One Little Boy

The explanation about the spelling of Mathew’s name is really very simple. It’s not historic, or familial, it was actually down to a good old-fashioned clerical human error. About an hour after he was born, we were all cuddling together in a hospital bed and a very tired Philippa looked down at him and said, “He kind of looks like a Matthew.” It wasn’t a name either of us had considered at any point during the pregnancy, but as soon as she said it, it just seemed right. He DID kind of look like a Matthew. One of the nurses on duty was a lovely Spanish lady whose English was not particularly impressive. She was the one who wrote his name on a hospital tag and she misunderstood it when we spelt it for her. When we looked at it written down – again – it just looked right, and we decided to go with it.

RC 31-12-18

Four Little Ducks

According to the stats section of my homepage on blogger, this is the 2222^nd blog I have posted.

I would love to do a well-researched, fact-packed collection of paragraphs all about the number 2222 and its relevance to humankind and human history, but I’m very tired and very busy, due to the fact that we have a 10-day old baby in the house!

So instead, I have decided to mark the occasion with a list of predictions about what I think the world will be like in the year 2222AD:

The Sun (in space) will be sponsored by The Sun (the newspaper) and will effectively be a big advertising logo hanging in the sky all day.

My descendants will include a Nobel prize-winning physicist, a celebrated author of romantic fiction, and a criminal/hero responsible for the assassination of an unpopular political leader.

Ed Sheeran will still be dominating the singles charts.

Our bodies will have rapidly evolved to the point where we are born with a smartphone embedded in the palm of our hand.

Nipples will be the official currency of Europe.

A lunar colony will have been established on the Moon. It will be located at a site called ‘The Boris Johnson Memorial Crater’ which was created by that bumbling British f**kwit crash-landing there after being launched into space by NASA following an ill-advised comment at Donald Trump’s birthday party.

Scrabble will be known as ‘Tiley-Word-Pain.’

Human involvement in sport will have been reduced to voting from home via a keypad while watching genetically-enhanced robots fight each other with celery sticks.

The Queen will still be our monarch.

RC 30-12-18

Boxing Day's Boxing Day

So here we are on December 27^th.

Our first Christmas as parents went by in a tired blur of confusion and crying. I’m sure these things will get better as The Little Fella gets older, but this one has been a bit of an inconvenience, in a way. Trying to juggle the exhaustion of labour, getting used to a baby and the biggest annual occasion in the Western world all at the same time is a bit of a trial.

Still – our fault for contriving to conceive nine months ago, right?

I’m still finding it hard to believe it has happened. After months of preparing for it, and after years of thinking about it, to be sitting here now with a Junior in the building is earth-shifting, overwhelming and a bit dreamlike. Ted and Beryl popped over today, bringing with them half of the products available from Hamleys’ website. Everyone ended up in tears, especially Philippa when Beryl told her we can call on them anytime we need help as we’re an important part of their family. Not sure what they can do while Beryl is still getting used to a new knee and Ted is getting weaker and frailer by the week, but the sentiment is welcome and the love is real, and appreciated. They’re not the only visitors we’ve had, either. Sophie finished a 12-hour Christmas Day shift and then drove straight down to see us and meet The Little One. Hannah and Nathan have been popping backwards and forwards as often as they can, bringing a supply of satsumas and nappies and having a pot of tea on the go constantly while they’re here. It’s weird, because part of me wishes everyone would just leave us alone to get on with stuff, but the rest of me is so grateful to have them here.

It’s amazing what a baby does to people.

Our ‘neighbours’ (I put it in inverted commas as our houses aren’t connected) – who we haven’t had a huge amount of contact with, although we all get on very well – have called in several times to wish us well and bring us soup and stews and generally be lovely and wonderful. My superiors have sent a huge bouquet of flowers for Philippa and a large teddy for Mathew and told me to ‘take as long as I need’ before returning to my duties, which is amazing because I assumed they’d all be spending Christmas time away from work, drowning in sherry while those on the Ground Floor and at the Coal Face drowned in overenthusiastic Boxing Day shoppers.

It’s all been wonderful, it really has.

But also tiring.

I hope this blog has made sense in the reading. I could happily take the rest of the year off, but I’m still determined to reach 250 postings in 2018!

More to follow soon…..

