wake up if a feather fell off a duck in Alaska.
Sleep by the way, is the first thing people mention to you when you talk about an upcoming arrival. “Get as much sleep now as you can” they’ll say, as though sleep could be stored up like a battery. The truth is that if you slept well last night, it only affects how you’ll feel today. You can’t carry it forward.
Sleep deprivation, baby blues, post natal depression, SIDs, messy nappies and colic are all terms we’ve heard recently. Nobody talks about smiles and the way babies smell after they’ve been bathed. Or the way they run to meet you when you come home from work. There is almost a conspiracy to talk down the benefits of parenthood, even though none of us would be here without it.
It will undoubtedly be tough, particularly as I’m no longer in the full flush of youth. But the benefits will more than outweigh the costs. I’ll have somebody to pass on my silky soccer skills to. I can teach him how to steal apples from the orchards down the road and to fashion pieces of plastic into the shape of fifty cent coins for use in slot machines and pool tables. Basically, all the tools he needs for a happy childhood.
One of the key objectives all prospective parents have is to ensure that they don’t repeat the same mistakes their parents made with them. I have to say up front that our parents (and I speak for the missus when I say this) did a thoroughly outstanding job and we wouldn’t swap it for the world. But there are a couple of teeny, weeny things that I’d like to improve on.
The first thing is clothes. Mother’s should be banned from choosing clothes for boys. They don’t have a lot of experience after all, apart from encouraging their partners to wear pink more often and to ditch the beloved t-shirt he’s been wearing for the past ten years. I wouldn’t be so bold as to choose suitable clothing for a small girl, apart from suggesting that black goes with everything. For the record, I should point out some of the sartorial massacres to which I was subjected as a small boy.
Skin tight trousers with a loop that went under your feet were not trendy in the 1970s and never will be until gravity disappears. A velvet suit would have looked well if I was embarking on a career as a 1960s pimp in Harlem. But it did not look well on the day of my confirmation. Tailored short trousers look good on a Bermudan businessman but work less well in the chilly November days of an Irish childhood.
I hope our child will grow up with the freedom to make his own decisions and if he wants a velvet suit, he’s welcome to one. For now though we’d like him to make one major decision and that relates to coming out into the big wide world. It only struck me recently that we all get to choose our birthday. It’s the baby who decides when to come out, not the mother.
I wasn’t to know it at the time but my birthday has a better than average chance of falling on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. So many of my childhood parties were held on days when everyone was fasting or gouging themselves on chocolate eggs and ignoring my celebration cake.
We’re just hoping he picks his birthday soon. We’ve had the bag for hospital packed for weeks and the nursery decorated and the baby stuff assembled. All we’re missing now is the baby.
Packing the bag was interesting. The web and baby books are full of instructions, including the suggestion that you bring your favourite pillow and duvet. I know cutbacks in the health system are a problem, but surely hospitals still provide bed linen? There is even a list for what the male partner is supposed to pack into his light overnight bag. This includes energy drinks, protein bars and instructions on how to remain the emotional rock that your wife requires during this traumatic journey.
As part of my final planning, I’m reading a book called “cheers to childhood” which is an instruction manual for blokes. I’m on the chapter titled “Practical ideas for pain management” which to my disappointment is not a guide to the best pain killers the father should take when he gets a headache.
I feel rather helpless it must be said. The woman does all the work and we men are there for “support”. It doesn’t fit the alpha male need to be in charge. But it’s better than waiting. Over to you Godot. It’s time to choose your birthday.
Monday, 28 November 2011
Cinema Paradiso
I vividly remember my first visit to the cinema. My Dad brought my brother and me to the movies to see a full length feature on the 1970 world cup. We had a black and white telly at the time, so the realisation that football was actually played in colour was my first shock. The second thing to hit me was the majesty of the theatre. The screen was bigger than anything my young mind could imagine and the way the sound enveloped me was strangely comforting. There was also the cushioned seats, which were a far cry from the wooden benches I was used to at home.
