Sixteen more hours of fatherhood

Just over a year ago, Dora went to a wedding on the far side of the country, leaving me to look after The Bean (then one and a bit, now two and a bit) all day for the first time. I wrote an hour-by-hour account of that experience here. Re-reading it brings back to me the mixture of pride, looming chaos, emotional intensity and increasing exhaustion that I felt that day. My post ended, "After waking once in a panic, The Bean sleeps peacefully, still clutching his bottle. When Dora returns, she will probably find me doing exactly the same."

Today, Dora has gone off to another wedding, leaving me in charge again. What a difference a year makes. The chaos and exhaustion have definitely lessened, though the other stuff is still there.

Hour one. I wake up first, and creep quietly out of the bedroom. I am moving at the speed of smell: very slowly, to avoid waking The Bean, and I won't be having a shower (too loud) until later. The Bean wakes up anyway, but groans quietly to himself long enough for me to meditate.

Hour two. I fetch him from his cot. "Down", he says, meaning "pick me up". We wash and dress with much less fuss than usual, and head for breakfast. "Shreddies". "More shreddies". "More shreddies". He is eating well today.

Hour three. We drive Dora to the station and watch her go through the ticket barrier. "Mummy gone. Train. Track". The chance to inspect the latter two seems to be ample compensation for the former.

Hour four. Visit to book sale at large warehouse near the station, where we meet Gabriel, Gabrielle and Gabble. Each of us three adults agree to look after both children for five minutes while the other two browse for books. Despite her advanced stage of pregnancy, Gabrielle keeps them enthralled with an enthusiastic display of gymnastics and amateur dramatics. Gabriel manages to get them both sitting quietly on the floor looking at books. When it's my turn, they fight each other trying to press the buttons on the same book at the same time, then run off in opposite directions. Fortunately there is only one exit from the place and I have a developed positional sense after watching so much football, but even so, after one stint on duty, I decide we will go home. I buy several books for The Bean, but find nothing that appeals to me personally among the piles of trashy novels, non-initial parts of interesting-looking fantasy series, and compendia of sporting and political facts. However, Gabrielle has somehow managed to locate a copy of "The Essence of the Gnostics" by Bernard Simon for me, which I figure has to be worth the outlay of a pound.

Hours five and six. A quick turnaround at home, and we are off to a local Baptist church which is holding a craft morning for children, presumably in order to evangelise the locals, though it's very low-key. We arrive with an Indian friend and her equally Indian son, who is the same age as The Bean. When we sign in, she and I are asked if we're married to each other. I feel vaguely flattered by this question given the more than twenty-year age gap between us, but The Bean has very definite blue eyes and blond hair, and I wonder what freak of genetics the questioner imagines could have produced twins of such striking non-identicalness.

We spend a contented hour gluing coloured sand onto paper and making snakes out of clay. I wonder why my friend's snake is so lifelike, with impressively alert eyes and a realistic forked tongue, while mine looks like a blind, tongueless worm with a cigarette up each nostril. I console myself with the thought that at least I can draw a back view of an elephant, then discover that realising it in clay is much harder.

The Bean finds several things to interest him on the stage. One is a drum kit, which by a superhuman exercise of will he manages to keep his hands off. The second is a large cross, decorated with fragments of pottery bearing people's names, and realistic-looking red stains running down it. "Oh, dear," says The Bean. The third is a boy wearing a tiger mask; although this boy is behaving in an entirely un-tigerish manner, The Bean is unable to distinguish symbolism from literal reality and is very perturbed. Judging by the profusion of texts from the Gospel of Matthew around the walls, he is not the only one on the premises who is challenged in this way. We return home for lunch.

Hour seven. Yummy food, thoughtfully cooked by Dora during the week. We listen to the News Quiz on the radio. Then I turn it off, thinking I should really pay more attention to The Bean. "Off", he says immediately, meaning "turn it back on".

Hours eight, nine and most of ten. The Bean sleeps. I wash up, book a ticket for the local rock festival, answer e-mails, and read a large chunk of "The Normal Christian Life", a fabulous exposition by Watchman Nee, based on Romans 5 to 8, of what is really supposed to be normative in Christian experience. It is arguably also a better exposition of the essence of Gnosticism than Simon's book, if the first chapter of the latter is anything to go by, though I don't suppose either of them would thank me for saying so.

Eventually The Bean wakes. "Boy. Tiger. Mummy. Train," he says, as soon as I go in to fetch him. I reassure him that it was indeed only a boy, not a tiger, and he's not here now anyway, while Mummy will soon be on the train again to come home. He is further reassured by some singing. He is fascinated by watches, and his favourite song at the moment is "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", because he thinks it's about a watch. (How so? "How I wonder watch you are", of course).

Hour eleven. Football in the garden. It's a full-sized ball, and he really knows how to kick it. We then spend half an hour climbing onto a bench and jumping off together. It was my idea initially, but every time I try to stop, I am recalled with "More. Daddy". Eventually I lie down on the grass exhausted, and for what seems like an hour but is probably only two minutes, he sits astride my stomach, bouncing up and down delightedly. Then we play with a very small plastic ball, and he reaches a developmental milestone: he is able to catch it! At least, he manages to do so when he adopts the pose of a worshipper about to receive the communion bread, and I throw the ball from short range precisely into his cupped palms.

Hour twelve. Out down the road on his trike (or rather, he is on it, while I push). We discover a digger on the far side of a fence, and I lift him up to see. Then we sit beside the main road, watching the vehicles pass. "Bus. Man (van). Red car. Lorry?". But there are no lorries, because it's Saturday. We go back past the fence. "Digger". At home, we watch a short video of a man who has conceived and executed an impressive and moving dance routine in which his partner is a large New Holland digger, to the accompaniment of an operatic aria. Because almost the whole thing is dubbed into Lithuanian, I am unable to determine how seriously he takes himself, but I recommend it to anyone with a taste for the surreal and/or a small child. I was reminded of the story of the woman who claimed to be married to the Berlin Wall.

Hour thirteen. Tea. Much to my and (later) his mother's amazement, The Bean has decided he likes strong cheddar, although not as much as he likes grapes, yoghurt, shreddies or diggers. Then bath time, whose highlights for The Bean are (a) the chance to exit the bath by leaping soaking wet off the edge into my lap, and (b) a short story about a small digger who after various trials and tribulations eventually finds a satisfying role in life planting flowers. I put him in his cot, settle him down, and leave the room. "Bye bye", he says, and blows me several kisses.

Hours fourteen to sixteen. The Bean sleeps. I am pleasantly tired, and feel no need (yet) to resort to the bottle.