by Matt Rudd
‘Daaaaaad, don’t be minging.’ Isabel has reverted to her teenage self.
‘Pass the cranberry sauce, Mum.’
‘Oh, look. Jacob’s smiling,’ replies Mum and I realise I have no hope of getting the cranberry sauce any time soon. I fold my arms crossly, and Isabel gives me the stop-being-a-teenager look.
‘Look at his lovely teeth.’ Isabel’s mum is getting involved, too. ‘Polish teeth are always strong. He must have Polish teeth.’
‘Hasn’t he got lovely eyes, though,’ says Mum. ‘South Africans always smile with their eyes.’
‘He’s got your nose,’ says Isabel’s dad to Isabel’s mum.
‘He’s got proper hair now, hasn’t he?’ says Isabel, by way of interruption.
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out like William’s,’ says Dad.
‘Hahahahahahahahahahaha,’ says everyone, including Jacob, the cheeky little chap, and Isabel squeezes my hand under the table.
Tuesday 31 December
Tomorrow my son will be one. He’ll be two this time next year and then he’ll be going to university before we know it. Probably Oxford. Or Harvard. Or he’ll drop out because he finds the constraints of formal education tedious. That’s what Isabel would like – an education conducted largely under oak trees, using dandelions to explain gravity. And he’ll become a great actor or philosopher – or none of the above.
I don’t mind. I don’t mind what happens to him as long as he’s happy like I am. Yes, I am happy. I don’t know why I think I’m not half the time. Overall, looking at the big picture, I am happy. I might not be able to stay up to see in the New Year because my son, my beautiful son, woke up and wanted to play the bouncy bed game at 4.30 a.m., but who would trade the bouncy bed game for some boring TV fireworks? I may still have nine boxes of aloe vera at work, and plenty more to come, but the fact that my four best customers, Andy, Saskia, Geoff and Alex, are all busy giving each other sex injuries again should mean I’m clear within the decade. I may also have a £6,000 gambling debt, but, you know, how important is money, really, when you’re happy? Which I am.
‘Morning, darling, would you like a coffee?’
‘Yes, please. Can you take Jacob while I have a bath?’
‘Of course, darling. No problem at all.’ (Even though I was about to sit down and read the paper.)
‘And you haven’t forgotten that we’re seeing the baby group for an early New Year’s party, have you?’
‘No, of course not, darling.’ (Bloody hell, I’m sure she never mentioned that. I thought we were having a quiet night in.)
‘And you are going to put those babygros up in the loft later, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sweetness.’ Satisfied, she turns to head off for her bath and I realise then that this is normal. Everything that just happened there is normal. And I like normal. I like it a lot.
‘I love you,’ I say suddenly as she turns up the stairs. She stops, turns round and comes back into the kitchen, eyeing me suspiciously.
‘Why are you being so nice? What have you done now?’
Acknowledgements
Phew. That’s that out the way. A few thank yous and I’ll be gone.
Thanks, firstly, to Annabel Wright, my editor at HarperPress, who despite still insisting on being Canadian, is very, very good at English. Thanks to Katherine Josselyn, Taressa Brennan, Ben Hurd, Clare Smith and the big cheese, Bond, John Bond. They work tirelessly, some for doughnuts, some for not even doughnuts.
Euan Thorneycroft, my agent at A.M. Heath, has never asked for a doughnut. He’s in it for the love of it. Sort of.
There are lots of other people who have supported or tolerated this latest writing adventure: my massively put-upon parents and parents-in-law, the good people of the Sunday Times, the less good people of our baby group, Mehmet, the coffee guy on Platform 1 of Sevenoaks railway station, and many other friends and family members. Except, of course for Martin, who continues to contribute nothing, absolutely nothing.
But gratitude to overshadow all other gratitude goes to Harriet. Not only has she been a co-conspirator and improver of plot once again, but she has also become a mother twice-over since I last wrote an acknowledgements page. One thing you don’t necessarily need when you’re a mother of two young boys is a husband dodging nappy duty in order to finish a novel. Particularly a novel full of jokes about parenting.
She has not only endured the disruption but encouraged it, madwoman that she is. This is much more than I deserve.
Finally, thank you to the two boys, without whom none of the jokes about parenting would have been quite so hard earned.
Also by Matt Rudd
William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story
Copyright
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First published by HarperPress in 2010
Copyright © Matt Rudd 2010
FIRST EDITION
Matt Rudd asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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