Growing Pains of a Hapless Househusband

by Sam Holden

  Dom had a point. Our local pool seems to breed more bacteria than the average hospital ward. Dip the children in the water and hey presto! A fun new skin disease called molloscum! An exciting new cough!

  'But maybe Suzie will be sacked?'

  'She won't,' said Dom. 'People never get sacked these days.'

  'Really? I did.'

  Dom didn't say anything. For once, he looked genuinely sheepish.

  Maureen was in a worse state than we had expected. The poor woman could barely walk, and it took about five minutes just to get her into the car.

  'Are you sure you're OK?' I said.

  'I'll be fine, dear,' she replied. 'But who are you two anyway?'

  We briefly explained who we were.

  'So am I going to be on the telly?'

  'You are indeed,' said Dom. 'I suspect you will be the star of the show.'

  'In that case, I think I shall buy one.'

  'Buy what?' asked Dom.

  'A telly, of course.'

  Dom's eyes, Tube logo.

  'You mean you actually don't have a TV?' he asked

  'That's right. I never saw the point. There's so much to be getting on with besides the telly. I have friends who watch the bloody thing all day and it rots their brains, I can tell you. From what I've heard, it's just full of programmes about doing up houses. That, or doing up people. You would have thought some people could get a life.'

  Dom went silent. I allowed myself a covert smile. I looked in the rear-view mirror and studied our passenger. She must have been in her late sixties, and shared her daughter's good features. Occasionally those features would contort as a bolt of pain from her hip shot up her body. It was painful even to watch.

  'Do you need anything?' I asked. 'Perhaps we could stop at a chemist?'

  'No it's all right, dear. I'm drugged up to the eyeballs as it is.'

  'OK, well, just let us know.'

  We arrived back at Suzie's just as she was leaving to take the three children to school. Toby was filming her, and as she looked stressed and flustered, it was making great TV in Dom's eyes. Once again I thought it an abuse, but I felt even worse than after what had happened with the Sincocks because it was basically my idea. We waved Suzie goodbye, and wished her luck, and then we turned our attention to Maureen and little David.

  'So how do you normally get him to the playgroup?' I asked.

  'Well, obviously I walk him down there.'

  'And how far is it?'

  'It's about half a mile.'

  'Half a mile? How long does it take you?'

  'Depends on the old hip. Sometimes ten minutes, sometimes the best part of thirty minutes.'

  She let out a wince of pain.

  'Well I don't think you should be walking anywhere today,' I said. 'We'll give you a lift down.'

  'Honestly love, that's very sweet, but I'm fine.'

  She didn't look it.

  'I really think we should,' I said.

  At this point Dom pulled me aside.

  'Perhaps we should let her try,' he said. 'Just to get some footage.'

  'Really?' I asked. 'But she looks in terrible pain.'

  Dom went and spoke to her.

  'Do you think you might be able to manage a little walk?' he asked in that condescendingly high-pitched voice that people use with old people. (Not that Maureen is that old.)

  'Of course I can manage!' she said. 'Honestly, all this fuss!'

  'OK,' said Dom.

  Once more I reflected on a spectacular display of faux sensitivity by Dom. It was excruciating to watch Maureen take little David by the hand and walk down the road. In fact, he was the faster of the two, and it was more a case of him leading her.

  'Hurry up Nan!' said David mercilessly.

  She did her best, but it was clear that the going was too tough. Bone was rubbing against bone, and although that doesn't sound as though it should be painful, I'm told that it is.

  'Come on Dom,' I hissed after she had struggled for about thirty yards, 'that's got to be enough.'

  'Let's just give it another ten yards.'

  'For fuck's sake! How much more do we need?'

  I could see another bolt tear through her body.

  'Right, that's enough,' I said, and ran forward. I could hear Dom tutting, but I just ignored it. I reached Maureen and David, and told her that she really didn't need to continue.

  'But I must take David to his playgroup,' she insisted.

