Bumbling, purblind, sleep deprived, wondering how other parents do this, and I’m not even the mum who gets up in the night. But I am the dad, and supposed to be a professional. I can’t answer the phone and ask "what day is it?" but, when it's slow and I'm in the office, I can at least crawl into the back room and pull out the piece of polystyrene packing with the imprint of my skull on it. It’s quiet in there, and warm, with one of the few radiators that works on this floor.
Nothing else gets done but work and chores and playing with my son. I kiss the mum and cuddle the baby and watch for changes in the weather, the meteorological tick tock which means the kids grow up. It happens fearsomely fast because when you’re in it, time becomes elastic. A day can be awfully long and a week incredibly short. What? Saturday again, Abingdon pool, Sunday lunch, back to school? We’re not wishing it away by any means, just peering out from our fur lined nest agog at the things we used to do and the people who are still doing them.
Recently we got lucky, friends babysat for free and we went out to a gig - typically the babysitting doubles the cost of a night like this. We stood in the Rusty Bicycle giggling, like imposters in the process of getting away with it. We'd bought tobacco at the corner shop (neither of us smokes anymore) and promised not to talk about the kids, so we sat in the beer garden in silence, ear-wigging, eyes shining. “I just came in for a lunchtime pint and stayed all day,” said someone happily.
The boys in our little office make me laugh, catching the two of them moaning about not having girlfriends and then moaning about having them. "Girls, tcha!" suddenly they're like new diseases. “She wants a kitten do you think she’s trying to tell me something?” “I have to sleep on the couch whenever her family come to stay. Bloody kids.” My guess is they were formed as adults and broke out of giant seed pods when they were done, like the jokers in Spinal Tap.
For some reason this reminds me of the self-proclaimed grandparents who kept little Poz up on the night flight to Cape Town. On the wine, squawking at each other without lifting their headphones and then glaring at us when it was their time to sleep and he gave up trying. Their wealth of experience was in self-righteousness, could we have but mined that seam and burned it for the fossil fuel it was.
