by Matt Rudd
Sunday 9 June
Breakfast on terrace. Conversation. Stroll. Lunch (ham, cheese, olives). Snooze. Stroll. Gin and tonic. Pasta. Wine. Bed at half nine.
Monday 10 June
Breakfast on terrace. Stroll. Conversation. Lunch (ham, cheese, sundried tomatoes). Stroll. Snooze. Gin and tonic. Pasta. Bed at half eight.
Tuesday 11 June
Breakfast on terrace. Snooze. Stroll. Snooze. Lunch (ham, cheese). Snooze. Pasta. Bed at half seven.
Wednesday 12 June
I think we could sleep all day today if we wanted. The three of us could lie under the thin sheets, sunlight sneaking in through the bedroom’s open shutters to warm us, and nothing would stop our luxurious slumber. Except, perhaps, the thought of another perfect late breakfast on the terrace.
Thursday 13 June
These are the natural rhythms of a young family. Life without the intrusions of the office. The most complicated thing I have to do is get ham and mozzarella from the deli. Isabel nests with Jacob. I return from my low-stress adventure and we transport wine, wine glasses, plates and simple lunch ingredients out to the table. We then lounge and chat and drift in and out of consciousness. Jacob has never been so smiley. Isabel is not looking exhausted for the first time in a year. And this is the happiest I have ever been. If I am never this happy again, it won’t matter.
Friday 14 June
Breakfast. Sleep. Etc.
Saturday 15 June
‘Don’t you think we should check out the local town or something?’ says Isabel.
‘No,’ I say. But this is the beginning of the end of our paradise, I know it.
Sunday 16 June
‘We could just drive there this morning. After breakfast.’
‘No.’
‘How about lunch out? If I have to slice another mozzarella ball, I think I’ll go mad.’
And so we settle on a walk to the next hamlet for lunch. At the trattoria, we hand Jacob in at the entrance like he’s a handbag and this is a trendy nightclub. He vanishes in a hail of kisses and hugs and ‘Ahhh, bambinos’, while we are treated to a nine-course feast. Paradise continues.
‘You think we should check if he’s okay?’
‘No, he’ll be fine. Leave him.’ I love the fact that Isabel is one of those mothers who can let her child out of her sight for more than a second without becoming hysterical. While I’ve spent every minute of every day of this holiday trying to anticipate and prevent the horrible ways in which our precious son might kill himself (knocking head on pointy villa step, grabbing and eating killer mountain mushroom, learning to walk three months ahead of schedule at the precise moment we leave him on the edge of the highest bit of terrace above the sharpest bit of rockery), she lets him be.
He re-emerges with our espressos, smothered in mama’s pinkest lipstick and neither scalded nor sold into the white slave trade.
We walk back through the vineyards, mission accomplished, itchy feet itched. And then Isabel starts throwing up.
Monday 17 June
According to Isabel’s mother, whom I phone in a panic, you can’t pass food poisoning through a boob. Aren’t women’s bodies clever? This means that Jacob can still feed. The rest of the time, he is my problem. And suddenly our holiday changes from pure idyll to something even Sisyphus would have found unbearably repetitive. I push Jacob up the hill in the buggy. The buggy rolls down. I push it up again. As the sun comes up, this task becomes more and more onerous. The angle at which I push becomes flatter and flatter, the pace slower and slower.
Must. Keep. Going.
Must. Stay. Out. Of. House.
Must. Let. Isabel. Sleep.
Tuesday 18 June
While Isabel lies prone in bed, trying not to think about whether it was the wild boar pâté, the fungi pasta or the smoked salami, I continue full parenting duties. It is mundane, repetitive, tedious, dull, fruitless, and by lunchtime I catch myself marvelling at how anyone could do this full time. But after lunch, something changes. Jacob starts to smile at me more frequently. Almost as frequently as he smiles at Isabel.
I feed him some fruit purée. He smiles.
I tell him a story about a midget who lives in a pub. He laughs. Pretty much at the punch line, where the midget gets run over by a post van. Then we go for another Sisyphean stroll and he starts babbling. We stop on the top of the hill. I lift him out of the buggy and he says, ‘Dada.’ Clear as day. ‘Dada.’ Then he says, ‘Dadadadadadadadadadadada.’ Which is less impressive, but all the same I think we can safely say Jacob’s first word was ‘Daddy’. Ish.
Isabel is asleep and I don’t dare wake her. I just sit on the terrace next to my favourite bug of a baby, no longer wondering how anyone could do this full time. Maybe when Isabel’s maternity leave comes to an end, I can resign and become a stay-at-home dad. It can’t be much worse than being a stay-in-Tuscany one.
Wednesday 19 June
Except, you know, how long does it take to recover from a little local food poisoning? Two hours, I slept. Two. Jacob wanted to play between the hours of two and four. Isabel needed her brow mopping between the hours of four and six. Jacob was up again at six and so on. It’s good to be needed. It’s even better to be useful. But, you know, I’m not Margaret bloody Thatcher. Anyone who can survive on less than seven hours’ sleep a night is clearly not human.
