Day 96 - The Wolf of Budapest

The Wolf of Budapest

I’ve been on a stag do in Dublin and I am unbelievably tired.

The first two days were craic (not crack) filled, but it’s now day three and I just want to go home.  In fact, I would trade in one of my testicles if I could be immediately teleported back to my sofa in Budapest, where I would then proceed to nod off whilst watching House of Cards with my ladies.  Alas, my flight isn’t until the evening (Damn you Ryan Air!).  We are staying in a squalid little hovel in an area of the city that’s bursting at the seems with dodgy looking council estates.  For some peculiar, unknown reason our accommodation also constantly smells of sausages.  

All of the other members of the stag party apart from me have been forced to check out already, so as it stands there are currently twelve, tired, hungover men with luggage in my room.  Some of the guys are sleeping on the floor, three others share a bed, one has been gazing out of the window for about two hours, while another makes some tea.  We look like Albanian immigrants waiting for a phone call to say that someone needs some tarmacking.

To make matters worse, there’s a big gaelic football match taking place today meaning that it's the busiest day of the year for the city.  The result being that we need to get to the airport five hours before our flight or risk not being able to get a taxi.

After five long hours sitting in a Burger King in Dublin Airport (I should have set up a Justgiving sponsorship page), I get on my flight, the plane is pointed in the direction of Budapest and off we go.  I skilfully manage to avoid buying scratch cards, we land, and I depart looking like one of The Walking Dead and fighting the desire to simply drift off in to a lovely coma.

I eventually make it home to our nest.  I open the front door and my wife flings herself around me.  She is beyond ecstatic to see me.  I haven’t been greeted with such boundless enthusiasm since I had a puppy as a child.  The puppy often weed on me in joy.  Thankfully I have toilet trained my wife to a slightly higher standard..

I sneak in to the bedroom to say hello to my sleeping baby girl.  I peer in to the cot.  I see two large, wild eyes glaring back at me through the darkness.  Either my wife has swapped our newborn for a bushbaby or this little human cub has decided to tear up the night and day rulebook.

Not even stylised political drama will make this baby sleep

That night I sob into my pillow as Mila screams.  ALL.  NIGHT.  LONG.

Eventually, extreme tiredness takes over, the screaming becomes background noise and I fall asleep.  A couple of ours later and I am awoken by an alarming smell.  My hungover brain has a horrible feeling that it knows where this smell is coming from.  I look to my wife for help, but she is nowhere to be seen.  All I can see is a wild eyed baby, staring back at me from her cot.  

Mila makes a noise which I think is baby for “Are you going to change me or what you lazy twat!?”

I know what I have to do, but I don't want to admit it.

Reluctantly, I decide that I have to do my duty and I cautiously lift my tiny baby girl out of her cot and take her to her nappy changing table.  Like a nerd carefully unpacking a new iPhone I begin to remove her outer layers.  

Oh the horror!  THE HORROR!  What’s that coming out of the nappy?  Is it a monster?  IS IT A MONSTER!?  Surely this filth has come from a darts player after a curry night in a Weatherspoons rather than from my sweet baby girl.  It’s gargantuan! Also,  I don’t know how, but she’s even managed to shit on her chest!

Fighting the urge to wretch for risk of adding vomit to this already beastly mix, I set about the clean up operation.  I’m like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction, if the Wolf was incredibly squeamish, bad at his job and sweated Guinness profusely.  The filth is on my hands, it’s on her clothes, it’s around her nipples, it’s on the nappy changing table, it’s engulfing me!

At this moment my wife emerges from the bathroom, sporting a beaming smile.

“Do you know who our baby reminds me of on her ID card?” my wife asks.

Still covered in shit, I rack my brains for famous babies or babies that we both happen to know, but I’m struggling.  My head is pounding and my brain is close to death.  All I can think of is Ross Kemp.  I shrug.

“Bill Murray!” she says.

I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting that.

“Her face.  She has the same face as Bill Murray.” she adds.

I stare at the face of our beautiful, seven week old little baby girl, covered from head to toe in shit and it hits me.  

My wife has just ruined Ghostbusters.

Day 89 - The Meat Baby

My Meat Baby

Conspirators

On three occasions this week, my wife and my newborn child have conspired to make me look like a psychopath.

This psychopathic tale begins on a Wednesday (as all good psychopathic tales should).  Mila is sleepy having tanked up on draught milk, straight from the fleshy tap (she can have some of the bottled European stuff later).  We bundle her into her buggy, pack her carrying sling just in case the milky sedative wears off, and leave our nappy strewn fortress.  Our destination?  A local Hungarian market.  A place where moustachioed men go to sell their fruity, meaty and…er…vegetably wares.  We arrive safe and sound, sleeping baby in toe, but as ever, we are nervous.  Nervous as we have been fooled in to this comfort zone before.  On various occasions of late, our baby has tricked us with her promise of being a peaceful, sleeping baby, and then BANG!  She’s awake.  She’s making a sound that I imagine a goat would make it it was being attacked with a cheese grater.  People are staring.  I’m mouthing sorry apologetically and then we sheepishly flee.  On this particular occasion though, so far so good.  But we remain sceptical.

A few minutes later, my wife is perusing the aubergines when our worst fears are confirmed.  Mila is stirring.  THE BRAZEN CHARLATAN!  At this moment in time she’s only stretching, but we are all too fully aware of what this is.  This is a teaser campaign.   This is the calm before the storm.  This is the beginning. This is Germany invading Poland.  In a state of panic we bundle her out of her buggy and in to her sling, a trick that sometimes works.  Mila lets out a big sigh and closes her eyes.  We’ve done it!  I think what might have been, if only Poland had a big sling in 1939.

“Honey!” my wife whispers.  “We need to be quick.  Why don’t you go and get the ham and bread?”

I silently nod my approval at this excellent, time utilising idea and push our baby-less buggy over to the meaty section of the market.  Using a combination of pointing and grunts I successfully purchase a shed load of (what I assume is) ham, pop it in to the buggy and head to the land of bread.  

The bread section is bustling with elderly Hungarian ladies.  It’s packed and I see no way through, but remembering our ticking baby time-bomb I decide that I need to be ruthless and so stride towards them with a plan to use my ham filled buggy as a battering ram.  I soon discover however, that the battering ram isn’t required.  The elderly ladies see me pushing the buggy and respond with beaming, adoring smiles and cooing eyes.  This must be what it feels like to be Tom Jones!  They move to let me pass and I now feel like Moses parting the Red Sea, but alas, it’s short lived and within seconds I am engulfed as they then all huddle around the buggy.  I’m drowning as they all peer in.  Seconds later and the smiles are replaced with a strange look.  At first the look is hard to decipher, but I soon realise that it is the look that people give when they peer in to a pram expecting to see a cute baby, but are instead confronted with some lovely ham.  They eye me suspiciously.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m fond of ham.  If I could only eat one animal for the rest of eternity, pigs would be right up there.  But I’m not so fond of ham that I would pop it in a pram and take it out for a walk.    My paternal feelings towards ham are at best, weak.  But these ladies think otherwise, and sadly my Hungarian is not of a standard where I can explain the truth.  I decide that bread is overrated and leave.

