Growing Pains of a Hapless Househusband (22 page)

Wednesday 14 May

It felt immensely voyeuristic to sit and watch somebody
get on with their life, but that's what we've done all day.
Well, nearly all day.

We dropped Maureen off first thing in the morning,
and from then on we sat back to watch the 'show' in a
mini-studio that Dom had set up in his hotel room.
Because GrannyCam was streaming over the Internet
the quality was a bit jerky, but we got a good idea of
what was going on. At times we got far too good an idea,
as Maureen kept forgetting to turn off the GrannyCam
when she went to the lavatory. Although this wasn't as
visually disconcerting as it might have been, it was more
aurally offensive.

We watched everything – Suzie supervising the kids
brushing their teeth, Suzie repeatedly asking whether
her mother was going to be all right, Suzie leaving for
work, Maureen getting their coats on, Maureen
hobbling to school. This was particularly painful to
watch, and although she said that she had taken
some industrial-strength painkillers, we could still
hear her wincing as she walked. However, when she
looked after David she managed brilliantly – taking
him to the swings, feeding the ducks, all the cliché
granny things.

At three o'clock she hobbled back to school to pick
up the children. By this point Dom was desperate for
things to go pear-shaped.

'C'mon you little beauties,' he said. 'One of you pick
a fight. Or fall over. Something naughty, please.'

Instead, the walk back home went without incident.

As did much of the afternoon.

As did teatime.

By then Dom was literally tearing his hair out. I
thought people only did that in cartoons, but Dom
really was.

'For fuck's sake!' he shouted at the screens. 'Can one
of you bloody kids just piss around!'

'Are you sure you haven't drugged them?' I
asked.

Dom took this badly.

'No of course I haven't!'

'Joke! Joke!'

'I'm going to kill the fucking researcher who found
this lot. Who was it, Emma?'

'I think it was Nicola,' said Emma.

'Didn't she ever meet these fucking people? Didn't
she realise they were saints?'

'I don't think she did.'

'Why the fuck not?'

'Because you wouldn't give her any petrol allowance
to drive down here, remember?'

'Oh.'

It was always nice to watch Dom being skewered by his
own actions.

We carried on watching, and then, just as the
children were finishing their tea, Maureen let out an
enormous scream of pain.

'My hip! My hip!' she kept crying.

The GrannyCam then went all sort of skewy, and
when we cut to the kitchen cam we could see that she
had fallen. The two younger children started laughing,
whereupon the older two laid into them.

'Don't laugh at Nan!' said Jamie (I think).

And then, much to Dom's delight, a fight broke out.
Plates, cutlery, cups – all were thrown, some of which
landed on Granny, who moaned as every new missile
impacted.

'This is perfect,' said Dom, 'just perfect.'

I shook my head in disbelief.

'The poor woman's in agony, and you think this is
perfect?'

'She'll be OK, she's just fallen over. Where are you
going, anyway?'

I had stood up and was feeling for my car keys in my
pocket.

'I'm going to help her, Dom. That's what people do
when they see other people in trouble.'

'She's fine! She'll get up in a sec and take another
painkiller.'

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

I drove round as quickly as I could, only to find that
the door was locked. I knocked on it furiously, and
although I could hear the children running riot inside,
they couldn't hear me (or chose not to). I then decided
that as it would take too long to knock on neighbours'
doors to see if they had any keys, I would just have to
break the door down.

Easier said than done. At first I tried it with my
shoulder, but all that did was hurt. I then remembered
that the best thing to do was to actually kick the door in,
which I tried next. I kicked hard, the door didn't open,
and then, because I had been bracing myself to go
forward, I lost my balance and fell arse over tit. Nice
one, Holden. Thank God I wasn't an SAS trooper at the
Iranian Embassy siege.

'What are you doing?' asked a neighbour. She had a
hairnet, but not a rolling pin.

'I'm trying to break in.'

'Why? Are you a burglar?'

'No! But do you know Suzie's mum Maureen? She's
had a nasty fall and she's trapped inside with the
children. Do you have a key?'

'No. And how do you know she's had a fall?'

'Because I saw it on film.'

'You saw it on a film?'

'Never mind,' I said, whereupon I stepped back and
gave the door an almighty kick. Kerpang! Thank God
for that, I thought, not just for the sake of Maureen, but
also for my dignity.

