Wednesday 31 March 2010

How The Hell Are We Going To Get Knocked Out In The Quarter-Finals Now?

Imagine my horror when I saw this. I couldn’t even bring myself to read the article. It looks like the team England will be sending to South Africa is going to be made up of snapped players, hobbling about with their hips popping. This is distressing. I am not generally interested in football, or any sport really, but I do enjoy the odd 90 minutes of nationalism when the World Cup is on.

It reminds me of an argument I had with an American friend who had been here long enough to start to enjoy a game of football actually played with the feet. He said that as the game gained popularity in the US, with the amount of money they could throw into the enterprise coupled with the sheer size of the country, it was only a matter of time before they won the World Cup. For some reason this simple opinion made me incredibly angry.

‘You what!? Scotland will win the World Cup before America ever does!' I yelled at him. 'And that’ll never happen!

Tuesday 30 March 2010

Teletubbies Vs Big Tone

I came home from work today and slumped on our new sofa in front of the telly. It took me a couple of seconds to realise that Lynne was talking and that I was supposed to listening.

‘Today me and the baby watched the Teletubbies on YouTube,’ she said.
‘Oh? How was that?’ I replied.
‘She didn’t laugh or anything, but she watched it.’
‘Good.’
‘But that said, I left her watching an interview with Tony Blair while I made tea. She didn’t laugh or anything, but she watched it.’

Sunday 28 March 2010

Further Bananas

I think there are a couple of points about Friday’s post that I should perhaps clear up. Reading back through it I might have given the impression that the baby was finished with breast-feeding, and also been a bit glib about postnatal depression.

1. The baby is still breast-feeding as well as eating her pulped yams, to the extent that occasionally Lynne’s boobs actually run dry. This is because the baby is a giant butterball. Luckily her stomach is now robust enough to handle all the new substances and also formula milk, which caused so much trapped-wind drama in the past. Now that she is five months old, the baby farts like a motorbike.

Still, the baby is never happier than when she is dozing with her rosy, milk-fattened cheek resting against my wife’s breast. Weaning the baby isn’t something that is going to happen in a week, but we do have two more months before Lynne has to go back to work and the bulk of the childcare responsibilities fall on my narrow shoulders.

2. I have no idea how the postnatal depression score is worked out, and luckily I don’t have to know. The health visitor left scoring Lynne until now because she was identified as low risk. I mentioned that the average score is supposed to be about ‘11’, and while this could mean ‘feeling a bit sad and run down’ it could also mean ‘ready to kill my partner because he does fuck all round here except watch the fucking telly’.

This takes me back to my primary bit of advice to all new parents, which is that everything is much easier if you treat it as a two-man job. Fathers, take as much paternity leave as you can get and be involved as you can. And another thing that I might not have mentioned before. Make sure your good lady knows that you still fancy her. This is very important. Everyone around you will go on about how cute the baby is, and of course the baby is cute, but it could leave the tired mother feeling as if she has been relegated to the status of a dairy cow crossed with a toilet attendant. Depressing.

Friday 26 March 2010

Stand By Stomach, Here Comes Banana!

We started to give the baby solid food on Monday. I say solid, but really it was a thin mush of baby rice and formula milk. She didn’t show much interest in it, instead she grabbed the spoon and smeared the goo over her head and upper torso. But at least she didn’t cry.

Tuesday saw two attempts to feed her baby rice, Lynne tried with a mixture made with formula milk which had the same level of success as Monday’s effort, and in the afternoon I gave her a concoction prepared with breast milk, which she ate greedily. She got some on her eyelids, and also put her hands in the spoon before grabbing at my collar, getting it on my face as well.

We don’t know if it was just a case of third time lucky, or whether the breast milk had produced a more palatable goo, or whether she just couldn’t understand why Lynne was trying to give her the goo when Lynne has a perfectly serviceable set of boobs.

On Wednesday I went to work. When I returned the baby had had some mashed banana, and there was some sweet potato on the hob for her to have for her tea. The health visitor had been, and we now have some recipe cards for meals the baby can have. The recipes are all fairly simple. Here are some examples:

Boil a sweet potato
Mash it to a pulp

Or:

Boil a carrot and a parsnip
Mash them to a pulp

Or:

Boil a…
…you get the idea.

Incidentally, the health visitor gave Lynne her post-natal depression score. She scored ‘3’. This quite a low score, because my wife is irrepressibly, at times annoyingly, chirpy. Apparently ‘11’ is about the average score. No, I don’t have any idea what that means.

Anyway, giving the baby solid food is going well. When she sees the cup and spoon in our hands, she flings her arms out stiffly, one leg going like she is sitting on a nerve, and says ‘grrrr-oooh’. This indicates excitement. Her favourite meal so far seems to be potato and peas, blended to a pale green goo. Before you wrinkle your nose at that, think of the pipe-bagged nonsense those fools serve up on Masterchef. It’s exactly the same.

This morning the baby laid her first cable. I was so proud.

