All work and no play makes Gareth a dull boy
Like The Revenant, but with a bit less sleeping in dead horses and more baby
We're at Chateau Bela, a massive chateau in Slovakia. It's a beautiful, grandiose building with fifty spacious bedrooms/suites, a restaurant, an orangerie, a spa, a bar, a private cinema, a swimming pool, a vineyard, an enormous garden and its own forest. We are the only people here. Well us, the manager, a waiter and a chef. We're also in the midst of a snow blizzard and as a result I've been keeping my beady eyes out for creepy twin girls standing at the end of every corridor.
We've just been for a candlelit meal for two (and a baby), and now we’re back in the bedroom listening to the La La Land soundtrack, while I gleefully dance around our ample room in my underpants. The album has been playing on repeat on my iPhone for the best part of a week. Now, if you know me well, alarm bells may be ringing. Gareth listening the a musical soundtrack on repeat? But the man despises musicals unless they feature muppets!? Who are you and what the devil have you done with our precious Gareth? Well my friends, this is really Gareth, and the musical listening is one of the symptoms of a virus that I've recently contracted called Fatherhood. For ever since that little madam tore her way out of my beloved wife in a manner that will haunt me forever, I've been reacting differently to certain aspects of the world. Not in monumental ways, but in little ways that I look back on after they've happened and think, "Huh!". Let's exam some of the evidence...
- I watched the film Arrival at a cinema and my eyes sprang a leak. For decades they've been impeccably well sealed.
- I suggested that we go and see a musical (La La Land).
- We watched La La Land, I loved it, my eyes very nearly started leaking again even though I thought I'd resealed them, and I've been playing the soundtrack on repeat ever since.
- I've become increasingly intolerant of anyone intolerant (Tories, Daily Mail, The Donald, Katie Hopkins I’m looking at you).
- I was compelled to give a 1000 forint note to a homeless man with a frozen beard (worth pointing out to non-Hungarians that that's actually only just under £3, so I haven't gone completely mental).
- I often find myself browsing the little girls clothes sections in shops and gasping at how utterly delightful a pretty little blouse is.
There are plenty more examples, but I think you should now get the picture. Basically I've become a soft bastard. Becoming a father has melted my icy heart and also made me more determined than ever to ensure that my little cub grows up in a wonderful, tolerant, open, friendly world. Plus it's made me like musicals and coo at tiny, floral dresses.
"Hi honey! I'm home!"
The Lads - "You fancy coming down the local and getting shit faced and then hitting a club until four in the farking morning?"
Me - "Could do. Or...how about everyone comes over to mine, we watch Dreamgirls and drink prosecco? Lads? Lads? Where are you going?"
Everyone - “Yeah we get it. You’ve gone soft. But to be honest we only visit your blog to read about you being an idiot and getting yourself in to some kind of ridiculous situation. To be honest, we’re a little disappointed”
Okay. Fair enough.
So on Wednesday I flew to London for a meeting. A guy from the office was driving to Budapest airport and he kindly agreed to pick me up and take me with him. It's 05:59 in the morning. It's dark, the temperature is subzero and I could easily cut glass with my tiny, rock hard nipples. I'm standing at an agreed meeting point, a street corner about ten minutes walk from my flat and opposite the hairdressers that did sacrilegious things to my hair. I see a car approaching. It begins to slow and pulls up about five metres away from me.
"That'll be Simon." I think to myself and jog over to the car.
I open the car door, and eager to escape the clutches of Jack Frost, I jump in. I turn and smile at Simon. But Simon doesn't smile back. As we all know, it takes Simon a while to warm up in the mornings so the fact that he doesn't respond to my smile with a smile of his own isn't actually all that shocking. And whilst that is a valid point, if I'm honest, I think the main reason that Simon didn't smile back at my beaming face was because it wasn't Simon's car that I was sitting in. This particular car, the one that I found myself sitting in in the dark, belonged to an elderly, moustachioed Hungarian chap who was at this moment in time staring back at me with an expression of deep concern. To be fair, he had every right to be concerned. He'd only stopped to scrape some ice off his windscreen, but now he had a grinning nutter sitting in his car.
I mumbled an apology, he didn't have a clue what I said, I have no idea what he said, and I sheepishly made my retreat, back in to Jack Frost's open arms.
So I'm still a idiot. Happy now?
This is what happens when we find ourselves alone on a chateau