A proud Dad taking his favourite breaded meat snack for a walk

A few days later and the folks have come to visit from Spain.  We have been to a restaurant.  For the most part, Mila was well behaved, but half way through our mains our baby bomb goes off.  My wife scoops her up in the sling and we begin our hasty escape.  I'm following about thirty metres behind, pushing my wife’s uneaten chicken kiev in the buggy.  At some traffic lights, people stare and then edge away from me.  I again look like a psychopath who has taken it upon himself to raise some meat.

It’s now Saturday and we are hosting the in-laws.  It’s late, but we decide that a walk might be nice, and so off to Buda Castle we trot.  Twenty minutes later and someone is again attacking a goat with a cheese grater.  We quickly pop Mila in the sling and the wife and the mother in law wander off to calm our frantic baby.  I’m left with my father in law and the buggy and we decide to stop off at a little bar and wait for the three ladies to return.  I carefully park the buggy by a table and we sit down.  The waitress comes over.  She gives us a strange look.  It suddenly dawns on me that we are two men, in a bar, at eleven o’clock at night, with an empty buggy that I am currently gently rocking back and forth.  We look insane.  

I decide that I should wear the sling from now on.

Day 82 - White Candy

White Candy

Me sleeping

My wife has been thinking.

“Honey.” she says.  “I’ve been thinking.”

Told you.

“You know what having a baby reminds me of?”

I lie there motionless, eyes closed and mouth open, a bit of dribble slopping out of the side of my mouth.  A sexier image, you will surely not hear of today.

“Like travelling on the 6:30am Ryanair flight to London whilst looking after a crack addict, EVERYDAY!” she replies.  “You’re standing in a Ryanair queue before the sun comes up.  You’re so tired that it feels as though your skin is about to fall off your body, and all the while, someone with manic eyes is pawing at you, pleadingly”

I nod at my wise wife.  She’s hit the nail on the head.  I’ve been trying to put my finger on the feeling for a few weeks now, but I think this tiny, female, milk providing soothsayer has nailed it.

“All we need now is for some bastard to turn up at our front door selling scratch cards!” she adds.

I think what my wife’s analogy is alluding to is that we are constantly tired and our baby appears to be going through cold turkey every two to three hours.  She wakes up in a blind panic.  She’s frantic!  She’s desperate!  Only one thing will quench this furious desire.  That thing being a nipple spurting milk.  I haven’t tried my wife’s milk, but by the reaction of her one, sole customer, that’s some good shit she’s peddling!  

Craving a hit of 'White Candy'

A thought hits me.  Maybe my wife should open a milk bar, like the one in A Clockwork Orange!  It would surely go down like a house on fire in Shoreditch.  They’d be arriving on their penny farthings and queuing around the block to sample, what I have no doubt, is seriously addictive stuff.  But then I start to worry that my wife’s lactation process won’t be able to keep up with her customer’s demand.  I‘m also worrying that there will be complaints to Watchdog that she is dealing a new, legal drug.  What would its street name be?  ‘White Candy’ maybe.  We might need to buy a camper van and head out in to the desert to replenish our ‘White Candy’ stocks.  It sounds like a lot of work.  I decide that I don’t want that stress for my wife.  It’s at this moment in time that I start to realise that I'm suffering from delirium, brought on by sleep deprivation.

To be fair to our little girl, she does actually sleep through the night like a fleshy little log.  The problem is, we don’t.  The reason being that Mila often makes a choking sound during the night that suggests that she can’t breath.  Concerned by this, we speak to the doctor and he assures us that it’s quite common.  Basically she can’t yet swallow properly so either milk, mucus or both often gets stuck in her throat.  

We are momentarily relieved until he adds, “You should keep an eye on her though as there is a chance that she can suffocate in her sleep.”

Great.  That’s sleeping off the menu for the foreseeable future then.

But anyway, today I am getting a temporary reprieve from our ‘White Candy' loving, wheezy little human cub.  I have been given a green card by my kindly wife and I intend to use it wisely.  I’ve now been in Budapest for more than two months, but I’m yet to visit one of the city's amazing thermal spas.  Today is the day where I rectify this.

Gellert Spa

A couple of hours later and I’m entering a sauna at Budapest’s ostentatious Gellert Spa. The sweltering heat hits me and I feel a tad feint, but I decide to battle on.  In the sauna is one other gentleman.  An elderly Hungarian man in tiny speedos that are struggling to contain his low hanging testicles.  I sit down and he smiles at me.

“Jó napot! (Good Day)” he beams, seemingly delighted to have some sweaty company.

“Jó napot.” I reply.

“Hogy van? (How are you?)” he enthusiastically asks.

“Jó köszönöm. (Good thanks)” I reply.

The elderly gent obviously detects an accent as his next word is "Deutsche?”

“Nem.  Angol (No, English)” I reply.

“I speak a little English”, he says.

I smile back before asking “How are you?”

This was my mistake, for this man does not realise that if a Brit says “How are you?” he doesn’t actually give a rat's ass how you are.  It’s just a turn of phrase.  It’s akin to saying “Hi”.  If anyone replies with anything other than the stock answer of “Good”, we assume that they are insane and proceed to panic.  Apparently however, if someone asks the same question to a Hungarian, it is an invitation for them to tell you their life story, as the man then launches in to a gargantuan monologue about the last few years of his life. 

He explains that he has just retired, but that he’s not enjoying it and that he wishes he was still working.  He’s struggling to cope with so much free time.  He then begins to tell me about his family.  His daughter is recently divorced and it’s causing the family much anguish.  He then elaborates on this subject, by divulging minutia about his daughter’s marriage and why, exactly, it broke down.  But I’m no longer listening.  I’m close to death.  It’s nearly one hundred degrees celsius in this hell hole of a room and my life is flashing before my eyes.  I’m discovering that living off minimal sleep for two weeks is not a good pairing for a room that’s so hot that it would melt Frodo’s ring.  I want to get out!  I need to get out!  But I’m British!  To simply get up and leave halfway through this man’s story might seem rude.  I’m trying to assess my options.  Do I get up and leave halfway through this man’s story, or simply give up and collapse, here on the smouldering floor.  If I get up and leave now, obviously I will need to leave the city for fear of bumping in to this man again.  I mean, he might give me a disapproving look!  Alternatively, if I collapse on to the floor, the spa will probably need to find a spatula to scoop me back up off it.

I eventually decide that social embarrassment is probably slightly more appealing than potential death, and I’m about to leg it, when the door opens and another elderly gent in x-rated speedos enters.  The two men’s eyes meet and they begin to converse.  I see my window of opportunity and leave the sauna.  I can feel my blood simmering and now know what it must feel like to be a live lobster in a pot of boiling water, whilst an older lobster with low hanging testicles tells you a sob story.

All of a sudden, an early morning Ryan Air flight with a crack addict doesn’t seem so bad.

Day 75 - Boob Wars

Boob Wars - The Nipple Awakens

A few days ago I discovered that ladies with milky bosoms across the globe are furious with me.  The reason for this unbridled rage?  Because I am so massively anti-breastfeeding...apparently.  I am momentarily confused, largely because I didn’t even realise that I was against breastfeeding.

I first became aware of this nipply rage when an old work friend contacted me via Facebook to let me know that I had popped up in some breastfeeding group that she’s a member of.  The members of the breastfeeding posse are spitting vitriol at this evil dad who for some reason has made it his mission to prevent ladies nipples from entering the mouths of their little babies.  Smack bang in the middle of the post that they are so furious about?  Me holding a breast pump to my man-titty while looking gormless.  Great!  My first time as the face of something and they had to use that picture.