I started a love affair with the cinema then to which I remained faithful through the years, even though other technologies sought to entice me into their parlour. First, there was video, which killed the radio star and did it’s best to destroy the movie going experience too. I was around when the first top loaders came in and remember that space docking sound as it sucked the cassette into its inner sanctum.
One of mates had a player in the back room of his parent’s house and for a few years during my adolescence, we could think of nothing more edgy than to pool our meagre resources and rent a video to watch teen focussed American movies that might offer the prospect of a naked breast or at least a few curse words that we hadn’t heard before.
Adolescence in the Ireland I grew up in was a slow burning affair.
Video rental shops were the big craze back then and seemed to pop up everywhere. The one we frequented was in a pub, with the videos arranged against the back wall. This meant that your selection was monitored by a collection of surly drinkers huddled around the bar. “The butler did it” they’d say if you chose a thriller. “There are more tits on the bull I have at home than you’d see in that filum” would be their call if you went for something more risqué.
DVD came later and I was a late convert having built up a sizable collection of Woody Allen and moody European movies on video that I was loathe to say goodbye to. But the lure of the box set got me in the end. Who could resist the entire catalogue of The Wire for example? Particularly when you can set up subtitles to understand the gangster accents and watch 20 episodes back to back over a weekend.
But throughout the video and DVD age, I stayed loyal to the cinema. It forces you to sit in one place for two hours, without distractions. You tend not to visit the toilet or play text tennis, as you do when watching a movie at home.
During my bachelor years I noticed that my married friends had all stopped visiting the movies, except for the occasional Saturday afternoon visit to a multiplex with their kids to see the latest Shrek or Toy Story release. When I asked why they never bothered seeing a grown up film, they would shrug and say that they weren’t going to waste a baby sitting night by watching something they could rent six months later. It always seemed to be about the film and not the atmosphere for them.
But in a week or so, I’ll become a Daddy and for the next few years at least, my cinema visits will be limited. So the wife and I have been trying to catch as many movies as possible in the past few weeks. But I’ve never been a weekly attendant. I’ve only ever gone when there was something worth seeing. It’s only when I felt I needed to go urgently that I noticed how much dross is on most of the time.
In my local back in Ireland, Betty (the landlady) kindly displays the front page of the local paper above the urinals to give you something to read while carrying out your waste control. The only problem is that the paper is from 1965 and Betty hasn’t changed it since then. The cinema listings have always stayed with me because I’ve never heard of any of the films that were playing that week. Red Buttons was the star of one of them (which gives an indication of the star quality) and the rest would have fitted into the straight to video category if only video had existed back then.
I puzzled over this until last week when I checked out the new releases and found only rubbish. One is a movie called Red Dog. I read a review and it didn’t go much further than saying “It’s about a red dog”. It reminded me of my mother’s last cinema visit, which was to see George Clooney’s “The Perfect Storm”. I asked her how it was which she took as a question as to the movie’s plot. “It was about a fishing boat that went out in a storm and then it sunk”. I watched it two weeks later and she’d pretty much nailed it. Most films aren’t about much except pretty scenery and boy meets girl. Red Dog falls into this category although dog meets bitch would probably better summarise the ending.
The other films on offer were “We need to talk about Kevin” (which is not the sort of movie expectant parents should see) and “The Orator” which is about a Samoan dwarf and has the added benefit of being in Somoan.
I’d just about given up and resigned myself to a life of Toy Story sequels when I
noticed that my old friend George Clooney had a new release out. “The Ides of March” is a political thriller and makes the West Wing look like Glee. It is magnificent and if movies like that keep coming out, I know where I’ll be spending my baby sitting nights in the next few years. My love of cinema still has a beating heart.
