I thought I’d keep a diary; I’m never, EVER going to show it to anyone, but I am going to bury it in the garden, sealed in a tightly wrapped plastic bag. I’m even going to put a photo in. Then one day, in three thousand years’ time, it’ll be read by the aliens that take over the world and they’ll have an insight into what life was like for someone who was becoming a father for the first time. They’ll probably make me an alien lord or something. If DNA technology is advanced enough, they could even bring me back to life. If you are an alien warlord or anything like that, there is a sample of my blood on the piece of cloth sellotaped to the back of this diary. Please only recreate me if you plan on giving me an easy life. I’ve also put a strand of my best friend Keith’s hair in the back; if you need to anally probe anyone then please use this to bring him back instead. I’ve always suspected he’d be really into that, so you’d probably be doing him a favour.
Other than that I’m Graham Peterson, I’m twenty-eight, and it’s the year 2012. If you’re interested, England, where I live, is hosting the Olympic Games this year. That’s a sporting event; or, more accurately, a series of sporting events. We’re all completely underwhelmed. Most of London, our capital city, is closed off to make way for the people taking part, so normal people have to sit in traffic for far longer than they normally would.
Earth is a strange place at this time. You have to work all day for five days a week; we do this for most our lives and then we give up a couple of years before we die. I suppose you’ve moved on by now. Again, if you’re able to recreate me into a world without work, then please do. I’ve a certificate in saving lives, so if any of your kind are planning on falling into swimming pools while wearing their pyjamas, I’m your man. For any other medical problems you’re probably better off recreating someone else. David Attenborough might be a good bet.
Back to me, though … I’m an expectant father, I’ve not really got a clue what I’m doing and I thought writing this might give all your people in the future either an idea of how rubbish we were in the new millennium or go some way to helping me find a way out of my own worries. Either way it’s a release for me and that’s all I really care about.
So that’s me. I’m a pretty normal guy who has found himself in a pretty normal situation. This is the story of the pregnancy and how I came to terms with being an expectant father.
Wednesday January 26th 2012
5.30 p.m.
I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. I remember seeing a TV programme about how writing a diary is a release and can help people. That’s all I can think to do as I don’t think this is something that can be sorted by my normal solution to problems (a few pints in the pub with Keith); this is going to be long term.
Alison rang me this morning and said she needed to speak to me urgently. I reminded her we were on the phone and that it was a technical possibility to speak there and then, but she insisted that we do it in person. I hate it when people do that, more so as I still had six hours of work left and couldn’t help but obsess about just what it could be. I’m meeting her in an hour, so going to shower and get ready.
10.00 p.m.
Well, it’s happened … somehow I’ve managed to pass on my miserable seed to a woman who’s kept it rather than rejected it, along with me, which is usually the case. Alison told me that she’d missed her period. I almost dropped my battered sausage. Why she waited until I was taking a bite to tell me, I don’t know. I wasn’t interested in carrying on eating after that, anyway. The shock was enough to put any man off a portion of Terry’s excellent chips.
‘How long have you known?’ I asked.
‘Well, I knew I’d missed it last week,’ she told me.
After a few back and forth questions from me, which all seemingly had really obvious answers, we decided that we had to know for sure and that meant one thing: pregnancy test. We spent an hour in Boots looking at all the different types. You wouldn’t believe how many different sorts of tests there are, digital, non-digital, double digital, it’s crazy. Pink ones, blue ones, white ones, I don’t know how anyone is supposed to make the choice based on anything other than price. All of them were ninety-nine point something per cent accurate. I mean if it’s five quid and ninety-nine point nothing per cent accurate, it’s going to be pretty good, what real difference does the point four or point five make? There can’t be much difference in it. I noticed the most expensive one was almost twenty-five quid. Just as I was jamming it back on the shelf before Alison saw it and wanted it, because of the shiny box and wild claims of being ninety-nine point NINE per cent accurate, a couple of greasy looking women walked past me and snorted, telling one another that, ‘You can get the same thing in Poundland, only for a quid.’ All smug. I don’t believe you can actually get pregnancy tests in Poundland so I didn’t drag Alison over there, but we did manage to settle on a middle of the road test for eight pounds. It’s ninety-nine point four per cent accurate.
