
Add
then, being inadvertently punched in the bollocks,
having brussel sprouts bounced off your head from across the dinner table and continually having to belly-crawl commando
style along that narrow space between the skirting board and the back of the
sofa then around the Christmas tree, searching for the missing TV remote
control - and this will give you some idea how Christmas was for me this year.
I
didn’t once leave my house to see any friends.
I didn’t get to watch any television
whatsoever and I didn’t even manage to get down to the pub. Why so, you ask? Well . . . I guess
it’s because
when you have a wife twenty and a bit years younger than yourself and three
sons aged three and a half, two and a half and two months, the general
principles of orderliness and control through time management turn out to be about as much use as a
set of carrying handles on a main battle tank and you are left with
unpredictability, disorder and total unconditional chaos.
On
Boxing Day morning however, during a rare moment when there were no children clinging to me and I’d finished washing the dishes, doing the
ironing and hoovering up etc, I did manage to seize
the opportunity
and answer a call on my mobile from a
good friend. So, I took the added precaution of shutting myself outside my back
door where I believed I’d be safe, only to be discovered by son number two who got his head wedged in the cat flap
as he tried to climb through and I was forced to hang up the phone mid
conversation.
Despite
all of this – the important thing was
that my three boys, Oscar, Rueben and Ellis had a simply wonderful time and no
amount of money in the world could persuade me to part with the memory I now have of the looks on their faces on Christmas Day morning.
I can’t help wondering however, if perhaps next year will be a little easier on me? Or will I
be spending the entire festive period leaning against the kitchen wall in the
stress position wearing an orange boiler suit, listening to white noise while
waiting to change the nappy on a fourth newborn baby?