I was left alone with a ten week old child this Saturday. I can only assume that The Special One had exhausted all other options and – left with no other choice – decided to leave The Little One in my care. As a public service to new fathers everywhere, I’d like to share my diary from that day with you.
0915 Stare at the clock in abject horror. Mentally calculate that I’ve got somewhere in the region of ten hours to survive without accidentally physically or emotionally scarring my beloved daughter for life. Idly ponder whether I’ve got more chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize by the time I’m 39, before realizing that I’ve just walked out of the bedroom leaving my impossibly young daughter all alone with my prize winning collection of antique razor blades.
0916 Look up the numbers for local doctors and hospitals just in case. Plan quickest route to hospital, before remembering that I don’t drive. Phone all taxi companies in the area to put them on standby.
0930 Daughter wakes from milk-induced coma, thoughtfully administered by The Special One prior to leaving. Change diaper, and beam with pleasure as The Little One smiles and laughs her way through the entire process. Transfer her to the bed, and lie next to her to play and chat.
0940 Wonder what all the fuss is about this whole childcare malarkey. Casually consider whether my ‘Dad of the Year’ mug will arrive in time for a Christmas morning brew.
0941 Daughter begins crying. Starts with a casual ‘I’ve just watched ET, and I can’t quite believe that he’s gone back home’ affair, before progressing to ‘I just stubbed my toe on a cast iron sewing machine thoughtfully left on the floor’. She then pauses briefly at ‘I’m sure I didn’t put “must get a demand for thousands of dollars of back tax on the same day that I get fired” on my Christmas wishlist’ before slamming headlong into ‘my fiance just dumped me at the altar to run off with my mother, but not before making me watch as he pureed three lovable puppies in a blender bought for us as a wedding present’.
0945 The high-pitched screams remind me that I must replace our smoke detectors. That is, if The Special One spares me my life when she gets home and finds The Little One still crying.
0951 Holy crap, has anyone ever got quite this red, hot and bothered before? The Little One is looking a bit peeky too.
0955 Check clock. Realise that I’ve only got through 40 minutes so far. Decide to put the wine rack in the downstairs bathroom, to put it out of temptation’s path.
0956 With daughter crying on shoulder, I hunt desperately through my music on iTunes trying to find something that resembles a lullaby.
0957 Hope that the neighbours don’t report me to social services for accidentally playing Slipknot at high volume whilst in charge of a minor.
0958 I don’t care what I might have said in the past, I’ve always loved ABBA! The first bars of Dancing Queen provoke instant calm in The Little One, and I lower her down onto my chest for a celebratory dance. Am given a look that suggests I will be tolerated at best. She must have learnt it from her mother.
1001 Crying starts again immediately as the song finishes, and I frantically try to line up another track. Inwardly pray that Dancing Queen is not the only song that keeps her happy, for fear that I may turn into a babbling mess after ten hours. “Having the time of your life”, my arse.
1002 Take A Chance On Me seems to work too. Am now in full-on whoop-and-holler, and begin to create devious Baby Whisperer playlist.
1034 Michael Jackson is a hit with the kids. Not the first time that sentence has been used, clearly.
1042 Am now on a roll. Have discovered that Queen has a similarly soothing effect, and croon along happily with Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
1045 Decide that I need to vet future lyrics for appropriateness, after serenading my daughter with Bohemian Rhapsody’s “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.”
1101 Blimey, she does NOT like Radiohead. To be fair, even Radiohead’s kids don’t like Radiohead, but I thought I’d try out a little bit of commercial credibility before heading back to the cheese.
1109 Is it wrong to play Amy Winehouse to your ten week old daughter?
1115 Mind wanders to the fact that I’ve not had coffee yet. Daughter still calm from all the dancing and singing, so decide to take my chances. I put her down with her favourite glow worm toy, and walk into the kitchen as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star plays.
1115 and 12 seconds Manage to turn tap on before screaming begins. Walk back into living room, pick daughter up, and press button to soothe her with the help of REM’s Shiny Happy People. Hand slips at last moment, and we end up dancing to Can’t Fight This Feeling by REO Speedwagon.
1130 Finally make it back to kitchen, with Freres Jacques being emitted by the glow worm.
1130 and 27 seconds Oh for crying out loud.
1140 Back to the kitchen. Four tablespoons of coffee go into the percolator. Am midway through administering tablespoons five to ten when I hear a bone shuddering thud back in the living room.
1141 Soothe cat, who has fallen backwards off the arm of the sofa onto the wooden floor. Presumably in shock at The Little One remaining quiet for thirty seconds. Cat refuses to dance to Barry Manilow with me, but seems offended when I walk back to kitchen. I think she was hoping for some N’Sync.
1148 Finally turn coffee machine on. Adopt the appearance of a man who has five minutes to defuse a bomb, with beads of sweat dripping down my brow as I wait to see whether the coffee will be completed before The Little One inevitably explodes.
1153 Does she have x-ray vision, enabling her to sense when the coffee is going to be ready?!
1159 Look at the clock. Struggle to understand why time is moving more slowly today. Surely it must be 7pm already. On Wednesday. Wonder how I’m going to make it through the afternoon. Decide to hide the Brit Out Of Water collection of fine malts.