‘Sir, you can’t go in there,’ the security guard called after me as I followed Alison into the ladies. I didn’t think it would matter if it was for official business, no funny stuff or looking at women weeing. He wouldn’t have it, though, and followed me in to remove me physically.
Alison didn’t want to do it without me there, although personally I didn’t mind too much. I wasn’t really too keen on seeing her do that anyway. But if I’ve learnt one thing tonight then it’s that you don’t disagree with a pregnant — or at that point a potentially pregnant — woman. She’d been drinking water all the way into town and by the time we managed to get rid of the security guard from the shopping centre, Alison was really angry and literally busting for a wee. She frantically looked around the centre for somewhere to go. I couldn’t see any other outcome than her wetting herself and was working myself up thinking about how today wasn’t going at all as I’d thought it would when I woke up this morning. ‘In here,’ Alison demanded, almost pulling my arm out the socket as she clambered into a photo booth.
I couldn’t fit into the booth, so I had to stand with my head poking through the curtain while Alison hiked up her skirt, pulled her pants down and let the river flow, as it were. I was so busy concentrating on the stick to see if it lit up or beeped or whatever it was we were going to get for our eight quid that I didn’t notice the river of urine that was pouring out the booth onto the floor, via my shoes. As quick as she’d started Alison finished and did the most inconsiderate thing I’ve ever known her to do: she flicked the piss stick and sprayed the only part of my body that was in the photo booth – my face. I got pregnant piss in my eyes, mouth and nose. I’d been given a golden face shower. I’m sure there are some weirdos out there that would have paid money to have a similar thing happen to them. I am not one of them.
It was as I stepped backwards that I noticed the river, well, I say noticed … I mean slipped in. I had piss on my face and piss on my shoes. Then Alison said that we needed to wait five minutes for the test to dry. ‘It’ll probably be done in two,’ I said wiping most of what had been on the stick off my face as we headed away from the mess we’d made as quickly as we could.
It wasn’t a big celebration when the line stayed blue and the instructions told us that she was pregnant. If I’m honest, Diary, for one of the most important moments of my adult life, I was angry about having been covered in piss. So angry that all I could really think of was not that there would be a little bundle of joy in my life soon, but that I would be able to get home and have a regular shower designed for normal people soon. Alison just looked shocked. Then I don’t suppose a girl grows into a woman thinking that she’ll find out she’s to be a mother after defacing a Kodak photo booth.
I walked Alison to the taxi rank, promised I’d call her tomorrow and came home to empty a bottle of Radox into my eyes.
I’m not sure how I feel really. Other than dirty, that is. I’ll reassess in the morning.
1.00 a.m.
I’ve just woken up in a cold sweat. This is massive. How will I cope? W
hat will I do? Can I afford it? How am I going to tell my parents? Life is going to change drastically in nine months.
Too many questions.
Thursday January 27th 2012
I hardly slept a wink after I’d woken up in a sweat. All I could think about was how there are so many ways in which I can screw this up. Alison seems so in control and with it. Well, she didn’t sound scared on the phone, anyway, far from it. She sounded excited. We’ve only been together a few weeks. I hope I’ve not been trapped in a honey trap or whatever they call it these days. I’ve read about women like that in the paper. They get men into bed, get pregnant, and then latch onto them for life, like an evil stick insect.
I like Alison, I like her a lot. I mean I have to, she’s the only woman who hasn’t dumped me after three or four dates. Except for the incident with the piss yesterday, but I’ve decided to chalk that one down to experience and never again go anywhere near a photo booth while a woman, mine or anyone else’s, is taking a pregnancy test in there. It’s my own fault; I should have seen the danger in that situation. I was like a child wandering out into the road, no sense of the impending doom that awaited me. She’s not a bad person, either. Anyone who looks after old people for a living can’t be a bad person, She’s also a qualified nurse, it’s always good to have a nurse about the place.