  'But we can help you,' I said. 'I can give you a lift. You're clearly in a lot of pain, and I really don't want you to suffer on our account.'

  Her eyes were wet, and she was struggling hard not to cry.

  'Come on Maureen, I insist.'

  'But I must do it,' she said. 'I really must. I don't want to let Susan down.'

  'I know,' I said. 'And you won't be.'

  The pride was easy to understand. This was a woman who didn't watch TV, and was therefore presumably pretty active, or at least used to be. Clearly the idea of not being able to do something as simple as walking her grandson to his playgroup was more emotionally painful than the physical pain of trying to do so.

  'It just makes me so angry,' she said. 'I've been waiting two years for a hip, and the bloody health service keeps letting me down. Two operations cancelled, all at the last bloody minute, and every time it's cancelled it's another four-month bloody wait.'

  She paused to wince again.

  'OK,' I said. 'Here's a plan. We'll drive up to the playgroup, we'll take some shots of your dropping David off, and then we'll drive back to Suzie's and have a cuppa.'

  'Whisky?' she asked.

  'A cup of whisky?'

  She smiled.

  'Fooled you there!'

  I laughed. I liked her enormously, and if she had really meant it about the whisky I wouldn't have blamed her.

  Suzie rang a little later to tell us the news.

  'Well, it wasn't legionnaires' in the end,' she said.

  'Thank God for that,' I said.

  'It was all a bit strange – the two patients just discharged themselves from hospital. They said they were feeling a lot better and just left.'

  'So does that mean that you guys are off the hook?'

  Suzie sighed.

  'I wish! Health and Safety are still making us drain the pool and get the whole place disinfected.'

  'How long is that going to take?'

  'Until Friday, and it'll mean working late. I really don't know how much of a help I'm going to be with your programme, I'm so sorry.'

  'Not at all,' I said.

  'Perhaps we can make it another week.'

  'No need,' I said, 'we've decided to focus on your mum instead.'

  'My mum?'

  'That's right. Is that OK?'

  'Er, I guess, if she's OK with it? But you must remember her hip is really bad, and she won't be able to do very much. Normally I just ask her to fetch the children from school and give them their tea if I'm running late.'

  'Well we can do all that.'

  'But I thought the programme was all about watching how I did it and then advising me?'

  'We can do that with both you and your mum.'

  'You sure?'

  'Absolutely.'

  After I put the phone down Dom took me to one side.

  'This wasn't the idea at all,' he said.

  'Oh?'

  'The idea was that we were just going to let granny get on with it, and watch the chaos that ensued.'

  'But she's not capable of doing anything!'

  'That's not our fault. What if we weren't here? What would happen then?'

  'But the reason why she's here at all is because of us!'

  'How do you mean?' Dom asked.

  'Because of the cock and bull story about the leisure centre, of course.'

  'All right, all right, but we've got to get some fuck-ups on cam. These people are too normal, and you're being too nice to them.'

  'Compromise?'

  'What?'


  'We help them out today, and then tomorrow we let it play its natural course.'

  Dom scratched his stubble, and then he grinned.

  'I've got it,' he said. 'We put up some cameras around the house, and then make her wear a "GrannyCam", which will show her point of view. I'll then say we've got to be off filming something else, and we can just watch what happens remotely.'

  'Very Big Brother,' I said.

  'Well, why not cross formats once in a while?'

  'Why not indeed.'

  We hardly did any filming after that. I picked the children up from school in the car, although the edit will make it look as though Maureen did it. We cooked the tea, and the four children ate it all up, and even said their pleases and thank-yous, annoyingly enough. While all this was going on the crew were rigging up the house with cameras everywhere barring the lavatory. Then they showed Maureen how to attach her GrannyCam. (That's probably also the name of a website I don't want to look at.) We left when Suzie got back, which was at 6.30. We told her what was happening tomorrow, and although she looked unsure, Dom insisted that Maureen would be fine, and that a researcher would be watching it from our hotel, and if there was a problem, we could pop round and sort it out.

  Suzie still looked doubtful, as did I.