To be continued…
As every long suffering wife or female partner will readily testify, it is absolutely verboten for men to read an instruction manual before plugging in a piece of technological gadgetry. Any male choosing to even remove the ‘How To…’ guide from its plastic will have his membership of the Men’s Union terminated with immediate effect, a punishment which also applies to any man choosing to ask for travel directions or for assistance finding a product in a shop.
Clearly, this can cause problems. I spent more than half an hour attempting to hook up my laptop to the TV on Friday night, despite the fact that a quick trip to the basement and the abandoned pile of various manuals would have probably saved me all the effort. And I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve walked out of a store without the item I needed, only to find three months later that the thing I had expensively imported from Guadeloupe or Ulam Bator was on a shelf there after all.
Call it stubborn male pride, call it fierce independence or call it bloody-minded stupidity (a title that The Special One is not without merit in using), but whatever it is, I just can’t help myself. Whether it’s a $5 piece of tat or an expensive hi-tech bit of kit, instructions may as well be written in Chinese, such is their value to me.
Of course, children – our highest of the hi-tech gadgets, after all – are perfect for somebody with this kind of attitude, as they come without any kind of manual whatsoever, and you just have to figure it all out for yourself. Unless you live in New York City, clearly, where babies really do come with their very own instruction book.
Don’t worry, the manual isn’t pushed out alongside your newborn; they tried that for a while, but they had problems getting the sharp corners through the birth canal. Instead the city simply sends you the instruction pamphlet when they postmail the birth certificate to you. It’s conveniently entitled “Your New Baby”, just in case you get it confused with the manual for your answering machine, and it purports to be from Thomas Farley (MD, MPH), the commissioner of the New York City Health Department.
Not daring to risk my membership of the Men’s Union, but also not wanting to miss any valuable parenting lessons, I took the booklet to the smallest room in the house and settled down to bask in its glorious authority. I feel that there are some essential tips that I need to share with you all:
1. Coming at the start, as page 1 has an alarming tendency to do, you have to imagine that page 1 contains the essential stuff that new NYC parents need to know – the vital facts, just in case you only read one page. The three points that the aforementioned page 1 mentions are “enjoy your baby” (a critical reminder when you’re changing a vivid orange nappydiaper at 3am), “talk to your baby”, and – of course – “limit TV”. That’s right, New York parents have to be reminded not to let their kids watch TV before they need to be told about trivial stuff like, you know, feeding and medical care. It’s no surprise that the “how to comfort your crying baby” section over the page suggests “turn down the lights and turn off the TV.”
2. Apparently, you should “never shake your baby”. It’s helpful suggestions like this which explain why I never pick up instruction books.
3. “Keep Your Baby Safe” is the helpful advice of one section. I think that Thomas Farley has heard that I can never remember in the morning where I put my wallet and keys the night before, panicked, and put this section in. Although if that is the case, I don’t think that putting the baby “on the hook by the door” is the solution to anybody’s problems.
4. Does anybody really need to be told “Don’t Let Anyone Smoke Around Your Baby” these days? And don’t even get me started on “Keep Your Baby Away From Poisons”. Although to be fair, I’d accidentally left Brit Out Of Water Jr playing with a pile of arsenic when I went off to the bathroom to read this pamphlet, so I was mighty relieved that New York City was tipping me off to this inadvertent danger.
5. In the 2009 list of The World’s Most Ridiculously Obvious Statements, “Be The Best Parent You Can Be” ranks only one notch lower than “Don’t Introduce Your Daughter To Tiger Woods”.
Incidentally, the final section of the manual is entitled “Planning Pregnancy” giving details of emergency contraception usage among other things. I can only imagine that this is New York City’s little joke at the expense of new parents, gently telling them that if they’d only read this booklet then they wouldn’t be in this sorry mess in the first place.
The one thing I’m still puzzling about is where the remote control for the baby is. She makes an awful amount of noise when she’s hungry, and it’d be useful to be able to use the mute function. Of course, if we’d splashed out on the Sky+Tivo baby, I’d be able to fast forward through the diaper changes too, but you can’t have everything.
When I was a kid, at the bottom of a hill down the road from our little cul-de-sac stood what could only be described as a bungalow on stilts. It was the kind of house whose owners had a year-round commitment to proving the old adage that you can have all the money in the world but you can’t buy class or taste. They’d built the house themselves, presumably making full use of the services of a partially sighted architect, and a landscape gardener who had tragically lost all but one finger in a horrific accident involving a strimmerweed whacker and a pair of garden shears. Sure, their home gave them a lovely view over some North East Wales hills, but I can imagine that the only upside to living there would have been the fact that you wouldn’t have to look at the outside of the house all day long.
Anyway, their lack of sophistication came to a height every Christmas. Each year somewhere around the start of December, word would spread around that the family at the bottom of the hill had put up the Christmas lights on their house. And, over the next week or so, we’d each have to make our way down there to check out for ourselves whether they had managed to surpass the garish extravagance and tastelessness of the year before. They rarely let us down.
