Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn remembers it all except the veg
So there we were, The Boy was dressed in his Stormtrooper pyjamas playing Animal Dominos with my parents (it would make a poor deleted scene on a Star Wars DVD) and we’d just finished eating salmon and potatoes. (What was the veg? Carrots? Broccoli? Can’t remember. Must remember.) My wife had just been for a 37 week pregnancy scan and we’d been advised and decided to go for an elective Caesarean. The day we had down was two weeks and a day away, and it felt good to have made the decision – nervous, yes, but it felt like a step forward.
Rewind to the Monday morning. I’d done a complicated and hurried handover at work which wasn’t so much passing the baton, as explaining the precise manner and frequency with which I’d dropped the baton during my stretch. The night before, while finalising and emailing last week’s column, I half-watched Agatha Christie’s Marple, which I found incomprehensible (Marple, not the column). I still, however, managed to randomly guess the perpetrator of the heinous crime. (Again, Marple, not me and this column.)
Earlier that day, yes, I’d finally cracked the secret of cooking pork (this felt important then): how to keep the crackling crispy and the meat moist, a mystery that echoes through the generations. Perhaps it should be the plot of the next Dan Brown book, the secret buried in a crypt under Middle Farm. In the morning I’d gone to the supermarket, and when I next lay eyes on the receipt and spot the date, I’ll be thinking how close it was.
“Remember the salmon, the potatoes, the dominos and The Boy dressed as a Stormtrooper”
Rewind further to the Saturday, and I was trying to come to terms with Tottenham losing their 100 per cent Premiership record by losing to Man Utd. (Don’t worry, readers, I will come to terms with it. I’ve done it before.) I’d also taken The Boy to the magnificent and slightly crazy Booth Museum, containing stuffed birds and cases upon cases of butterflies and moths. (Ten years ago I’d hired a heron, an owl and a human skull for a school still-life but that’s a story for another time).
Earlier, The Boy had gone to a friend’s birthday dressed as ‘Sporticus’. I’d made the mistake of telling him he looked ‘hilarious’ which he got very cross about, telling me seriously he didn’t look ‘hilarious’, he looked ‘great’. And most importantly, this was the weekend after The Boy’s first week at school where he’d made us so proud – but again, that’s a topic that deserves more space.
We’ve gone back too far. Let’s forward back to the Monday evening, remember the salmon, the potatoes, the dominos and The Boy dressed as a Stormtrooper. Press pause. Then resume. And my wife goes into labour.