RC (daddy!) 27-12-18

Quickie before Xmas Eve

XMAS SONGS I STILL LOVE:

The Christmas Song (Nat King Cole)

Anything by Elvis Presley

Christmas Lights by Coldplay

XMAS SONGS I COULD HAPPILY NEVER HEAR AGAIN:

Fairytale of New York (The Pogues)

Anything by Michael Buble

Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses

RC 23-12-18

Life / changing

Philippa and I are now parents.

After a relatively gentle 27 hours of labour, a young boy weighing 7 lbs 11 ozs arrived into the world at exactly midday on Thursday 20^th December.

Wow!

I will probably go into the event in more details at a later time, but right now we’re all a bit spaced out, overwhelmed with emotions, and just trying to deal with things minute by minute until we all get the hang of what the hell we’re doing! So I’m giving all my attention to my wife and son, rather than you guys in the blogsphere.

But let me just tell you everyone is perfectly well and all is as it should be. And let me just say it’s been the most amazing, emotional few days of my life.

And let me also just tell you the name we have settled on:

MATHEW RYAN CHESWORTH

And no – it’s not a typing error. We’re spelling it with one ‘T’

xxx

IT'S HAPPENING !!!

I’ll try and type this as calmly as possible:

Philippa has just called me at work to tell me she thinks her waters have broken.

I am now about to set off to collect her and take her to the hospital.

I have no idea when I’ll be able to blog again, but please keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

xxx

Winter colds and cars

I had a weekend to forget, all things considered.

Woke up Saturday morning with one of those colds that makes you feel like your sinuses are packed with cement and your head is trying to turn itself inside out. Philippa panicked at the prospect of having to go through labour while infected with flu and decided I should get as far away from her as possible, so sent me out into the freezing weather with a shopping list and instructions to ‘come home when you’re healthier.’  

I traipsed around the wet towns, with sleet being driven against me like a ruler being driven against a misbehaving Victorian schoolboy’s knuckles, and ended up soaked, shivering and miserable. Then I got back to our car, which took the annoying decision to refuse to start, presumably as a protest at being left outside in the Wintry storm in the first place.

None of the local places were still open so I couldn’t call out a mechanic. We’re members of RAC but they quoted me an ‘Estimated Recovery Time’ of 4-5 hours, and I was already feeling hypothermic and the weather was getting worse, so I didn’t fancy sitting in sub-zero temperatures while they sorted out loads of other people ahead of me. So in the end I got a taxi home and left the pissing car where it was.

Philippa was delighted, for many different reasons. I would have thought she would have been pleased to see me home safe, but no. I’d spent unnecessarily on transport, I’d endangered my own wellbeing and now I had abandoned the car that will be needed to take her to the hospital when Junior kicks his way through her waters. The fact that we have another car sitting outside the house that is operating perfectly seemed to escape her notice.

Anyway, I got a lift back to the motor yesterday morning and the pissing thing started first time. I’d still like to know what the problem was though, so I’ve dropped it off at a garage this morning to be ‘thoroughly investigated.’ Probably means I’ll be charged three months wages just because they hooked it up to a computer for 30 seconds, but there we are. Better safe than sorry.

RC 17-12-18

Wasting time at work...

Stream of Conscience A-Z of Christmas:

A is for Advent Calendars – an excuse to eat chocolate for breakfast.

B is for Baileys – for some reason I only drink it in December.

C is for Cheese – coz at Christmas my intake of it explodes.

D is for Decorations.

E is for Eggnog – even though I have no idea what it is.

F is for Frankincense – as above

G is for Gravy – makes everything taste better, especially turkey.

H is for Holly.

I is for Irish Coffee – for some reason I only drink it in December.

J is for Jameson’s – my whiskey of choice to go into the drink above.

K is for Kissing – any excuse, right?

L is for Licquers – never been sure how to spell it….

M is for Mince Pies – no explanation needed.

N is for New Year – the made-up holiday that follows the best one.

O is for Overindulgence.

P is for Parsnips – deeply roasted, heavily buttered parsnips…

Q is for Quizzes – gotta have one after Xmas lunch.

R is for Repeats – which make up 85% of Christmas TV schedules.

S is for Stollen – don’t even like it, but it’s traditional fayre.

T is for Turkey – obviously.

U is for Us – a sneaky way of mentioning family.

