Shift work can sometimes mean you miss saying good morning or good night to your children.
You would prefer to do both but are more grateful for the fact that they are sleeping at all.
There are other times, however, when the shift can work in your favour. It happened to me, one recent morning, when I was left in charge of our two, Caitlin and Patrick, for a few hours. It began with fun and games and ended with head dents and an expensive trip to the phone shop.
7:47am – Patrick is awake but content in his cot. Caitlin’s eye teeth have cut through, and she is under the weather. Still, our plans for a lie-in (of 10 extra minutes) are abruptly ended when she drops my phone into a pint glass of water on the bedside table.
9:06am – Cat (my wife) has fed Patrick and has put him down for a nap. Caitlin is in the playroom, swinging at and missing objects with her foam hurlóg. I am not due in work until 2pm so I tell Cat to get a few hours away from the house.
9:27am – Cat leaves. Caitlin is now wheeling her dolls around in the three-wheeled pram (it is supposed to have four but one wheel refuses to play along). I check on Patrick (30 seconds) before checking Sky Sports News (15 minutes). When it comes to the horse racing updates, I switch off and re-focus.
10:12am – I set up a toy farm set and, along with a Duplo dog Caitlin calls ‘Woof’, we round up the animals into their pen. The horses then jump the fence and need to be pursued on tractors.
10:39am – Rawhide is on TG4. I come to the episode late as a guy called Court has taken over herding the cattle through some dangerous pass despite not being at all trusted by Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood). I give Caitlin some banana and encourage her to join in the cowboy viewing experience.
10:55am – The phone has been drying out near a radiator. I check it. Still banjaxed.
11:04am – Cat drops back in for five minutes before heading back out. Patrick is still asleep.
11:21am – I pause Rawhide when Patrick wakes up but continue watching as he takes his bottle.
11:36am – Caitlin is patting her brother’s head and tucking his blanket in. I SPOT A BLOOPER NEAR THE END OF RAWHIDE! A camera crew (boom mics, director’s chair and all) are caught on screen, in shadows on cattle as they drink water. They must be filming (in 1964) with the sun at their backs. Wow. I pause the show, thinking, ‘I must get a picture of this’.
11:37am – All hell has broken loose. Caitlin has cracked a toy tractor, from the farm, off her brother’s head. There is a red mark already there. It looks like a head dent. Patrick, understandably, is wailing. Caitlin’s knows she has done wrong.
11:52am – A few laps of the front room has soothed Patrick. Caitlin is having some milk. ‘Where is that mother of yours?’ I wonder aloud.
12:08pm – We are 12 minutes into The Chipmunks Movie, and both children could not be bothered. They only perk up for the songs. I sacrifice the narrative for music. I wish my phone was working. Is that an Aqua song the Chipmunks are singing? Legs wobbling, I teach Patrick how to box southpaw.
12:31pm – Cat comes home. My bag is already packed. ‘It all went fine,’ I lie. ‘Yes, we played lots of games.’ I cannot resist telling the story about the Rawhide blooper. ‘What is that mark on Patrick’s head?’ she asks. My wife is a woman of priorities.
11:48pm – Back from work. After 14 hours of drying out in various warm places – including in a bag of rice in the hot press – the phone is no better. All of my photos of various TV bloopers, Ronan O’Gara’s garish RTE suits, and my family are scattered to the four digital winds.
Patrick is a Dubliner, now residing in the shiny buckle of the commuter belt (Sallins, Co Kildare). He is gainfully employed to watch matches and file copy for SportsJOE.ie.
