Lockdown: Week 5
“Your baby is crying again, sir?” the shopkeeper said. He was sat on the wall outside, smoking.
“Yep.”
On my regular walk, Jacob cries when we pass this guy’s shop. Without fail. It’s uncanny. Still, I don’t think it is comment-worthy. I mean, I couldn’t be more aware that my baby is crying. I am more aware of this fact than anybody else in the universe. Little does the shopkeeper know, his remark cost him £6 of my money for a bottle of Echo Falls (don’t judge, he has a limited selection. It’s basically that or MD20/20) so there is no winner here. Actually, there is. Tesco Express is the winner. Bloody corporations.
In a bid to combat Jacob’s tears, I put a white noise compilation on my phone and stuck it under the mattress in his pram. Things got off to a good start; he was asleep within 10 minutes, the tension in my shoulders eased and I settled into a casual stroll. I have become immune to white noise as we have it playing all night every night and silence now seems louder. I was surprised that my Spotify artist of the year for 2019 was Kanye West as I’m neither cool nor a fan of his latest album, but there will be no such surprises for 2020. White Noise is set to be the clear winner. I prefer his earlier stuff.
I was snapped out of my blissful state by a booming American voice:
“TAKE A MOMENT TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE ACHIEVED TODAY. TODAY IS A GOOD DAY. YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK…”
What have I achieved today? I forgot my password and got locked out of my work laptop this morning and I’ve just established a resentment for a perfectly amiable shopkeeper. More to the point, how the heck had this chancer got onto a white noise playlist? Totally the wrong genre, mate. I looked down at Jacob and he was in a heavy sleep. I couldn’t risk fumbling around in his pram for the phone and waking him up. So, looking like a man with deep insecurities which he is surprisingly keen to air publicly, I just rode it out and listened to 4 minutes of aggressively loud positive self-talk while avoiding eye contact with anyone we came across. Mercifully, the playlist got back on track with the sound of waves crashing.
There won’t be any similar issues with my phone for the foreseeable as I no longer have a working one. A couple of days ago, I took Joshua for a stroll in the woods, which you may remember from week 3. Enough time had passed, we were ready. Things started out great; it was a lovely day with flowers in bloom and sunlight flickering through the branches as we scrambled around searching for pine cones and, more ambitiously, dinosaurs.
After half an hour, we sat down on a rock by a stream and I gave Joshua a snack. As he was munching his raisins, I looked at him and thought, fucking hell, I am this guy’s dad! I am a father to two sons. Sometimes, not that often, this catches me completely off guard. It’s quite overwhelming. Blink 182 and drinking cider in the park doesn’t seem that long ago? As if I’m a dad? The ensuing moments indicate I still have a lot to learn.
In trying to show off to Joshua by kicking a large stick into the stream, I caught my rucksack and watched as it rolled, pathetically slowly, down the bank and into the water. I scrambled down the side and managed to extend my arm and grab it. Sadly, as I was performing this heroic action, my phone flew out of my back pocket and landed in the drink (I blame wearing jogging bottoms. I honestly think I’ve lost or broken double figures in phones due to the frankly irresponsibly designed zipless pockets on jogging bottoms.) The phone was fully submerged. I managed to hook it out but knew that a stint in a bowl of rice would be in vain. It was over.
With a sopping wet rucksack and a broken phone, I climbed back up the bank. Two women were walking their dog and hadn’t seen me. What they had seen: a 2-year-old, sat eating raisins by a stream, totally alone. Just out on a solo jaunt.
“Hi,” I said, emerging covered in mud and water. “Just, you know, dropped my rucksack, and subsequently my phone, in the stream.”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
I got the impression they didn’t give a shit about the phone. They were, though, visibly relieved that their day wasn’t going to be derailed by having to deal with an unsupervised toddler in the woods.
After they left, Joshua began laughing hysterically, saying “Daddy. Bag. Water” on repeat. He then, almost-definitely-deliberately, chucked his wooden butterfly into the stream and his laughter made way for tears, “No, Daddy! My butterfly!”
I was back in the stream. Hello, old friend. Gladly, I managed to retrieve the butterfly.
I’m no stranger to being phoneless but it is particularly galling in the current climate. What am I supposed to do with my days now? Do some work? Give the children my undivided attention? It doesn’t bear thinking about. At least Louise has a phone so we can stay in touch with friends and family. Well, this was the case for exactly 20 hours. The following morning, no lie, Joshua grabbed her phone from the windowsill and hurled it out of the front door onto the steps. Smashed screen, no good to anyone. Come on now?
In these unprecedented times, how on earth are we going to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in the world?
“You could always go and buy a newspaper, Andy?” Louise said.
Not happening.