V is for Virgin Mary – the lady, or the drink. Either, or neither.

W is for Wrapping – my least favourite aspect of Christmas.

X is for Xmas – same holiday; less Christ.

Y is for Young – the way we should all feel.

Z is for Zuzu – the little girl from “It’s A Wonderful Life”

RC 14-12-18

Mixture !

My trend this month seems to be using one-word blog titles, then leaving a space after that word, then putting an exclamation mark. It wasn’t a conscious decision to do it, but I noticed it’s happened a few times so far in December and I think it may become a habit.

Less than 10 days until the Solstice, which cheers me up a bit. I know we won’t notice any difference for a while, but just knowing that the days are getting longer is a psychological lift at a time when the Lights-On-At-4pm routine is really starting to bite me.

Philippa is now a Lady Of Leisure. Officially off on maternity leave until whatever date she decides she’s ready to return to work. Another red letter day reached as we tick off the various landmarks that will result in us being parents.

My advent calendar has disappointed me somewhat this year. Normally I put a lot of thought into it and get something that I know will delight me, but I was so distracted by Pregnancy Stuff and My Complete Lack Of Festive Feeling In Late Nov that I forgot to plan ahead, and ended up just grabbing a Cadbury’s Heroes one off the shelf at work. I like the choccies, but there’s no picture behind the door, so it just doesn’t feel right.

We have a very simple Christmas tree this year, decorated with a combination of purple and white lighting, which I have to say looks amazing. I didn’t go mad with adornments because I might not fancy packing it all away neatly in January, what with us having a little Sproglet in the house by then. Forward thinking or humbuggery? I’ll let you decide for yourselves….

RC 12-12-18

Excited !

It’s amazing how much of a turnaround I have had in my mental state. Having been terrified of The Impending Birth for so long, I now honestly cannot wait for the inevitable to happen and for me to finally get a chance to meet Junior. I really am quite envious of Philippa over the whole pregnancy thing. My only connection with our offspring so far has been feeling him/her kick and wriggle through layers of my wife’s fat and skin, whereas Philippa has had months of getting to monitor the changes and enjoy the growth and feel an important part of the process. Admittedly, she’s also had to endure discomfort, pain, vomiting, cramp and hormones, but there you go – you take the rough with the smooth, right?

I’m being a pain in the arse, really. Every time she farts or whistles, I’m saying “Is this it?”

I think she’d like to move into the garage and avoid me but sadly her excessive body size wouldn’t fit in there with the car and the drumkit.

RC 10-12-18

Fortune Cookie Wisdom?

Philippa called me in a blind panic today thinking she was about to go into labour. Turned out to be a touch of wind brought about by eating three donuts that a work colleague had left unattended in the break room. That’ll teach her. We do seem to have had a strange turnaround/role-reversal. She is now getting worried about what lies ahead, while I have broken through the months-long horrible anxiety that was crippling me and reached a plateau of calm acceptance. What will be will be and I can only do my best when it happens. I need to stop obsessing about every possible negative outcome and get ready to face what arrives by educating myself as much as possible and knowing where to turn for help if we need it.

Having said that – it is quite alarming that something could happen literally any day now!

But then again – we’ve wanted this for so long that it seems wrong to be worried about it or dreading it. There may have been times of uncertainty from me when Philippa first wanted to get pregnant, and I may have exaggerated my own reluctance now and then for online comedic reactions, but the truth is that nothing has ever given me a greater sense of pride or love than the thought of sharing a baby with Philippa. I’m scared shitless, but I can’t wait to get started, and I just KNOW that my wife is going to be the Best Mum Ever, so I can’t mess things up too badly as she’ll always be there to support me and protect Junior from my ineptitudes and failings.

Now how does the name JASPER CONRAD CHESWORTH sound?