I started a love affair with the cinema then to which I remained faithful through the years, even though other technologies sought to entice me into their parlour. First, there was video, which killed the radio star and did it’s best to destroy the movie going experience too. I was around when the first top loaders came in and remember that space docking sound as it sucked the cassette into its inner sanctum.
One of mates had a player in the back room of his parent’s house and for a few years during my adolescence, we could think of nothing more edgy than to pool our meagre resources and rent a video to watch teen focussed American movies that might offer the prospect of a naked breast or at least a few curse words that we hadn’t heard before.
Adolescence in the Ireland I grew up in was a slow burning affair.
Video rental shops were the big craze back then and seemed to pop up everywhere. The one we frequented was in a pub, with the videos arranged against the back wall. This meant that your selection was monitored by a collection of surly drinkers huddled around the bar. “The butler did it” they’d say if you chose a thriller. “There are more tits on the bull I have at home than you’d see in that filum” would be their call if you went for something more risqué.
DVD came later and I was a late convert having built up a sizable collection of Woody Allen and moody European movies on video that I was loathe to say goodbye to. But the lure of the box set got me in the end. Who could resist the entire catalogue of The Wire for example? Particularly when you can set up subtitles to understand the gangster accents and watch 20 episodes back to back over a weekend.
But throughout the video and DVD age, I stayed loyal to the cinema. It forces you to sit in one place for two hours, without distractions. You tend not to visit the toilet or play text tennis, as you do when watching a movie at home.
During my bachelor years I noticed that my married friends had all stopped visiting the movies, except for the occasional Saturday afternoon visit to a multiplex with their kids to see the latest Shrek or Toy Story release. When I asked why they never bothered seeing a grown up film, they would shrug and say that they weren’t going to waste a baby sitting night by watching something they could rent six months later. It always seemed to be about the film and not the atmosphere for them.
But in a week or so, I’ll become a Daddy and for the next few years at least, my cinema visits will be limited. So the wife and I have been trying to catch as many movies as possible in the past few weeks. But I’ve never been a weekly attendant. I’ve only ever gone when there was something worth seeing. It’s only when I felt I needed to go urgently that I noticed how much dross is on most of the time.
In my local back in Ireland, Betty (the landlady) kindly displays the front page of the local paper above the urinals to give you something to read while carrying out your waste control. The only problem is that the paper is from 1965 and Betty hasn’t changed it since then. The cinema listings have always stayed with me because I’ve never heard of any of the films that were playing that week. Red Buttons was the star of one of them (which gives an indication of the star quality) and the rest would have fitted into the straight to video category if only video had existed back then.
I puzzled over this until last week when I checked out the new releases and found only rubbish. One is a movie called Red Dog. I read a review and it didn’t go much further than saying “It’s about a red dog”. It reminded me of my mother’s last cinema visit, which was to see George Clooney’s “The Perfect Storm”. I asked her how it was which she took as a question as to the movie’s plot. “It was about a fishing boat that went out in a storm and then it sunk”. I watched it two weeks later and she’d pretty much nailed it. Most films aren’t about much except pretty scenery and boy meets girl. Red Dog falls into this category although dog meets bitch would probably better summarise the ending.
The other films on offer were “We need to talk about Kevin” (which is not the sort of movie expectant parents should see) and “The Orator” which is about a Samoan dwarf and has the added benefit of being in Somoan.
I’d just about given up and resigned myself to a life of Toy Story sequels when I
noticed that my old friend George Clooney had a new release out. “The Ides of March” is a political thriller and makes the West Wing look like Glee. It is magnificent and if movies like that keep coming out, I know where I’ll be spending my baby sitting nights in the next few years. My love of cinema still has a beating heart.
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
The Phantom Belly
I was once in a play in Dublin that involved a complicated costume change during the interval. Shortly into the second half I found myself front of stage during a long speech by one of the other actors. During a pause I noticed an elderly lady with a distinctive blue rinse hairstyle pointing at me. I should say that the front rows at amateur drama are usually reserved for people who are aurally challenged, so I wasn’t surprised when she spoke loudly to her partner.