It’s around this time of year that British tabloids like The Sun do a small news feature on the couple from Dewsbury or Weston-super-Mare who have either spent £15,000 on their Christmas lighting, or are being threatened with legal action by neighbours for erecting a ’son et lumiere’ spectacular which plays Also Sprach Zarathustra every hour on the hour for 25 days straight. It’s as reliably annual a story as ‘Postcard Turns Up At Address 67 Years After It Was Posted’ and ‘Dog Saves Cat From House Fire’.
Living in the ‘burbs of Brooklyn at Christmas is like having a place on a winter-themed Las Vegas strip, only marginally less tasteful. Imagine Blackpool with less vomit and more inflatable snowmen, and you’re heading in the right direction.
A few specific things to note:
1. Electricity consumption in the area must go through the roof at this time of year. Eco-awareness has not yet come to South Brooklyn it would appear, unless there is secretly a crew of 36 people cycling non-stop on exercise bikes hooked up to the grid, in a church hall somewhere in the neighborhood. If you’re on such a team and you’re reading this, do reach out to me and I will lavish you with all the mince pies a man with limited baking skills can create.
2. One of the joys of Christmas (NB, other seasonal quasi-pagan/religious festivals are available – see local listings for details), as far as I am aware, is that you put decorations on your tree and around your house as a family. Imagine my disappointment on Sunday when I discovered crack teams of professional house decorators at at least five houses in the area, erecting elaborate displays that wouldn’t look out of place at Disney World. Come on people – if you want the decorations, at least put the time in yourself. Although to be fair, if I had a set of 2000 fairy lights, and it was me who had to take each one out looking for the duff bulb, I might be tempted to turn to paid assistance too…
3. Young children would do well not to learn their Christmas traditions from the decorations that they see in gardens in the area. After all, the nativity story does not – as far as I’m aware – read “And so it came to pass that a penguin was born in a tent, and the three wise snowmen did travel from afar, bringing gifts of decaying pumpkins left over from Halloween, giant illuminated candy canes, and reindeer made of wire. And then Santa arrived on his inflatable Harley Davidson, wearing Ray Bans to protect him from the millions of red, white and blue lights that shone from the trees. And peace reigned, except from the houses whose speakers did blast out Hark The Herald Angels Sing.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – if you want to experience the pretence of peerless customer service, but an experience that’s as much fun as having your testicles scraped with a rusty razor blade, New York City is the only place for you. Despite having lived in the city for well over two years now, it still somehow comes as a surprise to me when I’m inevitably regarded as an irritant by somebody who makes their living from ensuring that I hand over cash to the business which they represent.
Take, for example, a discount department store that shall remain nameless. We’ll call it “Century 22″, which should be enough to confuse at least 75% of the staff that work there. I would normally avoid it like the plague, but had the recent misfortune of being dispatched to explore its dubiously stocked aisles for some curtains for our new home.
As an aside, I would like to make it clear that The Special One had rightly not trusted me with making an aesthetics-based selection on my own – asking me to pick out appropriate curtains would be akin to asking Joseph Goebbels to judge the prestigious Humanitarian of the Year contest. But even I couldn’t mess up picking up some pre-selected curtains.
Inevitably the course of true drapery never runs smooth, and having discovered that the store only had four of the aforementioned curtains, I looked around for somebody who could help me. I can only assume that nearby staff had seen me piling into the racks of carpets with befuddlement and frustration on my face, as by the time I glanced up, I could have been forgiven for believing that an announcement over the loudspeaker regarding an imminent outbreak of anthrax had caused all employees to scatter to the four winds.
Now, at this point, I should point out that the staff of “Century 22” all wear a badgebutton on their uniforms reading something along the lines of “I care – just ask me!”. So when I finally found somebody, I gave a winning smile and asked if she could check to see if they had any more curtains in stock. The response of “you’ll need to find somebody in drapery, I work in homeware” was almost certainly coquettish flirtation, although the fact that she turned on her heels and walked off would seem to be playing too hard to get, if you ask me.
After five minutes of wandering around, a manager finally and reluctantly disappeared off to a computer before returning to tell me triumphantly that they had fourteen more sets in stock, and introduced me to a colleague who would help me find them.
Which is when I met the true hero of the story. As long as the story we’re talking about is “How To Turn Customers Into Mortal Enemies”.
We’ll call our hero Marcus. Largely because that’s his name. When it came to ‘effectiveness’ being handed out, Marcus was infront of the mirror preening himself and making sure he could still fit into his skinny jeans. And let’s just say that he hasn’t exactly taken out a lifelong subscription to Enthusiasm Monthly, either.
After five minutes of sorting through the entire curtain stock of the store (something I had done myself in around three minutes flat), Marcus went back to the computer to check that a mistake hadn’t been made. On his puzzled return, he spent ten minutes repeating the entire process once more. And then he disappeared upstairs to check the stockroom.
By this point I’d already been in the store for half an hour, and there was a vague chance that the smoke coming out of my ears could have set off the sprinkler system. But safe in the knowledge that returning home with new curtains would bring a smile to The Special One’s face, I swallowed my impatience, and hung around pretending to be interested in pillowcases.