Thursday 20 June
She’s ready to eat again but doesn’t want anything containing pasta, ham, pizza, tomatoes, basil, mozzarella or olives. I have to drive for miles and miles to find a shop that sells porridge and Nutella. By the time I get back, some months later, she is better. Thank the Lord.
Saturday 22 June
Isabel has sworn that she will handle any in-flight nappies on the return journey. Irritatingly, Jacob doesn’t so much as wee. He is now an accomplished international traveller and we take great pleasure in tutting at the family in front of us whose unaccomplished baby screams all the way back to Britain. Tut tut.
Sunday 23 June
Massive post-holiday blues. Despite that first wonderful piece of Marmite toast, the familiar settle of the poorly sprung sofa, the middle-aged excitement of going through the post, there is no ignoring the fact that all is not well. We are back in the village that behaves like it’s in deepest Devon when it’s only an hour from London, and the moment I step out for a late-morning walk with Jacob, I feel its hostility. I get a shrug from the shopkeeper. I get blanked by the postman. Bob, who is wiping tables in the pub garden, looks furious. He hasn’t even seen me so his ire must be directed at some other innocent soul. Or perhaps that’s just his normal face. Such an unpleasant way to conduct yourself. And so unreasonable to ban me from the only pub in the village, particularly now the sunshine is out and I could do with a cheeky pre-lunch half.
Annoyed, I turn and head for home. As I do, I sense that Bob has stopped wiping the tables. I look back. His expression has changed from anger to malevolent pleasure. He is clearly delighted that he can subvert an Englishman’s God-given right to drink beer in the sunshine.
‘We’re going to another pub in another village,’ I tell Isabel the moment I get back home.
‘But I have to put another wash on.’
‘Please.’
‘Okay.’
The policeman was standing by his car in the lay-by on the outskirts of our village as we headed back home but the minute he saw our perfectly harmless, law-abiding Skoda, he gestured for me to pull over. For a minute, I thought he was the postman, but as he strolled over to my window, it became clear that he had a slightly bigger nose.
‘Step out of the vehicle, sir.’
‘Is there a prob—’
‘Your driver’s licence please, sir.’
‘I know I wasn’t speeding. My wife won’t let—’
‘I have reason to believe you are driving under the influence of drink or drugs.’
‘Drugs? What are you talking—’
‘I can smell alcohol on your breath.’
‘I had half a pint.’
‘Stella, was it, sir?’
‘No, it was IPA.’
‘Kindly breathe into this, sir.’
‘I can’t believe this. On what grounds did you pull me over? Were you waiting for me?’
‘Are you refusing to take the test, sir? If you are, then we will have to go to the station.’
The result, of course, was negative.
‘Are you, by any chance, related to a postman?’ I asked, once the policeman had had a good snoop around the car and made a sarky comment about the fact that we had no bumper.
‘None of your business. Now, on your way, sir. And watch that drink-driving. We don’t want any accidents, do we? Not with a little baby in the back.’
Monday 24 June
None of this would matter if I had an excellent job to escape to, but I don’t. It appears I no longer even have an excellent desk.
‘Why are you sitting at my desk?’ I say to the girl who used to be a work experience but got overpromoted by the girl who also used to be work experience who herself got overpromoted just because her dad knows Bill Clinton. ‘I can’t believe the workie is sitting at my desk.’
‘I do have a name, you know. It’s Evangeline and, as you know, I’m not a workie any more. Anastasia had another little desk reshuffle while you were away. You’re over there. Hope that’s okay.’ She points to the deepest, darkest, most windowless corner of the office.
I won’t let her win, even if she does have a name. With impressive self-control, I walk over to the deepest, darkest, most windowless corner of the office and start work. Or rather, I start blogging and tweeting and Facebooking, because apparently that is now what constitutes work.
‘I don’t know why I’m here any more,’ I tell Johnson in the pub at lunch.
‘You’re like a mayfly. You have fulfilled your reproductive obligations. You have outlived your usefulness to your species. You now have no reason to exist. There is nothing but decline and death to look forward to unless you decide to reproduce again, but that’s environmentally unfriendly so I doubt Isabel will go for that. Nope, that’s the end for you, sonny. Just be glad you aren’t a spider. Spiders have an even rougher time than men. They have sex. They get eaten. If I were them, I’d refuse to have sex in the first place. Don’t give away your one bargaining chip, spider. At the very least, make not being eaten a prerequisite of hanky-panky.’
‘I meant about my job. Our jobs. Since when does everything have to be all internetish and cyberish and blogospherish?’
‘I’ve got nearly seven hundred followers on Twitter.’
‘You, too. They’ve got you, too.’
‘You want to play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ asks Johnson. ‘I almost won a pound while you were away.’
Tuesday 25 June
Johnson might be able to take all this lightly, but he’s not thinking it through. This is Anastasia’s revolution. She’s sidelining all the people with sensible names and replacing us with Evangelines. All I have done is turn up late a couple of times in the last few months. The rest of the time, I have been as cooperative and productive as possible. And how am I rewarded? With a removal of window perks. Just in time for summer.