I rushed in. The children looked startled, and little
David was crying. Some paternal instinct made me want
to pick him up and give him a quick cuddle, but I
thought it best to attend to Maureen first. She looked in
a bad way. Not about-to-be-dead bad, but bad in a
should-be-in-bed-and-not-looking-after-four-small-children
way. She was moaning gently, and repeating,
'My hip, my hip'.

'It's OK Maureen, I'm here now. Do you think you
could get up?'

'I don't know, love. Can you help me?'

I noticed that her clothes were covered in food that
the children had thrown at her. That made me think of
Dom, and then made me uncomfortably aware that I
was being filmed. I tried lifting Maureen up, and each
time I did so she moaned in agony. The situation was
clearly getting worse, and the children had finally
realised that Nan was not playing.

'Listen,' I said. 'I'm going to call an ambulance.'

'Don't do that!' she snapped. 'I'm perfectly OK. I just
need a little time.'

'Maureen, I don't think that you are. I reckon you
may have hurt yourself more than you realise. If you're
feeling this much pain through the painkillers, you
ought to be in a hospital.'

'I've fallen over before,' she said. 'I just need a few
minutes. I don't want to waste anyone's time.'

'You won't be,' I said.

The ambulance arrived in ten minutes, and within five
minutes she was in the back of it. ('Broken hip I
suspect,' said one of the paramedics.)

'Is Nan dead?' asked one of the children.

'No, she's just hurt her leg.'

'I thought when people go to hospital they die.'

'No they don't,' I said. 'Some people do, but not your
granny, because she's very strong.'

'What's a granny?'

This was not the time to explain that one, so I turned
on the TV and sat them in front of it. I then called the
leisure centre, and within ten minutes Suzie was back at
home.

'How did it happen?' she asked.

I told her, and she started to cry.

'Poor Mum,' she went. 'It's all my fault, I should
never have asked her.'

'It's not your fault,' I said. 'You had no choice.'

'Maybe I could have asked a friend. I should have
asked my neighbour Dawn, that's who.'

More tears.

I put an arm round her gently.

'It's not your fault,' I said. 'It's our fault, it's this
bloody TV programme.'

'That's kind of you to say, but it is my responsibility.'

She picked up the phone and called Dawn, who came
round ten minutes later. I decided that I was intruding,
and, after checking that I wasn't needed, I left.

When I got back to the hotel Dom gave me a high
five, which I neglected to return.

'That was great!' he said. 'WonderHubby to the
rescue!'

'Oh cut it out,' I said. 'That woman's got a broken hip
because of us.'

'It'll heal. But you should see the footage! We've even
got the camera in the hall showing you kicking in the
door! It's like some cop show. Brilliant! And then the
stuff of you trying to lift her up, and then the
ambulance turning up – we can dub in some nice sirens
– all great, just great.'

'I think I'm going to go home,' I said.

'No problemo,' he said. 'I think this one's in the can.'

'But we can't have got a show out of this.'

'Wanna bet? We can make a show out of anything.'

Friday 16 May

I rang Suzie today to see how her mother was. Her hip
was indeed broken, but it was a blessing of sorts, as they
had to operate then and there. Unbelievably, we had
done her a good turn. I then asked how the leisure
centre was.

'It looks great! And the pool has never been so clean.
In fact, the whole place feels brand new! I think we're
going to get a lot more members.'

'Wow. Kind of a cloud with a silver lining then.'

'Exactly! I don't know what it is about you, but you
brought both disasters and miracles.'

'Well, the Chinese ideogram for crisis is the same as
the one for opportunity,' I said.

'That sounds very clever,' she said. 'Where did you
learn that?'

'I wish I could say to you, "Oh, I just happen to speak
Chinese" but I'm afraid not.'

'So how then?'

'Er . . . Trivial Pursuit, I think.'

Saturday 17 May

Sally was appalled by what had happened and made her
feelings very clear. She said that it was amazing that
nobody had died. I agreed. I said that if the series
continues like this, Dom and I would be in prison for
manslaughter. Perhaps I need to take out some form of
insurance.