Thursday 25 March 2010

Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen! For Your Pleasure...

My new job is going well, thanks for asking. I’m not going to say too much about it in case my cover gets blown and I get busted slagging it off online, but let’s just say it is a customer service role that includes a bit of old lady action. So far said old lady action has been a bit tame compared to this fond memory from my previous job, which I will present in the form of a play.

-----------------------------------------------
Dramatis Personae

ME, a worker drone skilfully mixing the tasks of stock replenishment and customer service

OLD LADY, selecting cucumbers, a bit frisky for an old bird

SAM, a fellow drone, just going for his lunch break

OLD MAN, pretending to choose potatoes while he eavesdrops
-----------------------------------------------
Act I, Scene I
A fruit shop


OLD LADY: I can't believe supermarkets chuck out cucumbers because they're not straight enough. What difference does it make?

ME: You'll take them any old way. Straight or bendy.

OLD LADY (laughing): When you get to my age you'll take what you can get.

{Enter SAM, putting his jacket on]

SAM: I'm getting a sandwich. Do you want anything while I’m out?

ME: Yeah...

OLD LADY: More importantly, do you want it straight or bendy?

ME: Erm... I’ll have it straight I think.

OLD MAN (as if talking to himself): Aye, straight in the mouth.

THE END

Hello Again

It has been a while hasn’t it? My only excuse for not posting for so long is that I have been busy. And it’s my blog anyway. So get it right up ye.

What has been happening? Right now I am lying on the floor typing. The baby is on a cushion next to me, watching me gravely while absent-mindedly chewing a plastic ring. I have just been feeding her a mixture of baby rice and formula milk. That’s right. We are moving her onto solids. I had intended to feed her it on a spoon, but I made it too runny so I put in her tommy tippee cup. She ate it all right, but ended it soaking, what with spillages and gagging.

Lynne is out with one of her pals tonight. So I have a glass of wine. Just a small one. I attempted to watch In The Night Garden as well, but the baby cried at the Ninky Nonk. Kids are meant to love that shit as well, but be careul clicking on that link. The noises are terrifying.

Last week Lynne and the baby went to visit Lynne’s folks. I stayed here by myself. We got a new sofa too, and had chucked out the old one, so for half the week I was in here, no family, sitting on the bare floor, drinking beer and eating junk. It’s funny but I am so used to having someone there when I go to bed that I couldn’t sleep. I would just lie in the dark, listening to the noises that the house made.

On the Wednesday night I cracked and bought some cigarettes. Coming out of the shop two guys were leaning against the shutter. One of them, with a big tan* across his fucking cheek, asked me if I had a spare fag. I said no. He pointed out that I had a full deck in my hand. I conceded that that was true, but kept walking. His friend then weighed in, asking me if I had a spare fag, just as if it was the first time anyone had ever mentioned it.

Here we go, I thought. I weaken in my no smoking resolve and end up getting a kicking in the street for it. That’s the thing about Dumbarton Road; you can hardly walk down it at night without some bam trying to tap you for fags and change.

‘Look, mate,’ I snapped. ‘These are my only fucking fags and I’m fucking smoking them, all right?’
‘Alright, there’s no need to have an attitude about it,’
said the guy with the tan. He looked genuinely upset at my lack of charity.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s been a hard day.’
‘Well, don’t take it out on me,’
he said huffily, and the pair of them walked off.


*for people who don’t live in Scotland; a tan is a facial scar, usually received from a knife or bottle.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

Mostly Slagging The Underground

Living in the city it is easy to dismiss everyone around you as a miserable prick, rushing about their business and swearing at anyone who dares to share the same pavement. But if you go outside with a buggy, everyone smiles at you. If you so much as look at a set of steps a horde of clutching hands reaches out to carry you and all your accoutrements where ever you would like to go. People are nice. Old ladies actually get out of the way as you go past, and staggering drunks babble at you and drop coins into the pram. (This is less welcome, but something of a Glasgow tradition. The coins can be rinsed.)

Public transport is another matter. The buses are ok, but they won’t let you on if there is already another buggy on the bus. And the fucking underground, the famous clockwork orange, doesn’t even have a lift so you need to fold the buggy and carry it and the baby onto the escalator. This means that a team of at least two people are required to get a baby onto the underground, which is ridiculous. And there’s more. If you fail to fold up the buggy on approaching the escalator, they shout at you over the tannoy. Nobody comes out to help. Many times I have seen a flustered young parent struggling to get all their equipment in order at the turnstile while the tannoy squawks at them like God’s tinnitus.

But on the whole getting out and about is easy, as long as nothing goes wrong. When something goes wrong it’s a disaster. Yesterday we were in a shop and the baby woke up, blinked for a bit, and then proceeded to poo straight through every layer of clothing she had on. We were quite close to the Botanical Gardens, which has baby changing facilities, but I didn’t fancy the idea of completely undressing the child in the park on a cold day in March. We were only carrying a back-up vest anyway. We had to sprint home with the kid before the poo went cold.