“Who’s he?” she said, keeping her finger pointed straight at me.
Her partner (who was obviously equally hard of hearing) replied in a similar booming voice “He’s the fat bloke from act 1”.
Yes, it’s time I admitted that I struggle with my weight. I have done so since I was a teenager. I got a job in a pub and used to sneak out with crisps, chocolate and anything else I could find (with the strange exception of alcohol). In no time at all I had developed a belly, or a spare tyre as my Mother so cruelly called it.
Then I went into my last year at school and had to give up work, due to the pressures of study. I went back to a frugal existence of three meals a day and soon returned to the scrawny shaped youth I was before I started work. Then of course I discovered beer and the belly returned. Over the years I guess it has fluctuated but the sport I played in my twenties probably kept it under control.
My next challenge was pasta. I didn’t start eating it until I was in my late twenties and moved to Luxembourg. I wouldn’t exactly say I was jockey like when I arrived there, but after 3 years of Tre de Pate every day I came back looking like the Michelin man. Luxembourg is squeezed between France and Germany and has developed a culinary tradition that takes the rich style of cooking from the former and portion sizes from the latter. It might be the smallest country in the European Union but it boasts some of the biggest people.
There followed 10 years in Ireland, which could best be described as an odyssey of Guinness and fried food. As the years passed, I played less and less sport and in one of those cruel games that nature plays I started losing hair in direct proportion to the weight I gained.
Moving to Australia was partly motivated by the desire to live in a healthier, outdoors type culture and this has worked to some degree. I’m five kilos lighter than I was when I got here and have the motivation to drive this further.
But recently I’ve noticed that despite my weight remaining steady, my stomach has bulged outwards. Last night I started getting cramps in the belly department and I was hit with a sudden realisation. I have developed a phantom pregnancy! My good wife is now eight months into her confinement and perhaps I’m subconsciously feeling jealous. I’ve had a well-structured belly for years after all but now she’s getting all the attention, including small children who want to touch her bump. The only people who have ever wanted to touch my bump are Chinese tourists who think I might be the reincarnation of Budda.
Jealousy or not, it is very strange. I find myself struggling to get out of sofas and hold the small of my back while waddling around the house. I’ve also started getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night as though some small creature was pressing against my bladder.
It seems odd though that men should want to share in the trials of pregnancy. It looks a pretty uncomfortable experience. I hope my own phantom experience doesn’t extend to the labour stage. I cry when I get an injection after all. I shudder to imagine what it would be like to have a thing the size of a melon pass through me.
However, I am pleased that my belly will become useful in a few weeks. The biggest thing I’m looking forward to is having our new born child rest on my stomach while I introduce him/her to the delights of football on TV. Skin on skin contact in the best bond a parent can develop with their child and I have enough skin to last the kid until adolescence.
We got into a bit of a panic a few weeks ago when we realised we had nothing bought. But a couple of laborious Saturdays spent in Mothercare and Baby Buntings has sorted us out. Junior now has somewhere to sleep and to wash and enough cute baby clothes to bring a tear to an ogre.
All that is left is for him/her to make their grand entrance. The doctor told us this morning that the baby’s head is now “engaged” which makes it sound like we are involved in a space mission, where we have hooked up with the rocket ship that will take us into the great unknown.
We are certainly on the cusp of something life changing and amazing and that might be a more realistic reason for last night’s stomach cramps. I don’t have much experience with kids after all, apart from once being one myself (and that was so long ago I can barely remember it). So I will admit to being a little nervous. Will I be a good Dad? Will I raise somebody to be my best friend, as my Father has been to me?
All expectant fathers have these fears apparently and all we can do is sit back, let our wives do all the hard work and then hope that instinct kicks in. If I can be half the Dad my Father was to me I will do well. And if our kid can be half the offspring I was, they will also be doing well. Because that means they will be unlikely to have a bulging belly.