RC 7-12-18

festive feelings

I am, despite everything, excited about Christmas. Yes, I know we’ll be ridiculously busy at work in the weeks building up to it, and I know I’ll be under constant pressure from Those Above to maximise selling opportunities and pick the pockets of the locals, and I know the imminent of arrival of The Little One means we can’t really plan anything in particular, but at the end of the day (or maybe I should say ‘at the end of the year’) IT’S CHRISTMAS!! And, as I believe I may have concluded sometime previously, Christmas is what YOU make it. It’s also what you WANT it to be, so if you want it to be a quiet, inexpensive family affair with a simple meal and a couple of sherries, then make it thus. Don’t get swept up in the hype of advertising and don’t let anyone or anything else dictate the way you spend it. Especially don’t be influenced by your own internal expectations of what you THINK you SHOULD be doing. To my knowledge, there’s no Yuletide Police patrolling around in sledges arresting people for not putting up any decorations or incarcerating those who neglect to cook sprouts. There’s no statute written in law that forces you to smile at cracker jokes on pain of prosecution. There’s no punishment-in-the-streets for those who fail to eat mince pies, where you are forced to carry a Christmas tree naked through town while neighbours throw roast chestnuts at your danglies.

You can do what you want, how you want it, and everyone else can just lump it.

This is a long-winded way of me telling people that I’m not sending out any Christmas Cards.

RC 6-12-18

Old poem; new version

Christmas is coming

The Goose is getting fat

When we cook and eat it

That will be the end of that

RC 5-12-18

Mind as messy as ever

Today is the birthday of a girl I used to fancy at High School. Why can I remember that, and yet I came home today without the milk I’d promised to get? For the second day running? It’s weird what my synapses will latch importance onto and keep locked in my brain unnecessarily.

Ah, sweet Samantha. Her family were Buddhists from Northern Ireland and she was plump in an acceptable cute way rather than the borderline-obese way we see among those in their early teens nowadays. She was planning to be either a teacher or a journalist but I heard tell she got busted for drugs while at college and ended up quitting education. Pregnant at twenty, she settled for a life of benefits and part-time shelf-filling, lowering her expectations of life as quickly as her sense of self-worth.

God I can be a judgemental, downward-looking bastard at times.

RC 4-12-18

LIMBO !

By fair means or foul, whether we wanted to or not, we are back in the Central Month of Party Season! So dust off your glad rags, iron your dancing shoes and get ready to groove and boogie til your stockings are filled by Santa.

Yes – my Christmas spirit has kick-started itself. Walking around yesterday with the knowledge its Advent made my innards get a little twinge of excitement, which I must confess built nicely all day. I knew it would turn up eventually, I just wasn’t confident it would be this side of Boxing Day.

So – on the one hand, I am very excited!

On the other hand, I am absolutely terrified, and I feel this is something I must own up to, as it’s happening despite my best efforts, and it’s probably affecting what I write about and how I write it.

I’m scared.

Sometime in December I will become a father for the first time and I feel woefully underprepared and shamefully inadequately skilled. I am full of anxiety, not sleeping, and not able to be a support to my wife at the very point she needs it most – when she is on the cusp of giving birth. I never understood the term ‘frozen by fear’ as I’ve always coped quite well with stressful situations and been able to think my way out of them clearly, but at times now I am literally going rigid with terror; immobilised by the sudden scary thoughts being generated by the darkest side of my mind.

I am scared that Junior will be damaged in childbirth, that Philippa will die while releasing him, that I’ll drop him on his head the first time I hold him, that one of the nurses will swap him for a lab rat, that I’ll throw up on the bed, or pass out, or have a breakdown, or run out screaming, that I won’t work out how to fit his car seat properly, that I’ll crash on the way home from the hospital, that our house isn’t fit for a baby, that I’ll drop him the first time I feed him, that he’ll grow up to hate me, that I’m too old now to be a first-time father, that Philippa won’t need me anymore when she’s got a child to look after, that I won’t get any sleep when he’s struggling to get through the night and end up too knackered to work and then I’ll get fired and then Philippa will kick me out coz I can’t afford to support them, that a meteor might crash in our garden and irradiate him before he hits puberty, that his teeth might grow crooked and he’ll have to wear painful braces, that his first girl-or-boyfriend will break his heart so badly that he never trusts someone else enough to love them, that I’ll die of a brain tumour before I even get to know him, that if it’s a girl she’ll love her mum more than me, or wrap me round her finger and grow up spoilt and unbearable, or be the girl that all the other girls pick on, or be allergic to make-up and end up burning her mouth the first time she uses lipstick, or go out wearing a tiny outfit and end up hypothermic, or have a horrible older boyfriend that I end up punching and then get sent to prison.

I admit a couple of those may be a little unlikely, but I’m finding it hard not to worry about them anyway.

RC 2-12-18