According to writer John O’Farrell kids today are mollycoddled by over-protective parents gripped by a terminal state of fear, forever watching their darlings like neurotic hawks. Blighty thinks this is patent…

…sorry about that, Blighty Jnr had picked up a piece of kitchen roll, can’t be too careful. Now where was I…?

Parental fears hit

It is true that being a parent does do something to the old mind, mushing it up a bit. From being a person who, when presented with a someone’s new baby would say, ‘Oh yes, got feet and everything,’ then turn to stroke the lovely cat on the sofa, I’ve become someone who thinks his daughter is a gift to the world and should be treated as such. Whilst out walking with Blighty Jnr I expect admiring glances (at the baby, not me, although I wouldn’t object to that, however unlikely) and usually get them. More often than not from women, the older ones often expressing an eerie desire to eat my daughter. If a woman at the checkout doesn’t swap smiles with my daughter, and enunciate some embarrassing gurgling sounds in her direction, I want to know why! And when my daughter smiles I EXPECT hearts to melt.

I never liked babies before. In fact, I’m not that keen on them now. The NCT group we joined before having B Jnr, where we discussed pie-in-the sky things like natural childbirth (try that with an upside down baby in reduced fluid), still meet. Well, the mothers do anyway. And that does seem to be a difference between mothers and fathers. Fathers might think their child is the best thing since the Big Bang, and in Blighty’s case this is quite evidently true, but they’re not interested in other people’s offspring. Mothers, however, do take an interest. They’ll even pick them up sometimes. Blighty Jnr in my arms is second nature, other sprogs, incendiary device about to blow. Please put down.

So, O’Farrell could well be right as far as old Blighty is concerned. But what does a parent do when he’s landed with a baby that is different from all those other wrinkly, idiotic little things that ordinary parents seem so oddly proud of? You see my problem?

* Third person detached narrative will shortly be resumed.