Poster Boy

“How dare he!” they howl.  “This makes my blood boil!”  they cry.

I’m still confused though.  To be honest, I didn’t even realise that it was a thing.  Are people really against breastfeeding?  Nevertheless, I guess it’s one thing off the old bucket list.  Become the poster boy for anti-breastfeeding groups?  Tick.

I investigate further and discover that it all came about due to an article that I'd written for The Dad Network.  This article, which you can read here, has somehow been interpreted as a vicious attack on breastfeeding mums.  I read it again to see if I’d accidentally slipped in a sentence about how breastfeeding mothers needed to be burnt at the stake, just in case, but I can’t find anything.  It’s just a (hopefully) humorous tale about our shell-shocked first week as parents.

I browse the comments on The Dad Network's FaceBook page and I'm stunned.  It appears that I've inadvertently started a war between two extremist breastfeeding factions.  There are hundreds of clashing comments between the extreme left (who seemingly want to breastfeed everyone) and the extreme right (campaigning for the extinction of nipples). 

I try to get my wife’s attention.  “Honey?”.

But it’s no use.  She’s too busy breastfeeding.  Damn that natural and beautiful act between mother and child!

I try again and this time it works.

“What’s up?” she says.

“Honey, am I anti-breastfeeding without even realising it?” I ask.

“I don’t think so.”  she replies.  “I mean, do you find yourself getting worked up in to a blind fury when I feed Mila?”

“Not really.”

“Do you hate breastfeeding Mums?”

“Not at all.  I mean sometimes I don’t know where to look, but I think it’s a lovely and natural thing.”

“Then I would say you’re actually a friend of breastfeeding mums.”

“I thought so too!”

“To be honest,” my wife says, “I doubt they’ve actually even read your article.  They’ve probably just read the headline that The Dad Network added and gotten the wrong end of the stick”.

Nevertheless, I’m now living in fear that on an innocent walk to the local shops to buy nappies for my baby, I will stumble across one of those infamous, deadly gangs of breastfeeding mums that you hear about on the news.  The ones that hang out on street corners or in tunnels, looking to cause trouble.  Probably a gang affiliated with the extreme breastfeeding terrorist cell who I have unexpectedly clashed with.  I am living in fear.

Please join me again next week when I will be writing about why mothers should lose the right to vote.

The face of a man who has accidentally pressed the red button.

Day 68 - Do Babies Dream of Baby Sheep

Do Babies Dream of Baby Sheep

You know how I said before that it was the waiting for the baby's arrival that was the hardest part?  Bollocks!  The waiting was the easy bit, as you can see from my new top three list of the hardest things about having a baby, ranked from hardest to easiest...

1. The birth.  Horrific.  Brutal.  Savage.  Basically like a Saw movie.  (Shudders)
2. Twenty four hours of a baby crying.  Oh!  My!  God!  Please sleep!
3. Waiting for an overdue baby.

In fact, as unbearable as it seemed at the time, I actually miss the waiting part now!  I mean, we love our baby, we are over the moon, smitten, and very rarely think about selling her on eBay, but I live in a beautiful city, it’s thirty degrees outside and I don't have to go and sit in an office!  I miss being able to just take a stroll up to Buda Castle with my favourite wife, pop in to Pest for a bite to eat, or visit one of the city’s many bars or cafes for a sociable drink in the sun.

Maybe I’m just feeling a tad bitter due to the fact that Mila spent yesterday (which incidentally was our third wedding anniversary) screaming at the top of her tiny lungs.  FOR TWENTY FOUR FUCKING HOURS!  I think she’s maybe going through that phase.  You know the one.  The phase where the ONLY thing that will stop her crying is to be carried around by her Dad while he sings the entire back catalogue of The Crash Test Dummies to her.  The trickiest part of this is that I only know two of The Crash Test Dummies' songs.  These being ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ and ‘Afternoons & Coffeespoons’, and out of these two songs I know a total of eight words from the lyrics, seven of which are in the titles.  So, our anniversary evening consisted of me, with wild, bloodshot eyes, wandering around the flat carrying a baby, guessing the entire back catalogue of The Crash Test Dummies.

“She’s asleep honey!  Why don’t you try and put her to bed?” my wife says.

I nod and then looking like a man carrying his life's work through a field of land mines, I carefully put my sleeping child to bed.  Her peaceful, sleeping head touches the mattress.  Her eyes shoot open.  She glares at me and she is frantic.  She screams.  I pick her up.

“Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm.”

Repeat until my eyeballs bleed, while I consider if there's any feasible way to put our baby back inside my wife.

One other thing that hopefully one of you experienced parents out there can help shed some light on.  Why is it that a baby will sleep through storms, sirens, violent political demonstrations etc, but if you step on to a squeaky floorboard, wide awake!  Why!?  What is this witchcraft, this black magic!  A few days ago we went for a walk with Mila in her buggy.  It was some kind of National Hungary Day so there were celebrations all over the city.  We’d just managed to get Mila to sleep by walking vigorously over a cobbled street, when up ahead we spot something that terrifies us.  A parade of Hungarian bagpipe players coming our way!  About fifty of them, all gleefully blowing in to their abhorrent sacks!  We've no idea what Hungarians are doing playing the bagpipes, but naturally, we are horrified.  We look for an escape route, but it’s no use.  We are surrounded.  So, with darkness in our hearts we prepare to walk in to the bagpipe playing hell.  And...our ridiculous little human didn’t so much as raise an eyelid!  Astonishing sleeping skills!  We are delighted!  We get home, she seems to be in a coma, we put her to bed, step on a floorboard that had just at this moment decided to become squeaky.  Eyes shoot open.  Scream.  We are broken.

“You know our baby?” I ask the wife.

“I know her.” she replies.

“Well, I think she might be a bit of a dick.”

“Don’t say that honey!”

“I’m sorry, but she has screamed for the entirety of our wedding anniversary, only stopping if I sing early 90's, obscure, Canadian rock to her!  Not only that, but she seems to time her number two’s for when it’s my turn to change her nappy!  You get a little splash of fragrant baby wee, I get stinking baby jalfrezi!  What the hell is that about!?  Like I said, I think she might be a bit of a dick.”

“She’s not a dick.  She doesn’t understand what’s going on.  She’s going through something called a leap.  She’s just scared.”

“Well, I hope you’re right!  She better be scared shitless!”

When we do finally manage to get Mila to sleep I often find myself staring at her, wondering what the devil she’s dreaming about.  I mean, what does she know?  She knows the inside of my wife’s uterus, she knows that breasts are delicious, and she knows a tiny section of Budapest.  She'd be a rubbish 'phone a friend' on Who Wants to be A Millionaire.  She probably doesn’t even realise that the United Kingdom recently had a referendum about whether or not to stay in the European Union!  Or maybe I’m wrong and she knows a lot more than she’s giving away.  Maybe she has been quietly absorbing the world around her over the last nine months from inside my wife.  

What the hell is going on inside that tiny head?

 Maybe her dreams are vivid and wild.  Maybe they go a little something like this…

Flying over the Alps like a fleshy, baby, Ryanair jet

The Even Littler Mermaid (Eat your heart out Nirvana Nevermind cover)

Dancing with pink dancing sheep on the beaches of Kokomo (obviously)

Riding her stuffed dog Rufus through the wild jungles of Mexico

Travelling across a river with her friendly, stuffed, pink, giraffe, Juan Sebastian.

