AKA Two Men and a Baby
Stew plotting an escape strategy from The Doghouse
I’m with Stew, a friend from London who’s come to visit. We have arranged to play squash and we're currently making our way to our gladiatorial squash arena, where champions are forged. However, we're both feeling delicate, sorry for ourselves, and like a 1970’s sitcom, we are both in ‘The Doghouse’.
All because we got a bit too excited last night.
Let’s quickly go back in time to the previous evening. A pre-Doghouse era when all was rosy with the world, and myself and Stew were just a lovable couple of 40 year old half-wits…
We are all at a restaurant, and by ‘all’ I mean myself, Zsuzsa, Baby Mila, Stew and his beloved, Jen. Everything is very civilised. A piano player is tickling a Sinatra tune out of some nearby ivories, the lighting is soft, my steak is bloody and the red wine is quaffable. A couple of hours in and Mila, who’s been exemplary up until now, decides that what this evening is missing is an excitable high-pitched, squealing baby. So she begins to squeal. Zsuzsa and I try all of the anti-squealing tricks in our arsenal, but it’s no use. Nothing is going to stop this runaway baby-squeal-train.
“I think I’ll take Mila home.” says Zsuzsa.
“I’ll come with you.” says Jen.
“I’ll open the door for you.” I add, ever the gent.
And just like that, all of the oestrogen in our little party heads home, leaving an imbalance of excitable half-wit alone and without supervision.
“Couple of beers?” says Stew.
“Why not.” I reply.
It’s now nearly two in the morning. “A couple of beers” seamlessly morphed in to a several beers, a few cocktails and a few gallons of palinka. We have just been kindly asked to leave a bar following an encounter in which Stew attempted to buy a man’s hat and we are now in a taxi. We think we are heading back to my flat, but we are wrong. We are in fact heading towards The Doghouse.
So that was last night. Let's now go back to the beginning of this tale with Stew and I heading, meekly towards a game of squash. We make it to the end of the road before realising that we will probably both die on the squash court, and deciding that we don't want to 'go out' like that, we decide to return home. We get back home, open the front door and our ladies are sitting there, staring at us. Judging us. We are sheepish. We look like two dogs who’ve stolen a couple of biscuits.
“Do you remember trying to engage our sleeping baby in conversation at two thirty in the morning?” Zsuzsa asks.
I do not remember this.
Before the storm
The rest of the morning is spent in grovel mode. We try to explain that we are just two men who got a bit over excited, went to a few bars, sampled the local produce and then tried to buy a stranger’s hat, but it soon becomes apparent that we have a tough audience.
We eventually have a breakthrough when our ladies go for a massage, leaving us to look after the baby. A couple of hours later and they return home, like two relaxed lumps of well kneaded bread, their previous fury seemingly rubbed away by the fingers of tiny Thai ladies. Noticing this chink in their anger-armour we pounce upon our opportunity. We are like a pair of velociraptors working together, wheedling our ways back in to their affections. Things are cleaned, tea is made, compliments bandied around, take-away collected etc. We are a pair of wheedle-raptors. It is clear to see that our wheedle display is masterful and should be turned in to a training video for other Doghouse prisoners.
Later that night I’m lying in bed with Zsuzsa with our little cub nestled in between us. All is dark and all is silent, although if you listened hard enough you would be able to make out the distant sound of Zsuzsa’s brain whirring. She is in deep thought.
“Mila will probably fly on a plane on her own at some point.” Zsuzsa says.
“When?” I ask.
“When she’s going to visit grandparents. She’ll probably fly to Hungary, to the UK or Spain.”
“I guess so.” I reply.
“It’ll be scary though.” Zsuzsa remarks. “What if something happens to her when she’s on her own?”
“Don’t worry honey. Flights are pretty safe nowadays. Especially in Europe.”
“But what if something did happen? I could never forgive myself.”
Silence as we both contemplate the un-contemplate-able. Zsuzsa eventually breaks the silence.
“If anything happened, I’d kill myself.”
I frown in the darkness.
“But what about me?” I reply.
“I’d kill you too.” Zsuzsa replies without missing a beat.
We lie there in silence while I decide that the wheedle training video might need to be put on the back-burner for a while.
My disapproving ladies