Wednesday 26 June
Evangeline is basking in the sun she gets from my window. But I have had this morning’s last laugh. I have written a blog, which is to say I have typed something and it has gone on the internet. And people are reading it. It is the ninth most popular post on the Life & Times website. And I’ve been ever so slightly clever: my first blog is about how much better life was before the internet. I’ll go along with the Anastasia revolution, but I’ll do it in a way that shows how ridiculous it is.
Thursday 27 June
My blog is the sixth most popular post on our website. I am the future. I am technoman. I write a second blog about how virtual popularity is inversely proportional to real popularity and immediately get comments about how much people agree. Anyone can do this whole internet lark, but how many can do it ironically?
Evangeline looks a bit hot and bothered in the suntrap that is my desk. She has competition.
Anastasia looks miffed when she walks out of the office. The old dog has learned to blog – and our readers seem to be liking it. Ha ha ha!
Friday 28 June
I get to work and Evangeline has brought in three new workies called Octavia, Cordellia and Maybelline. And because there are no spare desks, they are all sitting right next to my desk typing things into their iPhones. I don’t see why I must have these children tapping away next to me, but Evangeline says she needs the space to test a new virtual computer. The next thing I know, she is dressed in a silver cat suit and is doing what looks like Tai Chi. So are the three workies. And they’re all floating around my desk, laughing and moving holograms around. Then I look at my hands and they’re made entirely of wires and microchips. Then I wake up in bed at home, face down with my arms crossed.
As I wait for the feeling to come back into my arms, I notice that it is 9.30 a.m. and I am still in bed. Well not bed-bed. Camp-bed-bed. Now I remember the last thing that happened before the aliens attacked…Jacob was crying and Isabel ordered me into the spare room. ‘There’s no point both of us being awake and you have to work in the morning,’ she had said. Half asleep, I had dragged myself to the spare room, got comfortable in the camp bed, thought to myself that I absolutely mustn’t fall asleep before setting the alarm, then fell asleep without setting the alarm.
Nine minutes after I have regained feeling in my arms, I am at the station, unbreakfasted, unshaven, untoileted, mildly hysterical.
Thirty-nine minutes after that, I am still at the station because apparently there’s hardly any need for off-peak trains from this stupid village.
Some time after eleven, I get to the office and I’ve decided, in anticipation of yet another unbearable reprimand from Anastasia, to say a truck crashed through our living room because the one thing I’ve learned about lying is that the more ridiculous it sounds, the less likely anyone is to question it.
There are no Maybellines or Cordellias. There is an Evangeline, and she smirks as I walk past. I brace myself for Anastasia, but she’s not there. What I find instead is an internal memo tucked into the keyboard on my crappy, unnaturally lit desk. I have spent all week being positive and upbeat and not complaining and going along with the revolution, and the very first time something, through no fault of my own, goes wrong, I get another bloody memo. She doesn’t even wait to find out what’s wrong first. I mean, a truck could have crashed through our living room.
I power up my computer and try to take a deep breath. I will open the memo once I have had a coffee.
I get up to get a coffee and notice, only then, that someone has taken my chair, the special blue one that has been ergonomically examined by HR to ensure that I don’t turn into a hunchback before I’m forty. In its place is a red one that doesn’t look very ergonomic at all. I look over at smirking Evangeline and there it is – my chair.
‘That’s my chair.’
‘Oh, yes. Well. They said I could try it since you weren’t in. See if I want one like it.’
‘It took me three years to get that chair.’
‘It is very comfortable. Much better than those old red ones. You can have it back once the HR woman’s been up to assess me.’
Enough is enough. There comes a point where you have to stand up for yourself. If Anastasia wants me out, it’s going to be on my terms. And my terms are that I’m the one who writes the letters around here. I chuck her memo to one side, type a furious letter of furious resignation, march into her office and leave it on her keyboard.
Calmly, I gather my things and walk out. Johnson is trying to say something to me, but it’s too late. I’m not listening. I am free. I am Braveheart. No, too much. I am Jerry Maguire. No, I am Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Except that instead of going on a rampaging killing spree around Los Angeles, I go on a drink
ing binge around London. Except that it’s more of a drink than a drinking binge because I get halfway through the first pint and suddenly come to my senses.
What have you done, you idiot? You have a family. You have a family living in temporary accommodation. You can’t just resign. What will you do now? But I had to resign. I was being pushed out. Isabel will understand.
No, she won’t. Of course she won’t. She’ll think you’re just throwing a tantrum because someone else has a column and you don’t.
Why would she think that?
Because it’s true. You’ve chucked in your job because you’re jealous. And that makes you an idiot.
Shit.
Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe Anastasia hasn’t seen the letter. Frantically, I dial Johnson’s number.
‘William, what the hell—’
‘Is she back?’
‘Who?’
‘Who do you bloody think…Anastasia, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘Has she seen the letter?’
‘Of course she has. She’s already had Human Resources clear your desk.’
I wander the streets for what seems like hours. I feel sick. I feel dizzy. I keep trying to gather my thoughts but I don’t know where to start. What have I done? What was I thinking? How am I going to tell Isabel? With nothing resolved, I get my normal train home and walk through the door like normal. And she says, ‘You’re back. We’ve missed you. How was your day, darling?’