I suppose it all started back on the delightful island of Kos. Endless sunny days, cold beer, cool waters and of course day trips. Let’s go to the village with the Fountain of Fertility, at least that’s what I have come to call it. You get two chances, walk around it one way and you get rich, and walk around it the other and you get a baby. Trust Tina to walk the wrong way!
Two months later Tina was off the alcohol and I had the best Taxi in Christendom. A short time after that and I was being invited to look at photographs of what looked like a very blurry fingernail that went by the name of ‘our baby’. Noting the stunning dissimilarity between the picture and myself I had to draw the conclusion, coupled with the fact I thought I didn’t have it in me so to speak, that it was not mine; Tina had been off doing a Shirley Valentine.
Before I knew it, excellent trips to places like Dixons, had been replaced with surreptitious visits into Mothercare for scratch mitts and baby-grows. Of course I was taking my new found responsibility seriously and was duty bound to attend the ante-natal classes. There I found solace with new found, like minded, male friends who saw fit to ask the important questions like, ‘Does the maternity unit have a Microwave?’ Our mind was stimulated with facts like the uterus being made of two materials and I was stunned to find out that it was not forty percent cotton and sixty percent polyester.
Well before you know it the big day arrives. We had already had one force alarm that morning but this time it looked like the real thing. After a check up by the midwife Tina started to make her way down the stairs but it was all too difficult. We had called the ambulance before she started and half an hour later when it arrived she was still only half way down. I can’t tell you how glad I am we have a downstairs cloakroom (as they say in posh places).
My Honda Accord was no match for the ambulance and its flashing blue lights, and by the time I had arrived at the hospital there was no time to cook my steak and kidney pie in the microwave. Tina was looking like she had just had all the alcohol she had missed in the last eight months and being a Dad was not far away now.
Tune in next time to see if I get any further with the story.