Or maybe she’s just dreaming about my wife’s breasts. 

Day 54 - Escape From Baby Alcatraz

Escape From Baby Alcatraz

Not enjoying the handball coverage

I’m sitting at home watching Tunisia play Qatar at handball whilst a baby who can’t pooh screams in my ear.  There’s been a lot of obscure Olympic sports watched to the soundtrack of horribly shrill, poohless baby shrieking over the last few days.  Judo, fencing, table tennis, canoe slalom, trampolining, something called radial sailing.  I am well and truly living the fatherhood/Hungarian Olympic coverage dream.  Maybe this is what heaven is like.  I’m hoping things will change moving forward, but week one of parenthood has been like when the mafia ‘go to the mattresses’ during times of gang warfare.  We’ve hardly left the house all week for fear of detonating an explodable baby bomb.

As it stands, if Mila is conscious, the only way to stop her screaming is to stuff a nipple in her mouth.  Sadly, mine appear to be dormant, so it’s my good lady wife who has to be constantly on standby with an emergency nipple bung.  But then, when the time comes to remove the nipple from our human cub's mouth, it’s like removing a pin from a WWII hand grenade that you’ve found in your back garden.  You don’t know if the hand grenade is live or not, but if it is live, you can be sure that it will take your face clean off and leave everyone around splintered with shrapnel.

This nipple stuffing technique does seem to be foolproof, but it’s pretty tough for my wife.

“I’m like an industrial cow!”  she says.  “I’m just here for milking.  I don’t think she’s even seen my face!  All she’s interested in are my tits!”  

Maybe Mila takes after her father.

“Ahh.” I reply in my most soothing voice.  “You’re not an industrial cow honey.  More like a lovely organic cow that has been well looked after by a loving farmer.”

I think for a second, before continuing with my inspirational pep talk.

“I actually like to think of you more as her favourite restaurant.  And not just any restaurant!  You’re not a Wimpy for example.  If anything you’re like a lovely little, local, healthy restaurant.  You’re probably even gluten free!”  

A thought hits me.  I haven’t seen a Wimpy for about twenty years.  I’m now worried that they may have gone the same way as the dodo, the woolly mammoth or C&A.

“But I can’t keep up with the demand!” my wife moans, close to tears as she nurses her savaged nipples.

But it’s no use, I’m not listening.  My mind is focusing on the potential extinction of Wimpy restaurants.

At that moment we are interrupted by the midwife knocking on our front door.  It’s now been six days since Mila last poohed, so we just want to check that everything is in working order.  The midwife enters, prods her little belly, pushes her legs up by her head and then puts a thermometer up her rectum.  Once she’s finished fooling around we show her to our baby.

“I think she seems fine” the midwife tells us.  “It’s often the case that newborns don’t poop much for the first week or two of their lives if they’re being breast fed.  Keep doing bicycle exercises with her little legs, massage her belly and before you’ll know it, you will have more poop than you can handle.”  The midwife then leaves, leaving us once again, with our poohless child.

“Maybe she’ll never pooh” I say.  “Maybe she's like The X-Men!  Maybe the next evolution of the human race will be a pooh-free human!  Imagine how freaked out Andrex would be!  The shit would well and truly hit the fan in their HQ, perhaps for the last time!” 

Thanks to Angelcare I can Dad without missing a second of my beloved trampolining qualifiers

On Mila’s eighth day on Earth we decide to put our pooh concerns behind us, and prepare to face our fears by leaving our safe haven.  She wakes up at midday.  My wife pacifies her with a nipple.  Half an hour later she slowly removes the nipple.  Huzzah!  This grenade is not live!  We carefully place our cute little sleeping daughter in to her buggy, pop our flip-flops on and leave the flat.  Twenty metres later, Mila wakes up.  She apparently doesn’t appreciate the fact that we didn’t get her sign off for our expedition.  She screams.  Our neighbours no doubt assume that I am butchering a piglet.  We return home.

We are prisoners to our nipple obsessed little warden.   We are in Baby Alcatraz.  But never mind.  At least we can now watch India play Lithuania at badminton.

Later that evening, whilst I am helping Mila do her bicycle exercises, something shifts and things start to move.  It happens whilst I am looking directly in to the eye of the storm.  I don't think I will ever be clean again.

Hoping that Mila won't look behind our Raquel Welch poster

Day 51 - Budabreast

Budabreast

I've been trying to furiously milk myself now for hours, but so far not a drop.  I think the pump is broken.

If you’d told me several years ago that during the summer of 2016 I’d spend a whole morning, miming the action of pumping a tit to bemused looking, elderly ladies, on the other side of Europe, I’d have been dubious.  Today this happened. 

I was traipsing around Budapest in a desperate quest for a breast pump.  From shop to shop I travelled, like J.R Hartley looking for a book on fly fishing, but with more nipples.  And you know what?  Not one person in any of the shops spoke a word of English!  What on Earth are they teaching these people in the breast pump selling schools of Budapest!?  

The situation repeatedly played out like this.

I enter a pharmacy/medical supply shop.

An elderly, gruff Hungarian woman stares at me blankly.

“Beszél Angolul (Do you speak English)?” I say.

“Nem (No)” they reply.

Bollocks.

I do the only thing I can, and look them in the eyes pleadingly, whilst pretending to grab my imaginary tits and squeeze them.

Cue a furrowed brow from the gruff Hungarian lady.

My eyes become more and more pleading as my tit squeezing mime becomes more and more elaborate.  On a few occasions they twig and answer me with a shake of the head.  On a few other occasions they just continue to stare blankly.  But, just like those man hungry Mounties, I eventually get my man/breast pump.

My search was all in preparation for my ladies finally returning home to our Buda Nest.  Mila was born four days ago, but due to the particularly savage nature of the birth, Mila ended up hurting her collar bone and my wife dislocated her arsehole (or something like that).  So they’ve been kept in until now to recuperate.  Mila also needed a blood test as she was apparently looking a bit pale.  Thankfully the results came back positive, with the midwife concluding that she was probably looking a bit pale because she was half British!  What the…!?  But today was the big day.  They’d been given the all clear!  My little lady and my even littler lady were coming home.

The message to come and collect them comes through and I’m overjoyed, despite the fact that it might disrupt my evenings, which over the last four days have consisted of me, a pair of underpants, a sofa, The Olympics and a bottle of wine.  I jump in the car and race across Budapest to collect my girls.

On route to the hospital.

Once at the hospital it becomes apparent that we now have an abundance of possessions that must go with us wherever we go.  In the past, when we’ve hosted friends with children I’ve always been incredulous or sneerful, or both (sneerdulous?) by the sheer amount of apparent ‘shit’ that they’ve hauled with them.  Sterilisers, little tubs of slop, numerous wheeled contraptions, bags, more bags, a few more bags just in case.  Now, even before our baby has arrived home, I cast my eye at our car full of ‘stuff’ and begin to calibrate with their apparent madness.  It was bursting at the seams with baby shit (not literally)!  I make a mental note to do all that I can to stop this insanity in it's tracks.  We need to be the kind of couple who put our flip-flops on, chuck the baby in a baby bag, grab our passports and toothbrushes and head to The Amazon.  This may be wishful thinking.    