Today dragged, I couldn’t concentrate on the job in hand. Jane, my boss, started me off on the grill, which meant I had to cook all the bacon and have it ready for when the workers came in between seven and nine, then keep it going but also make sure that there was a supply of cheese on toast, too. It takes skill and timing to get it right when one is feeling OK with the world, and today I wasn’t, which meant some of the workers got bacon that had only been cooked on one side, and the queue for cheese on toast was huge.
If the workers lean over the counter a bit they can see who’s working the grill and tend to shout over ‘Hurry the fuck up’ if the cheese on toast isn’t coming quick enough. I’ve told Jane that we need more grills in order to get the most popular item cooked and served quicker, but she’s not made it happen. It’s tense work and today I just couldn’t do it. Once I’d dropped a tray of the stuff in front of the eyes of the very people waiting for it, Jane realised that if she wanted to get through the day without having to deal with endless complaints forms (which dictate our weekly bonus) it was time to move me to something less important.
That job was loading and unloading the dishwasher, which is the worst job in the kitchen and normally considered punishment. On the plus side, Boris was delighted to come off dishwasher duty and stop being punished for drinking the cooking wine three weeks ago. I think three weeks’ washing up isn’t punishment enough for drinking at work, but apparently dropping cheese on toast is worse than that. Still, I didn’t have to deal with people shouting, or any scalding hot cheese that not only burns when it comes into contact with skin, but also sticks to it.
It’s fair to say that today wasn’t good. I spent the remainder of the shift loading and unloading the dishwasher. It was nice to have such a simplistic job, actually, as it allowed my mind to wander, but not too much. I went through the fears I had one by one and tried to think about them in a logical way. Here is my list of fears:
1. That I’ll be a terrible father.
2. That the baby won’t like me.
3. That I’ll somehow screw up the kid so it ends up being a mass murderer or something.
4. That if the above happens, The Sun will do an investigation into the killer’s family and expose me as a loser.
5. That Alison will run off with the baby and I’ll be one of those fathers that doesn’t get to see his kid until he dresses up like Batman and climbs something tall.
6. That I won’t be able to afford a baby.
7. That it’ll grow up and be like me.
8. That the baby will have a disability and be reliant on me for life.
9. That the baby will have ADHD and be an absolute nightmare.
10. That my nights will become even more sleepless.
When I’ve listed it like, that I’m glad I only went through them one at a time as that is a terrifying list to see all in one go.
Here is my rationale:
1. You might be, but everyone learns and there are classes on being a good father and loads of books you can read, doing this might just upgrade you from ‘terrible’ to ‘mildly pathetic’.
2. Babies don’t dislike people, they don’t know how to. I can manipulate it into liking me.
3. See point 1, but also research on the Internet ‘how to make sure your child isn’t a killer’.
4. See points 1 and 3.
5. I’ll have to ask Alison to marry me, she’ll always be traceable then as she’ll have my name.
6. I’ve thought more and more about this and if I marry Alison, then we’ll live together and we’ll have more money. Failing that, we could both give up work; I read all the time in the paper that people who don’t work have more money than people who do. Failing that, I could stop spending all my money on myself. So there are options.
7. Of course it might. OR it might grow up and be like Alison. If we raise it like Alison then everything will be alright. Either that or I completely change my life around. I think it would be easier to raise it like Alison.
8. This is a natural fear all parents have, and most babies don’t have disabilities or the human race wouldn’t survive.
9. That’ll be payback for me being a nightmare.
10. Ear plugs are cheap and Alison will be off work anyway, so she’ll be happy to get up and look after the little one.
11. Just an extra: this is all months away. I don’t need to worry so much. Nine months takes ages to pass.
Not a complete saviour of a list, but it certainly got me through the day at the dishwasher.
Alison has been on the phone this evening asking when we are going to make the news public. By 'public' she means telling her mum and then putting it on Facebook. I suggested we wait at least until we’ve been to the doctor’s before we spoke to her parents, Alison wasn’t so sure. Well, I say wasn’t sure, she’d already told her mum, who in turn has told her dad. I think she did it last night as soon as she got home. I’ve not even met either of her parents yet. I suppose I’ll have to at some point now.
I think I’ll start another 'fears' list.
The Diary of a Hapless Father
Read an extract from the book:
~Introduction~
Who likes Short Shorts Page 21