“Who’s he?” she said, keeping her finger pointed straight at me.
Her partner (who was obviously equally hard of hearing) replied in a similar booming voice “He’s the fat bloke from act 1”.
Yes, it’s time I admitted that I struggle with my weight. I have done so since I was a teenager. I got a job in a pub and used to sneak out with crisps, chocolate and anything else I could find (with the strange exception of alcohol). In no time at all I had developed a belly, or a spare tyre as my Mother so cruelly called it.
Then I went into my last year at school and had to give up work, due to the pressures of study. I went back to a frugal existence of three meals a day and soon returned to the scrawny shaped youth I was before I started work. Then of course I discovered beer and the belly returned. Over the years I guess it has fluctuated but the sport I played in my twenties probably kept it under control.
My next challenge was pasta. I didn’t start eating it until I was in my late twenties and moved to Luxembourg. I wouldn’t exactly say I was jockey like when I arrived there, but after 3 years of Tre de Pate every day I came back looking like the Michelin man. Luxembourg is squeezed between France and Germany and has developed a culinary tradition that takes the rich style of cooking from the former and portion sizes from the latter. It might be the smallest country in the European Union but it boasts some of the biggest people.
There followed 10 years in Ireland, which could best be described as an odyssey of Guinness and fried food. As the years passed, I played less and less sport and in one of those cruel games that nature plays I started losing hair in direct proportion to the weight I gained.
Moving to Australia was partly motivated by the desire to live in a healthier, outdoors type culture and this has worked to some degree. I’m five kilos lighter than I was when I got here and have the motivation to drive this further.
But recently I’ve noticed that despite my weight remaining steady, my stomach has bulged outwards. Last night I started getting cramps in the belly department and I was hit with a sudden realisation. I have developed a phantom pregnancy! My good wife is now eight months into her confinement and perhaps I’m subconsciously feeling jealous. I’ve had a well-structured belly for years after all but now she’s getting all the attention, including small children who want to touch her bump. The only people who have ever wanted to touch my bump are Chinese tourists who think I might be the reincarnation of Budda.
Jealousy or not, it is very strange. I find myself struggling to get out of sofas and hold the small of my back while waddling around the house. I’ve also started getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night as though some small creature was pressing against my bladder.
It seems odd though that men should want to share in the trials of pregnancy. It looks a pretty uncomfortable experience. I hope my own phantom experience doesn’t extend to the labour stage. I cry when I get an injection after all. I shudder to imagine what it would be like to have a thing the size of a melon pass through me.
However, I am pleased that my belly will become useful in a few weeks. The biggest thing I’m looking forward to is having our new born child rest on my stomach while I introduce him/her to the delights of football on TV. Skin on skin contact in the best bond a parent can develop with their child and I have enough skin to last the kid until adolescence.
We got into a bit of a panic a few weeks ago when we realised we had nothing bought. But a couple of laborious Saturdays spent in Mothercare and Baby Buntings has sorted us out. Junior now has somewhere to sleep and to wash and enough cute baby clothes to bring a tear to an ogre.
All that is left is for him/her to make their grand entrance. The doctor told us this morning that the baby’s head is now “engaged” which makes it sound like we are involved in a space mission, where we have hooked up with the rocket ship that will take us into the great unknown.
We are certainly on the cusp of something life changing and amazing and that might be a more realistic reason for last night’s stomach cramps. I don’t have much experience with kids after all, apart from once being one myself (and that was so long ago I can barely remember it). So I will admit to being a little nervous. Will I be a good Dad? Will I raise somebody to be my best friend, as my Father has been to me?
All expectant fathers have these fears apparently and all we can do is sit back, let our wives do all the hard work and then hope that instinct kicks in. If I can be half the Dad my Father was to me I will do well. And if our kid can be half the offspring I was, they will also be doing well. Because that means they will be unlikely to have a bulging belly.
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