It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. Firstly, your girlfriend, or if you’re from the Isle of Sheppey, sister, is in extraordinary pain. That means you have a simultaneous need to both be at her side and be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It’s a close as we come to multi-tasking.
“Give me a ring if, you know, you get bored during the labour,” said Scally. “I’m happy to meet you for a pint.”
Bored? Scally clearly operates in another realm of gender relations.
“Look, love, I can see you’re in agony squeezing out something the size of a bowling bowl out of a frankly unsuitable orifice. However, the cries of pain have become repetitive, so I’ll be back stinking of booze when there’s something to look at.”
It goes without saying that men would simply not put up with childbirth. We would have invented a way round it by now if it happened to us. Even Scally appreciates we got the better deal. “All we have to do is shave,” he says. Though he does point out we have to do that every day.
Spud said childbirth gave her a whole new scale of pain and I wonder how far most men would go up that scale for their baby? The pinching of new shoes? Man flu? Stubbing your toe on furniture?
I’d go as far as tennis elbow.
Everyone thinks they’re baby is beautiful and that’s only natural. But claims that your baby is bright when all it can do is drink, poo and sleep are a little bizarre. Having said that, our baby boy did come out speaking three languages, the clever little thing.
Imagine how we laughed when he described Martin Amis’s latest novel as “flaccid”. Where do they get these words?