We leave the hospital and drive home.  Mila screams from start to finish.  On the straights I almost reach twelve miles an hour.  After what seems like several days (but was in fact less than twenty minutes), we get home and it hits us.

What the holy fuckety fuck do we do now?

Back in The Buda Nest.  Let the games begin!

Day 47 - Mila Time

Mila Time

Mila Juno Hutchins

Ladies and gentlemen meet Mila Juno Hutchins.  Mila Juno Hutchins meet the ladies and gentlemen.

So, she’s out, and as a result I have a new found respect for women.  THAT.  WAS.  BRUTAL!  My tiny wife somehow managed to push out a 57 cm long, 8 pound 10 ounce baby.  My little wife who can still comfortably shop at Baby GAP.   I have to doff my cap to my amazing better half and also to the miracle of modern medicine, as if the events of August 4th had taken place one hundred years ago I’ve no idea how we would have got her out.  But all is well and we are both in shellshock.  Oh my God.  What a day.  What a lovely day!

It started at 0500 with The Show.

My wife wakes me up.

“Honey, The Show has started!”

The Show!  The Fucking Show!  Sounds like so much fun doesn’t it?  Visions of jazz hands, music, dancing, can-can girls and maybe even a magic trick.  But then my wife shows me The Show first hand and I can confirm that The Show is not as entertaining as it sounds, and probably wasn’t written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The Show was shortly followed by a series of contractions that made my wife make noises that sadly, I don’t think I will ever make her make.  It’s definitely happening.  I calm my wife by charging around the flat screaming “Don’t panic!”  I am Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army. We get in the car and off we go.  Over the past month I’ve discovered that the roads of Budapest are particularly confusing at the best of times, but when you are driving along with your wife screaming in pain every five minutes, and me screaming “Don’t panic!”, I can confirm they are still fairly baffling. 

We get to the hospital and I am surrounded by rooms of women screaming and groaning,  They are no doubt either giving birth, watching pornography or watching The Walking Dead.  I mentally decide that they are watching pornography.

We get in to a room and it begins.  Zsuzsa is in pain, crying and wailing.  Given that she usually cries if she misses a train this isn’t abnormal, but I sense this is more than a missed train.  Call it intuition.  I give her a piece of chocolate and start recording her with a video.  She doesn’t appreciate this.  I stop recording.

What followed was like the opening twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan, but for seven hours.  I’ve never witnessed such savagery, such brutality.  Oh the horror!  THE HORROR!    I felt as though I was starring in my own, foreign language version of SAW. 

At one point, I was holding one of my wife’s legs, a midwife was holding the other, one doctor was playing the slip fielder, while another big male doctor pressed down hard on my little wife’s belly, trying to force the baby out with some kind of crazy Hungarian toothpaste technique!  And all of this whilst not understanding a single fucking word of what anyone was saying!  Throw in an exam paper that I hadn't revised for and take away my trousers and that's my nightmare!  Right there!  I had visions beforehand of casually sitting by my lady wife’s head, holding her hand and whispering sweet nothings while the doctor did the dirty work, but I had no say in the matter.  I was at the business end.  I was in the trenches.  I probably now have trench foot.  

Outnumbered

And now it’s over and I can confirm that I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhâuser Gate.  Now I’ve seen a baby's head do unmentionable things.  All of those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain.

If you are not familiar with Blade Runner you may now be thinking that I’ve been over doing it on the nitrous oxide.  Outrageously though, they don’t have nitrous oxide in Hungarian hospitals!  It was the whole reason that I got my wife pregnant in the first place!  Livid.

But she’s out.  Both mother and daughter are doing well.  Mother will hobble and sit on a rubber ring for a few weeks I’d imagine, but all is good.  We are ecstatic.  Our little family has just grown by 50% and she’s gorgeous.  I’m sure there will be tough times ahead, but for now, we are an overjoyed, mentally drained, tired, family.

I leave the hospital for the night while my wife and little Mila both try and work out how to breast feed.  I’m now out numbered by ladies, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My girls

Day 46 - In Utero

In Utero

Junior seems to be fairly settled in her modest, all-inclusive studio apartment.

My wife has a theory that our baby is reluctant to leave the womb as she is worried about the current state of the sterling.

”I'm not sure that she's actually aware of the current financial crisis facing Britain" I say.

"But the pound is doing so badly against the (Hungarian) forint!", she worriedly explains.  "It's not good!"

I'm still not convinced.

"What if my worries about the financial climate are being projected on to her?" she continues.  I guess this makes a little bit more sense.  Maybe.

I try to reassure her.  ”Look, babies are late all the time.  Just because she's decided to hang around in your womb it doesn't mean that she’s scared.  Take it as a compliment.  I'm sure lots of people would rather be in your uterus.  It would be the perfect place to avoid reading headlines from The Daily Mail.”

Just at this moment there's a noise on our terrace.  My wife doesn't hear it, but I do, probably due to my newly acquired heightened senses of alertness.  I pick up a pencil as a weapon and go and investigate.  It's a pigeon.  A dying pigeon sitting on the floor of our terrace.  I think how lucky it is for any prospective burglars that this is a pigeon and not a burglar, as this pencil has been freshly sharpened.

"There's a pigeon on our terrace."  I say.  "I think it's dying.”

My wife appears by my side, munching her way through a pineapple (in a desperate attempt to get the baby packing).

"Yes.  It's definitely dying.” she confirms, before adding, "What are you going to do about it?"

"What am I going to do about it?" I fire back.

"Well are you going to strangle it?" she asks.

"What!?  No!  Why would I strangle the pigeon?  I'm not the kind of guy who goes around strangling pigeons willy nilly!”  But it occurs to me at this moment, that I am the kind of guy who uses the expression 'willy nilly'.

Only seconds later, the pigeon breathes a dramatic last breath and then face plants firmly in to the concrete.  I am sad for the pigeon, but also incredibly relieved that I don't have to throttle it.

"What now?" my wife asks.  She’s full of questions today.

I think for a moment before replying, "I guess I'll put it in the bin.”

Operation Pineapple

I go to the cupboard under the sink where we happen to store all of our plastic bags/pigeon coffins.  I peruse the options on display before spotting the perfect choice.  The pigeon may have suffered a sorrowful death, but at least she will find peace in an ornate, see-thru Aldi carrier bag at the bottom of a Sulo bin.  A tomb fit for a pigeon king.

I make my way back outside and carefully place the dead pigeon in to its discount chain coffin, using a used orange juice carton as a makeshift prodding device to confirm death.

With the pigeon in the bag, accompanied by the orange juice carton, I leave the flat and begin my journey to the bin.  I decide to use the lift as I'm feeling hot and lazy.  The door is about to close when a foot appears, blocking the door's closure.  It is our neighbour, an old Hungarian man who doesn't speak English.

I look at the freshly dead pigeon in the see-thru carrier bag and simply think, ”Shit!”  I have never shared this lift with anyone except my wife, but fate has chosen this particular moment to alter this statistic.

The old man gets in and smiles at me.  I try to hide the bag, but it's too late.  He has seen the pigeon.  He looks puzzled.  I frantically scroll through my brain to see if I know any Hungarian that can help explain my situation. I've been learning an hour a day for the last six weeks and I'm getting much better.  Sadly though I haven't yet covered the topic of pigeon deaths and bin burials.  I also really wish I knew the Hungarian for "I don't usually shop at Aldi.”  So I simply smile awkwardly, shrug my shoulders and say "Pigeon", loudly and in English.  It is horrible, but at least we only have two floors to go.

