Dave the Dad 8 - A-Holes
It is a little known fact that all managers, technicians, workmen, site supervisors and planners for every A road in England and Wales are childless.Not one of them has any progeny whatsoever, and only five of them have nephews or nieces. Three of these are adopted. Now this startling fact does not lose any of its power, I feel, when I next reveal that it is completely made up. This doesn't alter the assertion to my mind, for how else can you explain the dismal state of the smaller roads between Brighton and Swansea? Give me a map and I can almost pinpoint the most rugged spots, for they seemed to occur at those times in the drive when Tom was just slipping off into a comfortable snooze. Nice play with Bonkers the Monkey, tootling along, bit of a snack, look out the window, chat to Mum in the back, start to feel sleepy, get comfy, last manic thrash of Bonkers, deep breath ...then along comes a breach in the road that some foreign visitors might mistake for an actual turning but which is simply a fifteen foot gape where the road just gives up the ghost. Banquo memorably remarked that the earth has bubbles and indeed at times our little Corsa did seem to melt as breath into the wind or, as in the most jarring case, into a pothole on the A27 that would have had Steven Spielberg cheering on the set of War of the Worlds.
In truth Tom minded less than we did. And as far as he was concerned it was worth the jolts just to get to the best, most fantastic, excitement-inducing part of the holiday: the Motorway Service Station. We travelled over 300 hundred miles to view the splendour of the Gower coast; the white sand beaches, the rugged cliffs, the clear bracing sea and all Tom really wanted was one more stop at the Mojo in Leigh Delamere or that great one on the A34.
|
| |
| Article continues below advertisement |
|
| |
It was at the first of these that Tom made his discovery that bins are for losers; doors are the future baby! Having done all he can to any bin he has encountered for the past three months he has finally exhausted their use. To be fair, I never saw the attraction anyway. But doors! Well, the possibilities are endless. They open into your face -brilliant- can be closed gently on your head -fab- can be slammed onto your fingers -bloody Hell- and offer a frisson of danger that quite swiftly turns into a massive frying pan of peril when said door is of the automatic kind. Add disgruntled holiday-makers, lots of screaming kids, huge beeping, rocking effigies of Postman Pat and as many crayons as you can eat and you have the perfect break for any toddler approaching one year old who has an in-built system for discovering the most dangerous element in any room. We've had interest from BAA who want to use Tom as a part of their new fool-proof alarm system. Stick him in a crammed fuselage for 13 seconds and he'll sniff out anything likely to cause a mid-air disaster.
At one point I actually became a little paranoid in our beautiful holiday chalet when Tom appeared to be fascinated with a bathroom sponge. I watched him as he rolled it around his hands as a prelude to taking a big bite, spat the taste out in a raspberry and then went back to squeezing and pulling. After five minutes, a thought struck me: although fewer things in a house are safer than a sponge I nonetheless wouldn't be too surprised if the reason for his focus was that there was a free razor inside that Tom was slowly bringing to the surface. You think I jest but he's at the fast crawling stage whereby one minute you're resting comfortably on your squishy laurels and the next he's off and he's shattered the fragile economies of two small countries before you can get to him and say 'No, dirty!' or 'No, bad!' or 'No, monetarily volatile!'
Once Tom overcame the disappointment of leaving the Motorway, he was fantastic on a trip which involved a sojourn in the Valleys of Wales whilst visiting relatives, a week-long break on the Gower and a night in a hotel in Hungerford where we stuck him and his travel-cot in the bathroom. This would have worked perfectly (and incidentally given us a room to ourselves) if he hadn't given a brief flutter when I was going to the toilet. In the darkness I reached in to soothe him by stroking his back and my hands encountered his face for he had pulled himself into a sleeping, sitting position. He sometimes does this and it's the easiest thing in the world to lay him back down, stroke his back and leave thirty seconds later. However, bathrooms in Hungerford are considerably darker than bedrooms in Brighton and my hands flapped around his face like plump, bald bats. He didn't like that. Then again, re-reading it, it sends shivers down my spine!
Earlier in the evening we had accidentally gatecrashed a wedding that was being staged in the hotel. As the bride and groom posed for photos in the lounge we made darting reconnaissance with our plastic spoons full of tuna pasta while our baby did a great impersonation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist -his head spinning from left to right in order to take in all the sounds and sights of a happy gathering in full swing, fists clenched on a mushrooming cheese sandwich. Any cuteness derived from the scene would have been expunged had the happy couple's room been within shouting distance of our bathroom at two in the morning. Well, they should have been up anyway. Oh yes, one more thing before the complaints arrive in the Forum, it was a huge bathroom!
26 August 2006
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com. Read more about his hilarious experiences as a Dad.
|
| |
| |
|
