Saturday Morning's Alright For Fighting

V and me are mooching around the flat, groaning and moving with glacial slowness. A passing zoologist could be forgiven for thinking he had discovered a new species of primate - one whose chief characteristic is a memory span so small that the consequences of drinking Albanian Grappa are forgotten over and over again.

I'm watching the news and battling my way through a stack of toast and Marmite. V is banging around in the kitchen trying to source bran flakes, sultanas and milk so she can bring them together in a beautiful symphony of fruit and fibre.

I've pointed out to her a couple of hundred times that there exists a ready-made product that would at a stroke make her life easier. It's called Sultana Bran. But V's on another guilt-driven health kick and won't eat this because it's 'full of nonsense'.

Our Saturday mornings are a picture of baby-free contentment. I imagine at this precise moment our bechildrened friends are facing down high-octane tantrums or cleaning up lurid green vom, and so feel the same sense of satisfaction I do when I order well in a restaurant and my fellow diners make rubbish choices. This warm glow is short-lived, however, as V marches into the lounge and makes short work of commandeering both sofa and doofer.

"I was watching the news!" I cry.

"Nothing ever happens at weekends," she says, flicking over to something she finds more agreeable.

I point out to V that Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow is a children's television show, and suggest she would be better served catching up with world affairs on News 24 or even honing her culinary skills via Saturday Kitchen. Her retort - a veritable rainbow of swearwords - suggests a career working in live TV with young kids will never be an option.

Dick and Dom are admittedly quite funny, and the antics of the nippers who scamper gleefully around their knees elicit a series of chortles from both V and myself. But this is dangerous territory.

Broadcasting images of a studio full of adorably perky seven-year-olds is a form of propaganda designed to brainwash people like us into believing that having kids involves not much more than buggering about on spacehoppers and taking the odd hit from a custard pie.

"They're so cute, aren't they?" says V. A small boy eats something and declares that it 'tastes like jobbies'. V laughs so hard I fear she may have a seizure. Though this would be terrible, I instinctively assess whether it would present enough of a window of opportunity for me to retrieve the doofer.

The cartoons come on. V considers herself to be too sophisticated for them and so redirects her attention to the view out the window. But I can tell from her thoughtful expression that she's not looking at the burnt-out shell of Booji's Quality Minimart across the road. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, she speaks.

"All things considered, I think I did well when I picked you."

I am aglow with manly pride. Although I was always under the impression that I chose her. And I'm not sure about the 'all things considered' bit. I press for details.

"Well, you're a decent guy," she explains. "If perhaps a tad unadventurous. And your indecision is not one of your better qualities. Especially when it comes to children."

Aware that I have unwittingly been drawn into a conversational minefield, I go for the least dangerous route.

"Unadventurous? What do you mean?"

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not disputing that you're relatively dependable and caring," she concedes magnanimously. "It's just that you're completely normal."

I wonder how normal contemplating partnercide makes you, but remain silent. V continues.

"Take Rachel's dad. He's off trecking with her brothers in Nepal and he's seventy-one. That's pretty cool. I couldn't see you doing that, if I'm being honest."

I silently curse the concept of 'honesty'.

"And Amy was telling me the other day that her dad let her drink and smoke in the house when she was 13. Talk about easy-going. You wouldn't allow that, would you. It's not a biggie darling, really. Everyone's different!" she says, smiling sunnily.

Rachael's dad survived in an icehole for nine days when he was trying to climb K2 at the age of 17. There have also been suggestions that he was in MI6 and can kill a man with his ring finger. I resolve not to compete with the trecking thing. But I can defend myself as a groovy parent.

"Look, my attitude to fatherhood is relaxed - libertarian even. Let them have parties. The odd glass of wine with a meal won't kill them. What's wrong with letting them watch, say, an 18-rated movie?"

V spins round.

"Uh-uh. I'd have to veto that," she says, shaking her head.

"What do you mean? I saw The Omen when I was eight and my friends will vouch for me that I've never demonically murdered any-"

"Listen up hepcat. No child of ours is allowed to watch violence on TV until they are old enough to decide for themselves if they want to see it. The same goes for porn and playing with stupid toy guns."

"Brilliant. Let's just wrap them in cotton wool."

"Shut up!" says V, jumping to her feet. "Our children are artistic and bohemian with liberal values and a peaceful sensibility. They're not interested in blowing shit up. They're smarter than that. Into the big issues - the world, politics, gender issues, free and open debate. And that's final."

I have a sudden mental picture of our children on the wrong end of a leathering - probably justified - for being painfully right-on Islingtonites in Birkenstocks and Yak-hair waistcoats.

"Well you can console them when they get a hard time at school for having Fair Trade quinoa in their lunchboxes," I protest.
"It's pronounced keen-wa," corrects V, rolling her eyes.

"If we can return to the subject, trying to condition a kid into being 'liberal' is the surest way I can imagine of raising a future Tory. I hope you can live-"

V stomps out of the lounge and goes to the spare room (aka the Situation Room), no doubt to run through a variety of parenting gameplans with the aim of ensuring full tactical advantage no matter what future scenario may arise.

I secure the doofer and flick over to Saturday Kitchen, but the programme washes over me. I'm in such a foul mood that I feel nothing but seething hatred for Anthony Worral-Thompson. Actually, that happens every Saturday.

As I stare at the telly and V plots in the Sit Room, it occurs to me we have passed a milestone.

Our first big fight about the children.

The ones that we don't have yet.

Comments

[MQ]

Ha! You call it a doofer as well. Where *did* that word come from?

[Joe Blogs]

Hehehehe - superabo. Worall Thomson has the effect same effect on my gf.