On the first floor the elevator stops again,  unexpectedly.  Three smiling Hungarian women enter.  They look at the strange Brit carrying a dead pigeon in a see-thru, Aldi carrier bag and their smiles drop.

I wish I was back in the womb.

Day 42 - Running Out of Names

Running Out of Names

Sadly neither Jet or Jinx made it on to the shortlist

Our baby is now five days overdue and we can’t decide on a name.  If we were having a boy the name was long decided and agreed.  Hugo Zoltan Hutchins!  He would no doubt have been both a comic book character and a wizard.  But little Hugo will just have to wait as, unless it’s a boy with a micro penis, all evidence suggests that we are having a girl, and we are more than delighted with this.

“Why don’t we call her Sonia?”  my wife suggests.  I almost choke on my yogurt, which I’m confident would have been a world first.

I show her a photo of the Eastenders character called Sonia and she gets my point.

“What about Uma?” I ask.

“Are you insane!?” she growls back.  

I take this as a maybe.

This game of baby name tennis has been going on for months now, ever since our twelve weeks scan where we discovered that we were most likely going to welcome a little madam in to our world.  The drama is also heightened on discovering that you are not allowed to leave the hospital in Hungary until a name is registered!  Yikes!

I decide that a run might help with the baby name idea generation.  I am also spurred on by the realisation that I may have to take my top off in a hospital in the next few days for some skin to skin action with a new born baby.   

It’s midday and I am running around Margit Island like an unconventional English/Welsh gazelle.  It’s over thirty degrees celsius and I am the living embodiment for the Noel Coward song, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”.  I am now rather regretting my running decision. 

Half way through I spot a leafy little exercise yard and instantly decide that this is a perfect excuse to take a break from my foolhardy run.  I study the machines on display and make a calculated decision that the peculiar devise that allows you to swing your legs from side to side is probably the least taxing of all the available machines.  After all, what more do you want from exercise than to relax?  So on I hop and begin the bizarre routine of swinging my legs from left to right.  It’s in the shade and I start to smile as I feel my life-force returning.  But then something dreadful happens.  Something almost too ghastly to even mention.  A man makes his way towards my machine, and as bold as brass, hops on to the section that opposes me and begins to swing his legs about.  He is facing me, our noses are centimetres from one another.  His breath is caressing my skin.  I am horrified by this brazen display of disregard for the unwritten rules of personal space encroachment.  But not unlike Theresa May, I resist the urge to immediately trigger Article 50, as being British, the last thing I want this random chap to know is that I feel uncomfortably by his unbelievably close presence.  So, with my heart composing it's own hardcore drum n' bass 'tune', and with every fibre of my being secretly screaming “What the fuck are you doing you scoundrel!?”, I try and play it cool.  This begins with a nonchalant scratch of my shoulder with my chin.  It provides me with the perfect excuse to move my face in to a safe zone.  But I immediately realise that this is only a momentary respite as I can only scratch my shoulder with my scratching chin for so long without appearing to have descended in to madness.

The Circus Maximus

I need a new 'face safety' strategy.  In a eureka moment it comes to me!  I will study the ground for a while as though it is as fascinating as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!  But it’s no use.  I can’t continue to look at the ground for more than fifteen seconds for fear that this stranger will suspect that I am looking uncomfortable, and as a Brit, it is in my DNA that I must do all that I can to avoid this shame.  I reluctantly decide that there’s only one thing for it.  I brace myself and then slowly, calmly and assuredly look straight ahead, in to the eyes of my aggressor.  Our eyes meet and it is horrible.  If we both extend our lips we could probably kiss.  And in this bloodcurdling moment I’m now afraid that this is what he has in mind, so I quickly glance at my wedding ring in the vain hope that his eyes will follow.  But they do not.  This bushwhacker is made of sterner stuff and will not be fooled by ‘sleight of eye’ tricks.  I want to grab him by the ears, shake him and forcefully say “I don’t know what you’re used to around these neck of the woods you cretin, but in Britain we respect each others personal space!”  But it’s no use.  This man is a shameless bastard, plus I don’t know the Hungarian for “neck of the woods”.  Or “cretin”.  Or any of the rest of it.  So I look at the ground again.

Eventually, after what seems like an eternity, but was probably actually less than thirty seconds I decide enough is enough.  You have won sir.  You have won!  I hop off the machine whilst whistling, trying to act as nonchalant as possible and involuntarily break in to a peculiar display of lunges to help me appear so.  I don’t think it worked.  I then run away as fast as my tired legs and shaken mind will carry me, a mentally broken Brit in a land full of foreign, personal space invading madness.  

About a hundred metres down the road I spot a little stall, selling beer.  I decide to stop.  I remember that all of the world’s greatest ideas are generated in a pub.

Day 35 - Waiting for a Girl Like You

Waiting for a Girl Like You

Hands on Dad (not a painting of Freddie Mercury).

Speaking as a man who is yet to witness a baby tearing his wife’s perineum apart with just its head, I think it’s the waiting that’s the hardest part.  We’ve been on tenterhooks for two weeks ever since the doctor remarked that the baby could come at any minute, but so far ‘nada’.  We can't go too far from base camp, I can't drink booze despite being surrounded by delicious Hungarian grape juice wherever I turn.   So we just sit and wait and when we’re not sitting we’re walking.  In fact, we’ve probably covered every yard of Budapest in the last week.  Which when you consider that my wife has to carry her belly in her arms, is quite a feat.  Across streets, over bridges, to fröccs and langós festivals, over hills, to a Picasso exhibition, through markets and even to a concert (Budapest Bar) she has carried that gigantic belly in her tiny arms.  She may look like an Easter Egg with legs, but I have to admire her pluck.   

In dire need of a wheelbarrow

But anyway, I’ve now been in Budapest for about a month and I’m with a friend at a small beer garden (Spiler) near Buda Castle.  The friend has a two year old child and he may not yet realise this, but he is my Obi-Wan Kenobi of fatherhood.  With Junior’s arrival looming large I am looking for reassurance, guidance and a few handy tips of how best to keep a human cub alive.  I’m also trying to assess just how tough the first few weeks of parenthood might be.

“You know the first couple of weeks with the baby?” I say.

He throws back the hood of his robe, leans upon his staff, looks me in the eye and then wisely replies, “Yes”.  This is good.  So far, all positive. 

“Will I be able to get any sleep?”, I ask.

At this he laughs so hard that food comes out of his nose.  I am surprised by this response.  Mainly because he wasn’t even eating at the time.

“I didn’t get any sleep for the first three months!” he snorts.  “You’re going to be so tired that you won’t be able to feel your bloody face!”.  He chortles.  “Take my advice young padawan.  Get as much sleep as you can now as you won’t be able to sleep once the baby arrives!  You’ll look and feel like SHIT!”. 

Naturally, I am thrilled by these words. 

"But still, I guess I should count my blessings that I don't have a nine to five job at the moment.  Right now every day is Saturday!", I remark, striving for an upbeat finish.

"As soon as the baby comes everyday will be a Monday!", he sneers.  

I consider whether I need a new Obi-Wan, whilst wondering if my friend has ever considered a career as a motivational speaker.  