Twenty minutes later, and there was still no sign of Marcus. Store customers couldn’t get access to the kitchen appliance or luggage sections, such was the unbearable angry heat radiating from my cheeks and making it impossible to get within twenty feet of me.
And then I saw him. Marcus. Standing and laughing with some colleagues near the bathroom towels, about thirty yards away. My guess is that they weren’t discussing curtains. I’d go as far as to say that he would have struggled to tell you what a curtain was at that precise moment. As I approached with my face full of thunder, I began thinking of all the things I would say to him to make sure he never treated a customer like that again. I was almost looking forward to it.
Then I realised that I was English, and meekly asked him if he’d found anything. He told me that he’d have one last look through the stock on display. You know, just in case. And I let him. Fifteen minutes later – an hour or so after my arrival – I left emptyhanded, having thanked him for all his help.
I showed him who’s boss, I can tell you.
It’s pretty astonishing how being a father to a month old baby can change your perspective on the things that matter in life. Although, for the avoidance of doubt, I will never like peanut butter, no matter how much my daughter comes to believe it to be the lifeblood that keeps her in existence.
Nut spread issues aside, all other opinions and theories are now officially open to change. And that was never more evident than in my reaction to Halloween this year.
Now, bear in mind that I am the man that wrote this. I think it’s fair to say that I have never been the biggest fan of Halloween. Most Americans tend to take it more seriously than, say, breathing. In the same way that the likes of Hallmark have managed to persuade us that Administrative Professionals Day is a worthy use of our hard-earned cash, so costume manufacturers have managed to convince Americans that a pagan ritual is a good reason to provide extensive job creation for 7 year olds in Indonesia.
But then introduce a small child to the mix (one too young to even see a pumpkin two feet away from her, let alone participate herself) and everything changes. Suddenly when Halloween arrives, you’re focusing on whether you’ve got enough sweetscandy for everyone, and pondering whether you should probably go out and buy another three tons of mini Snickers bars just in case.
Of course, the presence this year of She Who Was Born To Worry probably helped foster the festive spirit. Particularly as after a couple of visits from local kids, she designated herself The Candy Witch, refusing to dole out more than one sweet per child, and giving venemous looks to anyone who failed to say thank you.
So while I resisted costume this year, and instead dressed merely as ‘confused new father operating on two hours sleep’ (a look that I pulled off with comparative ease, if I’m honest), I nonetheless entered into the spirit of the occasion. Fortunately enough questionable events occurred to ensure that I could maintain the healthy dose of overarching cynicism that you all have come to expect of me.
1. The little princess with dietary restrictions
The very first knock at the door came from a tiny princess, who could have been no older than six. She immediately endeared herself to us by pushing her nose up against the screen door to peer inside. Indeed, she was so sweet, I even managed to fight off the overwhelming need to get some spray cleaner and wipe off her smudgy little paw prints from the glass.
And the first thing she said as The Special One opened the door and proffered the bowl of many delights? “My mommy says that I’m not allowed any chocolate.” This came as a blow, given that the “many delights” in the bowl were solely chocolate-based. Thankfully The Special One managed to convince her that the Reese’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup (the root of all candy evil, by the way) actually contained no chocolate, and sent her on her way with a smile on her face. But what parents send their kids out with specific dietary restrictions? “Now, little Elsie, remember that high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavourings are fine, but chocolate and gelatin are out. And don’t ring number 87’s doorbell this year – you know your brother’s never been the same since the electric shock.”
2. The little brothers and sisters
The age range of the trick-or-treaters varied wildly, from the three year old who practically had to be dragged up the steps to the door, to the dubiously aged teens whose skirts were short enough that their parents felt the need to accompany them. As a side note, I’m all for the principle that Halloween is an opportunity for women to show some skin, but I live by the motto that says if your parents need to come with you, you’re not old enough to show some skin. And as a further side note, if my daughter is reading this in – say – 2025, the age at which you are old enough to show some skin at Halloween is approximately 35.
Anyway, I digress. Kids of all ages came round, and they all received candy for their efforts. Even the ones who had dressed as “a kid wanting candy”. But on at least six separate occasions, once they had received their bounty, a kid would proffer another bag and say “Candy for the little one – she’s too young to come.”
Now, I’m still new to this parenting lark, but I tend to believe that if you’re too young to trick or treat with your whole family in tow, you’re too young to be eating sugar snacks. Leading me to the inevitable conclusion that “the little one” is a Halloween scam, with kids taking advantage of doting parents who sigh wistfully at the thought of poor little Johnny in his Merlin outfit, crying at home on his own while the older children go out to forage for him.
Next year, “the little ones” will be getting a bag of raisins and somw dried apricots, mark my words.
3. The double dippers
I appreciate that I’m getting on a bit now, but I’ve still got all my own teeth, and most of my mental faculties are intact. Sure, I forget the occasional thing or two, but The Special One’s electro-shock punishments are having a positive impact on my will to remember, I can tell you.
Anyway, the point is, if you come and get candy from The Candy Witch while dressed as a purple fairy, and then you come back twenty minutes later to try to get some more, we will remember and we will send you away with a flea in your ear. If you come back as something completely different (say, a pink fairy), we will almost certainly not rhave any recollection of you whatsoever and will lavish you with as many Twizzlers as a girl can eat.