  Wednesday 14 May

  It felt immensely voyeuristic to sit and watch somebody get on with their life, but that's what we've done all day. Well, nearly all day.

  We dropped Maureen off first thing in the morning, and from then on we sat back to watch the 'show' in a mini-studio that Dom had set up in his hotel room. Because GrannyCam was streaming over the Internet the quality was a bit jerky, but we got a good idea of what was going on. At times we got far too good an idea, as Maureen kept forgetting to turn off the GrannyCam when she went to the lavatory. Although this wasn't as visually disconcerting as it might have been, it was more aurally offensive.

  We watched everything – Suzie supervising the kids brushing their teeth, Suzie repeatedly asking whether her mother was going to be all right, Suzie leaving for work, Maureen getting their coats on, Maureen hobbling to school. This was particularly painful to watch, and although she said that she had taken some industrial-strength painkillers, we could still hear her wincing as she walked. However, when she looked after David she managed brilliantly – taking him to the swings, feeding the ducks, all the cliché granny things.

  At three o'clock she hobbled back to school to pick up the children. By this point Dom was desperate for things to go pear-shaped.

  'C'mon you little beauties,' he said. 'One of you pick a fight. Or fall over. Something naughty, please.'

  Instead, the walk back home went without incident.

  As did much of the afternoon.

  As did teatime.

  By then Dom was literally tearing his hair out. I thought people only did that in cartoons, but Dom really was.

  'For fuck's sake!' he shouted at the screens. 'Can one of you bloody kids just piss around!'

  'Are you sure you haven't drugged them?' I asked.

  Dom took this badly.

  'No of course I haven't!'

  'Joke! Joke!'

  'I'm going to kill the fucking researcher who found this lot. Who was it, Emma?'

  'I think it was Nicola,' said Emma.

  'Didn't she ever meet these fucking people? Didn't she realise they were saints?'

  'I don't think she did.'

  'Why the fuck not?'

  'Because you wouldn't give her any petrol allowance to drive down here, remember?'

  'Oh.'

  It was always nice to watch Dom being skewered by his own actions.

  We carried on watching, and then, just as the children were finishing their tea, Maureen let out an enormous scream of pain.

  'My hip! My hip!' she kept crying.

  The GrannyCam then went all sort of skewy, and when we cut to the kitchen cam we could see that she had fallen. The two younger children started laughing, whereupon the older two laid into them.

  'Don't laugh at Nan!' said Jamie (I think).

  And then, much to Dom's delight, a fight broke out. Plates, cutlery, cups – all were thrown, some of which landed on Granny, who moaned as every new missile impacted.

  'This is perfect,' said Dom, 'just perfect.'

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  'The poor woman's in agony, and you think this is perfect?'

  'She'll be OK, she's just fallen over. Where are you going, anyway?'

  I had stood up and was feeling for my car keys in my pocket.

  'I'm going to help her, Dom. That's what people do when they see other people in trouble.'

  'She's fine! She'll get up in a sec and take another painkiller.'

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  I drove round as quickly as I could, only to find that the door was locked. I knocked on it furiously, and although I could hear the children running riot inside, they couldn't hear me (or chose not to). I then decided that as it would take too long to knock on neighbours' doors to see if they had any keys, I would just have to break the door down.

  Easier said than done. At first I tried it with my shoulder, but all that did was hurt. I then remembered that the best thing to do was to actually kick the door in, which I tried next. I kicked hard, the door didn't open, and then, because I had been bracing myself to go forward, I lost my balance and fell arse over tit. Nice one, Holden. Thank God I wasn't an SAS trooper at the Iranian Embassy siege.

  'What are you doing?' asked a neighbour. She had a hairnet, but not a rolling pin.

  'I'm trying to break in.'

  'Why? Are you a burglar?'

  'No! But do you know Suzie's mum Maureen? She's had a nasty fall and she's trapped inside with the children. Do you have a key?'

  'No. And how do you know she's had a fall?'