A snap of Liberty Bridge from one of our many walks

Lazy bastards lounging on Liberty Bridge

Nevertheless I have tried to take this sagacious advice on board and have been attempting to hibernate as much as possible.  For two weeks I’ve been half man, half dormouse, but as we reach the finishing straight it’s not as easy as one would think to pop off to the land of nodsville.  The reason being is that I have discovered that once darkness falls I now achieve an unnaturally high state of alertness.  I am a cowboy sleeping with one eye open.  A praying mantis poised to strike.  A man shitting it that his wife is going to go into labour.  I think this newfound ability stems from someone once telling me that babies are most likely to come at night.  The ‘apparent’ reason being that our instincts tell us that as it’s quiet, there’s a lesser chance of predators being around.  I think this sounds like 'utter bollocks' as surely more predators come out at night, but nevertheless my subconscious mind believes them.  

Pablo Picasso The Finger Puppet.  The toy that all kids crave for.

It’s two in the morning.  My wife gets out of bed to empty her battered bladder.  Like a ninja I sense her stirring.  My eyes shoot open and I sit up in bed, like a meerkat on speed.

“Are you alright honey?  What’s up?”  I ask, but before she can reply I am already wearing trousers and searching for the car keys. 

“Need a wee.” she wearily replies.  My trousers are off and I am back in bed.  But I cannot sleep as I am fully alert, heart pounding.  About thirty minutes later I eventually begin to drift off.  Then up she clambers.  I’m awake again.  I’m wearing trousers.  She is weeing.  Back to bed.  Repeat every thirty minutes until dawn.  

Come on Junior!  Please don’t take after your mother and be late.  We’re waiting for you!

Nearly being a father is tougher than I’d imagined.

Budapest Bar

Day 6 - Radio Fame

Radio Fame

Today I was interviewed by one of Hungary’s biggest national radio stations about the Brexit.  And this is unusual as in my six days living in Hungary I have hardly ever been on the national radio.  So when I was contacted by the radio inviting me to share my thoughts, I decided to break my ominous radio silence and the whole of Hungary breathed a collective sigh of relief.  

“Would you prefer to speak in English or Hungarian?” I was asked.  I pondered this dilemma for a few moments before deciding that I’d probably struggle to get my succinct political thoughts across using only the four words of my Hungarian vocabulary.  Especially seeing as one of those is ‘paradiscom’ (tomato) and another ‘fogotmos’ (to clean ones teeth).  You can listen to the full interview below, but if you find yourself struggling to understand the Hungarian translation that has so rudely been placed on top of my sweet voice, it roughly translates as “Bollocks!  That’s me fucked then!”.

It’s crazy to think that I was the glue that kept the UK together.  Of course, I’d always expected that this was the case, but it was only once I actually left the country and witnessed it’s catastrophic collapse in to to chaos and parody from afar, that my instincts had been proven right.  We’ve voted to leave the EU, the prime minister has resigned, the candidates to replace Cameron remind me of the end of the film Ghostbusters when the heroes were asked to choose their destroyer.  Scotland might bugger off and they might take Northern Ireland with them.  The inhabitants of Hull have all turned blue. 

Pretty soon we’ll undoubtedly run out of petrol and be ruled over by Immortan Boris.  The next thing to go will be the food and we’ll have no choice but to become cannibals, or something much worse…vegans.  But I’m afraid I can’t come to the UK’s rescue on this occasion.  I’m out here for at least a year now and have a miniature wife and an even more miniature baby to think of, so the UK will just have to pull itself together and get on with things without me.

I’ve decided that I won’t let fame change me.  I may be Hungary’s hottest new radio celebrity, but I have to keep my feet on the ground.  I have a young family to think of.  I won’t go down the same route as the Justin Biebers and Kim Kardashians of this world.  You might be sceptical of this, but I promise you, I won’t.

But anyway, I imagine you're currently trying to work out what a Hungarian radio celebrity does to distract himself from the shitty mess that is The Brexit.  Well, the answer is get out of the city and enjoy some of the delights of Europe’s largest lake.  I’m of course talking about Lake Balaton.  So, we're now jumping in our Skoda Yeti hire car and will shortly by cruising down the M7 like some kind of Hungarian P-Diddy and Jo-Lo, Petofi Radio blaring out 80’s Hungarian hits as we go, in a desperate attempt to forget all of the chaos in my homeland.

Until next time.

Day 2 - The Sausage

The Sausage

I’ve been in Budapest for two days now and I fancy a sausage.  As luck would have it, I’m standing outside a shop on Szent Istvan Kerut that looks suspiciously as though it may contain sausages.  I wander inside and intrepidly make my way through the shop.  Aisles of tinned food, bottles of potent spirits, fresh tomatoes, peppers and cheeses try to put me off the meaty scent, but they are doomed to failure.  Nothing can stand between this man and his sausage. 

I reach the back of the shop and I am delighted.  For in front of my sparkling eyes lies some kind of sausage Babylon.  Rows and rows of delicious, processed, animal meat hang, delectable, delightful and practically screaming out to be devoured.  “Come eat us!” they plead.  “You are our destiny!” they somewhat creepily chant.  But the path to my sausage destiny is not as simple as you may be currently imagining.  Oh no!  For I must first get past the sausage guardian who stands before me, behind a meat counter, guarding her meaty treasures.  I am not fooled by her appearance.  She may resemble a sweet, if slightly hairy, little Hungarian lady, but I know she is carved from granite with an unbreakable, iron will to protect these sausages from the unworthy.  She has sworn an oath to these slender tubes of meat, and around here that means something.

Cautiously I take my position in a three person queue.  Another elderly Hungarian lady comes and stands to my right and this throws me.  Who is this brazen harlot, this free spirit, this renegade who doesn’t abide by the law of the queue.  Stand behind, not to the side!  With my British upbringing, naturally, I am falling apart inside.  While this battle is enraging, the leader of the sausage queue claims her meat and moves aside and the queue moves forward.  Surely this challenger to my rightful throne will now hold back a step so that order can be assumed?  But no!  What is this treachery!?  She moves forward with me, in unison!  We are side, by side!  My mind is racing.  Beads of sweat are forcing their way through the pores in my forehead.  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, that the next three minutes were some of the most stressful of my lifetime as this mental and physical battle took place.  But, with a series of throat clearings, a subtle use of elbows and an ability to spread myself to three times my usual width, I eventually thwarted the challenger, despite her aggressive use of walking stick.

And now I’m at the counter, just me and the sausage guardian, face to face.  But, then it hits me.  I haven’t chosen my sausage poison!  I had been so engrossed in fighting off my queue challenger that I hadn’t prepared myself mentally for my next challenge!

“Szia”, bellows the guardian menacingly.  

“Uh, szia”, I skilfully retort.

“Kekndflsecnejnflzefmwmdzzwsnz?” apparently asks the guardian.  

And in the heat of battle I panic.  All of those Hungarian classes that I have been taking to prepare me for this epic moment are wasted.  I can barely remember English.  My queue challenger shuffles behind me, with menace.  In that moment all I can do is grunt and point at one particular sausage adorning the wall.  The sausage guardian looks at me and seems confused.

“Horz!”, she says.  

I have no idea what that means.  I mentally travel back to my Hungarian class in London, racking my brain.  No, ‘horz’ is a new word for me.  I nod defiantly.

“Horz?” she says again, although this time adding a question mark.  