Monday 19 May

Dom has emailed a schedule of the remaining shoots. It
looks exhausting, and it's going to take me all the way
through to July. God knows how many more lives we will
wreck. I emailed back:

Dom
thanks for the schedule. It certainly looks
exhausting! I just hope that we manage to get
through it without being sued. I'm being serious
about this. It's bloody lucky that Suzie and her mum
haven't done us for what happened. Or the
Sincocks. So far we must have committed around a
dozen offences, all of which could have seen us in
prison. When I signed up for this, I knew that I would
have to take some scales off my eyes, but I didn't
realise that I would have to become a criminal.
I really need your assurance that we're going to play
it straight from now on.
Best
Sam

His reply came back about ten minutes later.

Sam
No prob
Dom

This hardly inspires me, but what else can I do? I'm in
so deep, the money's spent, and all I can console myself
with is the fact that nobody's been actually killed.

Monday 26 May

Just back from filming up in Scotland. For once, and
probably never to be repeated, it genuinely WENT
WELL. Amazing! The family were a nice bunch, but just
naughty enough for Dom, and, incredibly, they actually
reacted well to some of my HCP techniques. The
incentivisation and disincentivisation charts worked
really well, and by the end of the week there was a
distinct improvement. What was also gratifying was that
nobody was killed or wounded.

The only thing that was strange was that Dom kept
having bad-tempered conversations with someone on the
telephone. He was quite careful not to let anybody
earwig, but I didmanage to catch the end of one of them.

'Well, I can't help it . . . It's just the way I am . . . I
know, I know . . . but I thought you would understand
. . . OK . . . OK . . . Yes, I agree, best not to talk about it
on the phone . . . all right . . . see ya.'

All very mysterious.

Thursday 29 May

Why do I always keep bumping into Emily in the
wretched supermarket? She actually seemed slightly
more friendly, but I refused to engage her in
conversation. I think she's got a guilty conscience.

Sunday 1 June

Last night was our wedding anniversary, and we went to
Rookster Hall for dinner. It's our nearest country house
hotel, and as such, it should do some good food. But it
doesn't. In fact, it is dismal, stuffy, overpriced and just
shit, frankly.

The first warning sign was when they made me put on
a tie. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't as if I was wearing
jeans, and I had on a stylish (I thought) royal blue linen
jacket and a white linen shirt. Sally looked lovely, and
before we went out we congratulated each other on how
glam we were.

But not the right sort of glam for one David Bird, who
said that I could either wear a tie or we could eat in the
bar, which wasn't exactly the idea. So I wore the fucking
thing, and it looked utterly absurd with the linen shirt,
which was clearly not designed to take a piece of
neckwear, especially polyester neckwear. I just don't get
it, this obsession with ties – I looked far far worse
wearing it than without.

Bad sign number two was that our gin and tonics were
execrable. They were warm, the tonic was flat, and a
miserable piece of old peel floated on each. When I
complained the barman looked at me as if I were an
out-and-out tosser, despite the fact that I complained
politely. I felt like telling him he was a fucking hick, but
fights and wedding anniversaries seldom mix. Oh yes,
and the crisps were stale.

The next bad sign was the emptiness of the dining
room. Despite it being a Saturday night, the only people
there were a middle-aged couple, an elderly couple and
a man about my age reading a trashy WWII thriller by
someone called Guy Walters. We weren't expecting a
room full of the young and the beautiful, but we were
expecting a little more liveliness.

Then came the menus – enormous things, full of
overly complicated dishes that you just knew couldn't
be cooked there and then. And if they couldn't be
cooked there and then, that could only mean one thing
– they were basically all ready meals, ready to be pinged
in the microwave, and ready to be met with the derision
they deserved. Eventually we both opted for soup, and
Sally went for some monkfish and I for steak. How
would sir like it cooked? What an irrelevant bloody
question that was. Whatever you answer, it will always
come back well done.

The soup was fine, but our main courses were
terrible. The plates had been microwaved along with
the food, and although I have no objections to
microwaves for heating things up, they are not ovens.
They do not cook things. They simply make things hot.
Thus our food was hot and not cooked and it was
expensively revolting. We didn't bother with pudding,
neither did we go back to the bar for a coffee or a
whisky. We just wanted to get out.

The price for all this? £150. Fuck knows how. But
there you go. The middle-class curse: paying far too
much money for shit food because we don't have high
ceilings at home. Madness.