Yesterday was a big day in Stanley Micah Wedd’s life. It was the first day daddy was looking after him for the whole day. Not a mummy in sight. Wall to wall fatherhood for you my son. He coped remarkably well.
The day started with him being shoved into his car seat at 8.55am (ten minutes behind schedule), for his special trip of the day. This was of course a visit to an old people’s home in Grantham. Stanley just loves going to old people’s homes. It’s like Center Parcs for him.
Daddy was on a special photography assignment for his employer and had to make bad architecture look good on a bad (and freezing) day. Broadly speaking daddy was unsuccessful, but Stanley was good as gold as he dangled precariously from daddy’s arm while daddy wrestled with a tripod.
A few of the ‘customers’ cooed appropriately while one, rather mysteriously, said “I should give him a punch on the nose”. I suspect she was not fully in control of her mental faculties. Or Irish. She didn’t sound Irish. Either way, some synapse in her brain that acts as a gatekeeper to saying phrases out loud that suggest you want to punch babies (and sweet babies at that) on the nose was well and truly out of working order. The rest of us laughed awkwardly. Stanley gazed nervously at his nose.
It is fascinating to wonder what poison any of us might pour forth should the magic social convention regulator pack up in the grey matter. What is it that our subconscious is always desperate to say that our pesky cultural mores just keep on keeping in check?
My wife would probably maintain that plenty of my poison gets through just fine thanks very much. This would no doubt be a reference to my worryingly bitter comments flung in the direction of 4X4 drivers or those with personal number plates. Living as I do in one of the more affluent parts of town (and there are not that many in this town) means I spend a lot of my time being affronted with these people (and yes, they are still people, whatever the research may suggest).
That said, this year I am trying to be different. This is my official year of Not Voicing Unbridled Antipathy Towards Drivers of Vehicles Designed for Combat Zones but Driven in Leafy Affluence or Those Who Struggle to Remember their Names and So Have Them Written on Their Number Plates.
Nelson Mandela (or N3LS0N as he is known to the DVLA) once said (something along the lines of) being bitter or vengeful towards a person is like drinking poison and hoping it will harm your enemy. In other words shouting abuse at a Range Rover only makes me feel worse. It does nothing to affect the driver of the monster truck.
Far better, Nelson might say, to drag the driver from the vehicle, put a tyre around his neck, fill it with petrol and…no, no, no. Stop it. This is the year of Not Voicing Unbridled etc…
I’m not sure that necklacing someone for driving an oversized car or for thinking that 4A3ON spells Aaron would be a good example to Stanley.
And as we all know, children learn by what they see as much as what we tell them.
Poor Stanley has many more daddy days to come as wifey and I share out the child care when she returns to her coalition-mangled employment.
By the age of one he will no doubt have perfected the ‘heavy sigh’, the ‘tut’ and the phrase ‘just eat it, it’s all there is’ (see picture for the aftermath of the Battle of Stanley’s Lunch, which daddy won after a long haul of attrition).
Poor Stanley indeed. Thank God for his mother.