The sausage guardian is apparently perplexed by my choice of sausage.  Is this a trick?  I need to be assertive and demonstrate that I am worthy of this treasure.  I need to display my balls of steel (not literally).  I compose myself.

“Igen, köszönöm szepen”, I reply, suddenly delighted with my use of the native tongue.

The guardian, clearly impressed by my linguistical magnificence, but trying to play it cool, shrugs, grabs the sausage from it’s hook, wraps it in paper and hands it to me.  I return the kind gesture by crossing the guardians palm with forint, turn and triumphantly leave.  I have won.  I am the penitent man!  I have passed the test.  I have seen off my challenger.  I will now return home to my basecamp, present my heavily pregnant wife with the fruits of my victory and we will enjoy sausage!

Thirty minutes later.

“Honey.  Why have you bought a horse sausage?”

We order a pizza.

Day 1 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Blending in with the natives

It’s my first full day in Budapest.  I wake up, the sun is shining.  Yes!  Take that UK!  Shove your erratic weather right up your rainy anus!  My heavily pregnant Hungarian wife, who at this late stage of pregnancy is beginning to resemble a pregnant guppy, is in the kitchen making coffee.  I step out on to our little, but delightful balcony, survey the scenic Buda hills, take a great big contented breath of Buda air, and then it hits me.  Bloody hell, it’s hot!  Very hot.  I immediately make a calculated decision that it’s too hot for pants and this, obviously, makes me happy.

“Morning honey”, my miniature wife beams, waddles over wth her big fat belly full of baby, and hands me a piece of paper with an unusual number of ‘Zs’ on it.  I look at the paper, puzzled.  “This is your list of challenges for the morning”.  Have I woken up in The Crystal Maze?  As wondrous as that sounds, alas the answer is no.  I’ve been given a number of ‘The Apprentice’ style challenges to complete, assuming of course, that it was an episode of ‘The Apprentice’ where they were challenged to go and buy nectarines.  The thing about me, probably one of your favourite bits about me actually, is that I’m bloody brave.

“I accept your challenge!  I will buy you fruit!”

And so off I trot, to the wild plains of Buda, a warrior in flip flops, armed only with a piece of paper covered in ‘Zs’ and a mobile phone with a dodgy reception.  Shortly after stepping outside I notice something unusual about my hair.  It has become apparent that my hair and the Hungarian climate are an unusual, dare I say it, heady mix.  Back in dear old Blighty my hair is slightly wavy, but nothing too extravagant.  However, after a little under five minutes in the mid thirty, Hungarian heat, my hair has decided enough is enough and is making a play to become exceedingly extravagant.  My hair has turned in to Liberace.  Suddenly I’m a white man with an afro, or so it feels.  I need too check this bad boy out before meeting my friendly local greengrocer who I’m sure, even before meeting him, is called Laszlo.  

Being the eagle eyed swine that we both know that I am, I spot a darkened car window just a few metres ahead and on the other side of the road.  Bingo!  I momentarily wonder if there are Bingo halls in Budapest and then flip flop over to the car, looking around to avoid appearing like a preening, vain peacock wearing a David Hasselhoff wig.  With the coast seemingly clear I peer in to the dark, back seat window and begin inspecting the damage.  Verging on a code red, curly hair disaster, but I can manage this.  With a bit of spit and a fleshy five pronged comb I can tame this frantic beast.  And so I set to work.  

You know how when you’re in a lit room and the lights go out, and for a few moments everything is pitch black, but then gradually, your eyes adjust and you start to make out shapes?  Well the same is actually true for darkened car windows.  I’m leaning right in, staring so intently at my own reflection that I can count my own pores, when something moves.  It’s in the car.  I adjust my gaze slightly and then lean in further to inspect the movement.  What I see chills me to the core.  There’s somebody starring back at me.  A pair of eyes.  A startled pair of eyes.  A startled pair of female eyes.  A mother’s eyes.  A breastfeeding mother’s eyes!  I am staring intently at a breastfeeding mother, discreetly, feeding her tiny baby.  Oh, the horror!  And yet I’m still staring, like a rabbit caught in the headlights!  Must…stop…staring!  The expression on the woman seems to be changing.  Anger is replacing fear!  I do the only sensible thing that I can do.  With all of the blood drained from my face like a piece of halal meat, I mutter the words “sorry” under my breath, turn and hurriedly canter away, flip flops clopping like a mule.

Back in the safety of the flat, moments later, I tell my wife the bad news.  “All out of fruit sorry honey”.  The streets of Buda are fraught with peril.  The next twelve months could be dangerous.

The Prologue

Budapesten Élek!

I live in Budapest.  This is very odd as I don’t usually live in Budapest.  In fact, I’ve never lived outside of the UK, but here I am, sitting on a sofa in my new digs in sunny Budapest.  A soon to be forty year old, soon to be first time father, immigrant.  My heavily pregnant wife is currently on the phone, speaking to her mother in tongues.  Some Hungarian duck pate is lazily lounging on a piece of Hungarian bread on a table next to me.  All of the food products in our kitchen have an unnatural number of ‘Zs’ on their packaging.  If I look up, my view is of the Buda hills.  It’s sunny and hot outside!  No, this is definitely not London in June (which according to the grumbles and moans that I’ve read via Facebook is currently suffering rain on a biblical scale).  I arrived two days ago and still feel very much like an old cat, torn from his natural habitat and dumped in to a new home.  I’m discombobulated, sniffing all of the new corners of my home whilst resisting the urge to pee and mark my territory.  What am I doing here?

Well as all good stories should begin, it started with a brain fart.  “What if we move to Budapest for the first year of Junior’s life?”.  We initially dismissed this thought, but soon realised that it wouldn’t simply dissipate like a well behaved fart into the ether, no matter how vigorously we wafted.  

Naturally there were opposing thoughts that did their best to put us of the Budapest scent.  “What about my job?  What about our mortgage?  How would we watch Masterchef?”   But then that little brain fart slowly became a brain hurricane, battering all obstacles in it’s path and turning the opposing thoughts on their heads.  “What if I quit my day job and pursued my dreams of being a full-time writer?  Why don’t we rent our place out?  We can stream Masterchef via the old tinterweb can’t we?”  And so I did it.  I quit my lovely, secure day job in London and we found renters for our London basecamp.  What followed were several weeks of blind panic.  I’d wake up in the dead of night, mind racing and heart pumping.  My thoughts during these wee hours usually went along the lines of…

“Fucking hell!  What in the name of God have I done?!  I won’t have a job!  Nobody will understand me!  I’m going to be forty!  I will be forty seven when my child is seven.  But that’s only three years from fifty!  When I’m fifty, that’s only ten years from sixty!  I’m supposed to retire at around sixty five aren’t I?  I’m a mere half a century from the probably end and I’ve just quit my job to go and live in a country where they speak in mostly ‘consonants’ and I have a baby on the way!  Help me!”

But with the unwavering support of my miniature wife, my tiny tower of strength, I got through those dark hours, and now here I am in beautiful Budapest, trying in vain to understand what on earth everyone else is saying, whilst eating an unnatural amount of sour cream, and with a heavily pregnant little lady by my side.  The next 12 months or so should be an interesting ride, full of cultural clashes, sleepless nights, shitty nappies and me being a clueless father in a foreign land.  So like a slightly more hirsute Captain Jean-Luc Piccard, I’m going to chronicle my adventures.  Here we go…