4. Commuting to Trickortreatsville
Despite my cynicism, I have to say that Halloween promotes a healthy sense of community, with all the residents of a neighbourhood interacting with each other on a level that’s more harmonious than “for the 837th time, can you sodding well turn that music down?”
But when you’ve got carloads of kids being shipped into an area by their parents because it looks like a place where you might get Toblerone rather then Tootsie Rolls, it’s suddenly less about community, and more about a 12 month campaign of reconnaisance and intensive evaluation of candy sales across the five boroughs. The kids probably sell their swag in their schools for the next year. Or save it for the next Halloween, to provide the gift of gastroenteritis to unsuspecting locals.
Still, I’m starting work on my Halloween costume for 2010. Like a born-again convert, I’m going to put some serious effort into getting it just right. I’m thinking ‘new-ish father operating on three hours sleep rather than two, but still as confused as ever’. Better start working on those bags under my eyes right away…
I promise that normal service will resume shortly, working on the assumption that all babies sleep for 12 continuous hours every single night after the age of 1 month, right?
Anyway, you’ll no doubt be delighted to know that things are calming down at Casa del Brit Out Of Water, although to be honest it would have been difficult for things to get any rockier. After all, there can’t be many newborns who have their first trip out of the house to move house, the second to be rushed to hospital, and the third to go to a funeral. But we always knew that she was going to be special, I guess.
What isn’t so special is the administrative black hole that you immediately fall into as soon as you have a child. Never (knowingly) having had a baby in the UK, I’m not sure what the red tape situation is over there. But frankly as I alluded to in the last post, the paperwork nightmare that is childbirth in the US is enough to convince anybody that one son or daughter is plenty enough, thank you very much. From trying to convince a pharmacy that your doctor didn’t write a prescription for a non-existent child, to persuading your healthcare providers to not send letters addressed to Newborn Child Jones, it’s far from easy to plot your way through the minefield of technicalities and odd requests.
That said, nothing can be as odd as the sheet that has to be filled in immediately after your child is born.
I have filled in some ridiculous forms in my time. And yes, Inland Revenue, I’m looking at you. But nothing can prepare you for the glorious majesty of the “mother’s worksheet” element of the New York birth registration form. It’s the document that is used to put together your child’s birth certificate, so in many ways, it’s pretty important. But when you’re handed the form by your midwife mere moments after the birth of your daughter, and you’re holding a glass of champagne in your hand, it’s kind of difficult to digest some of the questions you get asked.
Of course, there are the expected teasers such as child’s name, mother’s name, date of birth, social security number etc etc. But just after they’ve got you warmed up, they throw in a few corkers.
For a start, they want to know the mother’s ancestry – the nationality, lineage or country which the mother or her ancestors were born in prior to coming to the US. For clarity, even if your family has been in America for a couple of hundred years, you can only put down “American” if you are of native American extraction. Apparently the response should reflect what the mother considers herself to be, and is not based on the percentage of ancestry of any given parent or grandparent. Anyway, don’t tell The Special One, but I put down that she’s British. I mean, she’s been to Old Trafford and she’s been on the London Eye, so surely that’s enough?
Next they want the weight of the mother at birth, and the weight of the mother pre-pregnancy. Now, I’ve only been married for two years, but even I know that you never EVER even mutter the actual weight of your wife, let alone put it down on paper. I can only assume that this question has been placed on the form as a nasty little trick against men. Any unwitting new father who – in the adrenaline rush of the moments immediately post-birth – writes down any figure that is not at least 25% under the actual weight, will find himself sleeping on the sofa until their son or daughter is approaching university.
Somewhat easier, but still perplexing, is the question on whether any illicit drugs were taken by the mother during pregnancy. Among the options are heroin, cocaine, methadone, and methamphetamine. You’ve got to appreciate the effort, but do we really see anybody fessing up to a weekly freebase and the occasional snort of charlie?
Sadly on the question regarding whether the mother had swollen or bleeding gums during her pregnancy, there was no answer box marked “it’s none of your sodding business really, is it?” for me to tick. And on the question regarding whether the mother was at all depressed (‘a little depressed’, ‘moderately depressed’, ‘very depressed and did not receive help’ or ‘very depressed and did receive help’), can I make it clear that any mother who ticks ‘not depressed at all’ must surely have either high tolerance for discomfort, or else made full use of the narcotic options mentioned earlier.
One last question stood out, asking “Thinking back to just before you were pregnant, how did you feel about becoming pregnant.” The four options given are as follows (with my commentary in italics):
1. You wanted to be pregnant sooner (but my joke of a husband was firing blanks, and it took me a while to find a new tennis coach)
2. You wanted to be pregnant then (back THEN I wanted to be pregnant, but boy would I change my mind after the last nine months of hell)
3. You wanted to be pregnant later (what do you mean, condoms have only a 98% success rate?)
4. You didn’t want to be pregnant then or at any time in the future (if it hadn’t been for those 16 vodka cranberries and the glint in the fireman’s eyes, I wouldn’t be stuck with this thing or that stupid lump of a man…hold on, my children don’t get to read these comments in the future do they?)
