Dave the Dad 30 - Out With a Shout
I’m a fairly restrained person. Sometimes when Jane is in the house with Tom and their playing gets a touch boisterous I’ll slide to the back windows and close them. Not the type of person then who would enjoy pushing a screeching toddler along a crowded beach on a windy day in mid-summer.So imagine my surprise when I found myself pushing a screeching toddler along a crowded beach on a windy day in mid-summer! You could have knocked me down with a feather. In fact several families tried to knock me down with disapproving stares and they very nearly succeeded. Even Tom, my own little lad, attempted to knock me sideways with flailing feet and fists. So, on the whole, it was something of a surprise.
To be fair, it was all our own fault. After all, we had just spent the morning in a sunny field adjoining a pub whilst Tom got to know little Howie better. We were in the Gower -a gorgeous spot of coastline in South-West Wales- and had met up with a friend of Jane’s from Brighton. It was the weather that did for us. In a summer that knows few bounds when it comes to moist disappointment the suddenly marvellous weather convinced us that Tom would be fine, no, he didn’t need a nap, absolutely, he could just bally well muddle through.
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Unfortunately Tom doesn’t do muddling through. We all know those parents who exercise magic in the manipulation of their children as far as sleeping goes. ‘Oh,’ they scoff, ‘he’ll be fine, just shove him in the buggy and he’ll be asleep in no time.’ Replace the last ‘in’ with ‘at’ and you’re closer to the truth with our lad. It’s not as though he didn’t try on the beach, but we were undermined by the simplest of things; natural law. When walking along the beach we were apparently travelling at the same speed as a gentle wind. Now I’m no mathematician but when we turned around our speed in the opposite direction times the original speed of the wind equalled, frankly, The Perfect Storm. Tom had no chance but this didn’t stop him from trying to shield his face with Jane’s beautiful new cardigan. Actually at various points he tried to shield his face, his arms, his legs, the buggy wheels and most of Oxwich Bay with the cardigan, some of which, I believe, is still there. But back to the walk of shame.
The beach was packed and possibly the only thing preventing onlookers from intervening was the obvious tone of Tom’s English screams. Those Welshies had us marked for interlopers and some clearly took pleasure from the fact that you wouldn’t catch a purely Welsh child crying like that. Well, my sister was purely Welsh and when stroppy she deliberately banged her head on the floor of my parents’ kitchen from 15 months to 23 years. So.
We tried everything. I tucked him up, Jane tucked him up, Rachel smiled at him, we played with him, Howie ignored him, I picked him up, Jane tried to get her cardy off him, Rachel politely ignored our manifest discomfort, everything! And he screamed and screamed and screamed. In retrospect we could have seen it coming. Over the last two months he’s been practising a variety of different moves: frowning, stamping, throwing, even the odd snap on his mum’s arm when she least expected it. Then only last week my dad (a natural teacher, a veritable Socrates of the Valleys, only without the muckiness) taught Tom how to snatch things to his chest and say ‘Mine!’ Brilliant. Tom spent most of the three days at my parents’ house grabbing anything he could reach and immediately laying territorial claim to it. Cortez would have been proud of him. Of course my father found it hilarious, a damn sight more hilarious I have to add than he found the heart attack brought on by Tom at Xmas. Perhaps this was pay-back; you know the sort of thing: ‘Your heart’s too strong, so I’ll wreck your loving personality.’ After three days taunting from an elderly relative who bears more than a passing resemblance to a greying, malevolent imp it was no surprise that Tom cracked and abandoned his innate personality for one that would be more at home on Jerry Springer.
The best way I can describe ‘the beach walk’ (which, incidentally, took fifteen days) is to draw another parallel. You know those times on the motorway when you are ensconced in traffic and then, within the space of a minute, you find your car alone with a bank of traffic ahead and a similar one behind. It was like that. Only with the cars behind shaking their bumpers at the disgraceful state of your childrearing and the cars in front tutting their exhausts at the woeful personality of your monster child. Personally I blame Rachel for two hours earlier, watching our respective bundles of gorgeousness cavort on bouncy castles and run up and down slopes in the sunshine, she had perked up at some crying. ‘Don’t you love it when someone else’s child is showing off,’ she sniggered. I caught sight of Tom laughing, chasing a butterfly with arms outstretched and sniggered back. Take away the laughter, add the howling, substitute the butterfly for his mum’s mulched cardigan but keep the arms outstretched and there we were, two hours later. I did remind Rachel of her comment and she pretended to feel for us but I watched as she leant forward to tuck in perfect snoozing Howie and I’m sure I saw a smirk.
*All Rachels mentioned in this article are fictitious, and should in no way be confused with any other Rachels that Jane and I know and had lunch with that day and who might take umbrage when she reads this because she may infer something that clearly isn’t there in any case. So there.
August 20th 2007
Dave Fouracre
Dave Fouracre aka "Dave the Dad" is a regular feature writer here at thebabywebsite.com.
Read more about his hilarious experiences as a Dad. |
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