  'Because I saw it on film.'

  'You saw it on a film?'

  'Never mind,' I said, whereupon I stepped back and gave the door an almighty kick. Kerpang! Thank God for that, I thought, not just for the sake of Maureen, but also for my dignity.

  I rushed in. The children looked startled, and little David was crying. Some paternal instinct made me want to pick him up and give him a quick cuddle, but I thought it best to attend to Maureen first. She looked in a bad way. Not about-to-be-dead bad, but bad in a should-be-in-bed-and-not-looking-after-four-small-children way. She was moaning gently, and repeating, 'My hip, my hip'.

  'It's OK Maureen, I'm here now. Do you think you could get up?'

  'I don't know, love. Can you help me?'

  I noticed that her clothes were covered in food that the children had thrown at her. That made me think of Dom, and then made me uncomfortably aware that I was being filmed. I tried lifting Maureen up, and each time I did so she moaned in agony. The situation was clearly getting worse, and the children had finally realised that Nan was not playing.

  'Listen,' I said. 'I'm going to call an ambulance.'

  'Don't do that!' she snapped. 'I'm perfectly OK. I just need a little time.'

  'Maureen, I don't think that you are. I reckon you may have hurt yourself more than you realise. If you're feeling this much pain through the painkillers, you ought to be in a hospital.'

  'I've fallen over before,' she said. 'I just need a few minutes. I don't want to waste anyone's time.'

  'You won't be,' I said.

  The ambulance arrived in ten minutes, and within five minutes she was in the back of it. ('Broken hip I suspect,' said one of the paramedics.)

  'Is Nan dead?' asked one of the children.

  'No, she's just hurt her leg.'

  'I thought when people go to hospital they die.'

  'No they don't,' I said. 'Some people do, but not your granny, because she's very strong.'

  'What's a granny?'

  This was not the time to explain that one, so I turned on the TV and sat them in front of it. I then called the leisure centre, and within ten minutes Suz
ie was back at home.

  'How did it happen?' she asked.

  I told her, and she started to cry.

  'Poor Mum,' she went. 'It's all my fault, I should never have asked her.'

  'It's not your fault,' I said. 'You had no choice.'

  'Maybe I could have asked a friend. I should have asked my neighbour Dawn, that's who.'

  More tears.

  I put an arm round her gently.

  'It's not your fault,' I said. 'It's our fault, it's this bloody TV programme.'

  'That's kind of you to say, but it is my responsibility.'

  She picked up the phone and called Dawn, who came round ten minutes later. I decided that I was intruding, and, after checking that I wasn't needed, I left.

  When I got back to the hotel Dom gave me a high five, which I neglected to return.

  'That was great!' he said. 'WonderHubby to the rescue!'

  'Oh cut it out,' I said. 'That woman's got a broken hip because of us.'

  'It'll heal. But you should see the footage! We've even got the camera in the hall showing you kicking in the door! It's like some cop show. Brilliant! And then the stuff of you trying to lift her up, and then the ambulance turning up – we can dub in some nice sirens – all great, just great.'

  'I think I'm going to go home,' I said.

  'No problemo,' he said. 'I think this one's in the can.'

  'But we can't have got a show out of this.'

  'Wanna bet? We can make a show out of anything.'

  Friday 16 May

  I rang Suzie today to see how her mother was. Her hip was indeed broken, but it was a blessing of sorts, as they had to operate then and there. Unbelievably, we had done her a good turn. I then asked how the leisure centre was.

  'It looks great! And the pool has never been so clean. In fact, the whole place feels brand new! I think we're going to get a lot more members.'

  'Wow. Kind of a cloud with a silver lining then.'

  'Exactly! I don't know what it is about you, but you brought both disasters and miracles.'

  'Well, the Chinese ideogram for crisis is the same as the one for opportunity,' I said.

  'That sounds very clever,' she said. 'Where did you learn that?'

  'I wish I could say to you, "Oh, I just happen to speak Chinese" but I'm afraid not.'

  'So how then?'