Can someone tell me what use any of these statistics are? My guess is that the public relations industry lobbied hard to include them, simply so that it creates a much-needed job for a PR flunkey who gets to issue an annual press release saying that 27% of New York babies are unwanted accidents.
Oh, and one thing the form makes very clear is that the father is of no importance whatsoever in this process. All they want to know is his name, date and place of birth, and social security number. Essentially it’s a case of ‘who are you, and can you pay for this thing?’ No questions about depression, nothing about my ancestry, and not even a passing interest in the state of my gums.
To be fair, I’m kind of glad they didn’t ask about my pre- and post-pregnancy weight. It’s not easy eating for two, you know.
Been a long time since we rock’n'rolled, huh? Lest you think I’ve been idling away at Expat Mansions, wilfully neglecting this esteemed journal, let me reassure you that I’ve had one or two things on my mind. Specifically, I’ve been preparing the raw material for what could be my new book entitled “Life: How To Change Everything In As Short A Timeframe As Possible”.
So, cue the Scooby Doo style flashback fade, and let’s take a look back at the last two weeks:
Day One
I wake up at 2am to find The Special One at the edge of the bed, telling me that she’s going downstairs to make herself a baked potato, and that I should go back to sleep. Given that I am Enlightened Man, I intuitively understand that is pregnant female code for either “I have taken leave of my senses and need to be institutionalised” or “I have had a few contractions and I think I’m going to give birth today, so you should rest and relax in preparation for the fact that I will be shouting obscenities at you in a few short hours.”
I plump for the latter, and within a couple of hours, I’m hearing The Special One make the kind of groans that got us into this whole mess in the first place. And, as it turned out, the noises only got louder for the next twenty hours.
From a mother and child’s perspective, the benefits of a homebirth are clear: better outcomes, more control over decisions, and a more relaxed environment for a baby to come into the world. From the father’s perspective, ease of access to your own refrigerator so that you can get the champagne out when your child is born, should not be overlooked. Pink champagne, of course, given that we had a beautiful baby girl at 12:37am on October 1. American manufactured, with British parts – and there couldn’t be a better example of the special relationship between the UK and the USA.
Day two
I’m no expert, but nowhere in the baby manuals do they generally say “if you give birth after midnight, and get to bed at 4am, you should move house later that morning.” But the winning combination of a baby turning up 11 days late, and my wife having an idiotic husband, conspired to cause the movers to turn up less than nine hours after the birth. Suffice to say that my name was mud for some considerable time afterwards.
Day three
My punishment for such a challenging schedule was to clean our old house for seven hours straight. On my own. The arrival of a new tenant was a shock, although the mouse (or small rat) at least had the decency to be dead.
Day four
If I dislike B&Q or Homebase, I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate Lowes and Home Depot. Especially when I get home from buying a brand new microwave, and find that it has a brand new dent in its brand new door.
Day five
Did I not mention that I was launching a brand new corporate website for the company I work for? It’s always useful to have to be sending constant emails when you’re looking after a five day old, and you’re simultaneously unpacking enough cardboard boxes that a passing news crew mistakes your home for the favelas of Sao Paolo. In related news, I also stuck a broom up my arseass and swept the floor as I walked.
Day six
No, you don’t understand, I really hate Lowes. Who knew that not all toilet seats were the same size?
Day seven
Let me give you some marriage guidance advice, should you need it. If you have a child, and you move house on the same day, you’re going to be unpopular. If you then spend a day on telephone calls as you attempt to organize a conference for your company’s senior management team the following week, you should probably keep your suitcases close by just in case.
Day eight
I’ve never spent any time in UK hospitals, so I don’t really have any point of comparison with their US equivalents. But given that the American ’system’ forces you to pay through the nose for private healthcare, I think that when you race to the emergency room with an eight day old child, you should be considered as an emergency. I mean, I’m sure some people are happy to be able to watch TV in the waiting room; I’m not one of them.
Oh, and by the same token, private healthcare should entitle you to access to someone who doesn’t need five attempts to get a lumbar puncture right.
Day nine
Hospital food in the US is astonishingly bad. If Obama wants to make this country a better place, he could do worse than outlawing the production of hospital meatballs.
Day ten
Only in America would you get hospitals that have 50 channels of cable TV at every bedside, but no water fountains anywhere on the ward.
Day eleven
The best thing about American hospitals? Leaving them. With your eleven day old baby, safely in your hands.
Day twelve
When you’ve given birth at home rather than a hospital, it’s almost as if your child doesn’t exist. Try convincing your healthcare providers to pay for, say, some antibiotics for your apparently non-existent daughter, and you’ll find you’ve got more chance of getting a quick roll in the hay with Megan Fox. And add that freckly girl from Lost into the mix if you think there’s a remote chance of the battle over the subsequent hospital bills being over before the London Olympics. The 2124 London Olympics, that is.
Day thirteen
If you have a child and move on the same day, you’ll be unpopular with your wife. If you then spend a day on the phone organizing an international management conference, you’ll need your suitcases nearby in case you get thrown out. And if you then have to go back to work to actually oversee the conference, you’ll almost certainly have to look into expensive jewellery options if you want to remain married.
Day fourteen
I take my 803rd look at a photo of Brit Out Of Water, Jr taking in the world from her bed. Realise that it’s all worth it.
I remember being very excited about the fact that I was about to get the vote. Admittedly I hadn’t had to chain myself to some railings, get hit by a racehorse or even burn my bra in an attempt to get it, but nonetheless I somehow felt that my eighteen years of life had given me the necessary experience to shape the future of my country.
That my first general election was a showdown between John Major and Neil Kinnock was possibly a disappointment. It was like waiting forty years to lose your virginity, only to be told that the only two living females left in the world were Margaret Thatcher and the octogenarian from across the road who would never give you your football back if you happened to kick it into her garden.*
Still, I proudly marched into the polling booth that day and placed my cross against a candidate’s name with all the solemnity of a Death Row jailer pressing a button to release poisonous gases into the chamber. A little harsh to compare some of the 1992 MPs to poisonous gases perhaps, but given that their number included Michael Portillo, John Redwood and Michael Howard, not entirely unfair.
Since then I’ve voted whenever and wherever I’ve been required to, before cruelly being robbed of my electoral franchise by emigration to the US.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to bleat on yet again about taxation without representation, tempting though it is. Because the fact is, there seems to be so many elections over here that half the time I’d have no idea what I’m voting for in the first place.
For a start, you’ve got the primaries, which appear to be like the early audition rounds of The X-Factor or American Idol – mildly irrelevant to the main event, and of little interest but for the freakshow candidates. Come on, I understand that we need to exercise our democratic right, but do we really have to have semi-finals?
And then there’s some of the things that Americans seem to be asked to vote for. Right now in New York, there’s an election for the roles of comptroller and public advocate. I mean, do we really have to choose who is going to look after the finances – isn’t that why you select a governor in the first place, to make decisions about the best person for the job? And is American politics so far up its own posterior that we need somebody whose role it is to make sure that they listen to the public? Isn’t fear of being voted out at the next election enough for these people?
Next thing you know, there will be a run-off to choose who should make coffee at the Senate on a Tuesday, mark my words. With maybe a subsequent vote to determine whether they brew decaf or regular.
* Bless you, Mrs Lester. May your afterlife consist of watching on in horror as a succession of boys kick balls into your pristine garden for all eternity.
Being British in America can sometimes be akin to life as a happy-go-lucky labradoodle – everybody thinks you’re very sweet, but they don’t really understand you, and they’re often shocked to find out that you really do exist.
The problem is that as soon as you tell someone that you’re British, people jump to certain assumptions. As far as some Americans are concerned, everybody has met the Queen, and quite possibly have had tea with her. I know I still miss my weekly cup of darjeeling and occasional chocolate hobnob with Her Majesty, as do most expats I’m sure, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve also met Harry Potter, David Beckham, or that kid from the Twilight movies.
For clarity’s sake, fish and chips is not the only food we Brits eat, contrary to popular opinion. We also eat black pudding on Tuesdays, and tripe on the second Sunday of every month.
And yes, absolutely every single one of us is stark raving posh. Whether we’re from a dilapidated estate in Newcastle, or a country pile in the home counties, each and every one of us was born with a plum and/or silver spoon in our mouth, and is the heir to a fortune built off the exploitation of children in the (former) colonies. Quite.
Of course, my insistence that “we’re just like you, you know” generally falls on deaf ears. And mostly that’s probably down to language. A lot of that might be our own fault. After all, if – as I did this weekend – you use the phrase “I’ve been running around like a blue arsed fly,” you’ve got to expect that people are going to regard you as being a bit different.
That said, Americans (whether cosmopolitan New Yorkers or sheltered West Virginians) love to perpetuate a stereotype as much as the next man, and never more so than when it comes to the British.
Last week, Metro newspaper published an article entitled “Be prepared for a second Brit invasion” regarding a marketing accord between London and New York, to drive locals in each city to visit the other one. Helpfully, Metro offered five “terms to know” for anyone hoping to either go to London, or understand the hordes of Brits apparently about to descend on New York. For your delight and edification, I list them below:
1. “Footie: Means football, as in “I’m off to watch the footie.”
If you’re a football fan, you should know that the first rule of being a football fan is “never refer to it as footie”. It’s marginally more acceptable than soccer, but only in the way that maiming is more socially acceptable than murder.
2. “Bladdered: Means drunk. ‘I am so bladdered, I couldn’t gargle another pint.’”
Words fail me. I have never once in 35 years heard someone use the phrase “gargle a pint”. Even Dick van Dyke would have rejected it as too unbelievable. The irony, of course, is that most American beer tastes worse than mouthwash.
3. “Meat and two veg: Slang for male genitalia.”
Now, I’m no expert, but I struggle to be able to think of a situation in which an American in London (or a New Yorker talking to a Brit over here) is going to need this phrase. Anyone believing that “fancy a sample of my meat and two veg” is part of the essential lexicon of love, with the ability to win the heart of a passing Brit faster than any Shakespearean sonnet, should probably think again.
4. “Trainspotter: A dork. The kind of guy who keeps a log book of train schedules. The British love their trains.”
Show me someone who believes that the British love their trains, and I will show you someone who has not been to Britain. The sad thing being that American trains make their British equivalent look world-class.
5. “Brad Pitt: rhyming slang for defecation.”
Maybe I missed a meeting, but last time I looked, rhyming slang for ‘defecation’ was Eartha Kitt. That’s showbusiness for you. And there was me thinking that Brad Pitt was rhyming slang for “actor with marginally less talent than he thinks, with a penchant for screwing leading ladies’.
So, if this Metro piece is to be believed, Brits spend all their time drinking, shagging, shitting and watching football. Or trains. Thanks for the resounding vote of confidence in our collective personality, guys!
Still, at least we don’t believe that universal healthcare means an inevitable march towards Hitler death camps, eh?
I often tell people how easy it is to forget that I live in New York. I mean, when your morning consists of getting drenched by torrential rain, squeezing up into somebody’s slightly musty armpit on the subway, and getting delayed exactly seventeen minutes more than is strictly necessary, it’s difficult to believe that you’re not actually in London.
Infact, the cities are so eerily similar at times that the recent second anniversary of me being a Brit living out of water passed without comment – or without me even noticing, to be honest.
Like a petulant child that feels it is being ignored or underappreciated, New York has spent the last two weeks trying to get my attention. After all, no sprawling metropolitan area likes to be taken for granted. As a result, the city employed three agents to provide me with a vivid reminder that New York’s like no other place on earth:
1) The deathwish biker
As I think I’ve mentioned, I don’t drive. I’m also pretty environmentally conscious, although my refusal to drive is more to do with a casual unwillingness to kill people than it is with a distaste for excessive emissions. But even as a non-driving eco-warrior, people on bikes can irritate the living bejeesus out of me. Don’t get me wrong, some of my closest friends ride bikes, and I preach transportational tolerance at all times. But come on, let’s be honest, there are some people who get on bicycles and turn into idiots. That doesn’t excuse the time that I opened a car door, and accidentally twanged a speeding biker into a brick wall, but it does maybe explain it.
Cyclists in cities the world over are bound by a common code to give the v’sflip the bird to at least twenty pedestrians a day, and to use pavementssidewalks to scatter passers by in their path. Nothing unusual there. But most of them at least have a vague desire to stay alive.
Not the New York cyclist that I spotted recently though. Waiting to cross a busy avenue, I stood patiently at the junctionintersection as uptown traffic slowed to a halt, before I stepped out into the road. I casually glanced up to see a cyclist approach the head of the stopped line of cars at speed, shout something along the lines of “parp, parp”, and plunge headlong into the traffic heading across town at high speed. Screaming “wheeeeeeeeee!” as he swerved through the cars as they screeched to a halt around him. With a triumphant wave over his shoulder to stunned onlookers, he carried on with his journey.
2) Shouty Bagel Guy
The bagels in our local bagel place are without doubt the best that I’ve ever had in New York. And trust me, I’ve spent many hours and piled on many pounds to check the veracity of that assertion. As a result, I’m more than happy to queuewait on line for five or ten minutes over the weekend in order to get my hands on some.
Last weekend, loaded up with bags of fruit and vegetables, I stopped by to pick up breakfast. Ahead of me in the line stood a heavy set man with his stunningly indecisive girlfriend, who took around five minutes to decide she only wanted a small coffee. Having reminded myself that I’m not a New Yorker and can therefore have a modicum of patience, I bit my lip, waited my turn, ordered my bagels, and turned to walk to the till to pay. As I turned, my bags knocked with all the force of a particularly venomous feather into the leg of the guy ahead of me. He turned, and sneered at me using his top lip in a way that would have made Elvis look like an amateur, and turned to his girlfriend while shaking his head.
In a voice that almost certainly made me sound like a kid that was beaten up at Eton for “sounding too posh”, I looked at the guy and said “I’m sorry, but it was an accident you know.” And in a thick Brooklyn accent that could probably have been heard in New Orleans, he responded with “Yeah, well you got your bags right up my ass, haven’t you?”
Obviously I retorted with “that’s because your ass is so big that it’s practically impossible for anybody to walk into the store without hitting it.” In my head, that is. In real-life, I went red, paid for my bagels, and walked out of the shop in fury.
3) The Seat Snatcher
Nobody likes standing on the subway, but frankly it’s a fact of life in New York. I swear that some people train daily at home so that they’re able to race into a carriagecar and seize any empty seat before someone else sits in it. Even if they get in a good ten metresmeters away. Frankly there are few lengths that some commuters won’t go to in a bid to find a temporary home for their rear.
On one not-so-packed journey home, a man on the train I was on took the art of grabbing a seat to new lows. A small child vacated her seat temporarily to talk to a member of her family a yard or two away, and the lure of the bright orange plastic proved too much for the guy, who promptly sat down in it. The girl returned a few seconds later, looked the man directly in the eyes and burst into tears.
In my defence, I didn’t know she was coming back to the seat, and the tears were a slightly excessive reaction. I even offered her the seat back, but the damage had been done.
Still, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
