A Year in the Life of Baby called Bertie

At 17:02 tomorrow, Nancy Eleanor, once our little braying peach, will turn exactly one. So wherever you are or whenever you read this, raise a glass and toast her sublime chud and joyous being. She has made it a year and so remarkably have her parents.


In my own small way to commemorate it, I might try and cradle her in my arms for an hour but given her rate of growth and redoubling chud it would a challenge apt for an edition of the World's Strongest Man. 

It pains me to say it but she really is a baby no more - she bumshuffles in the eternal limbo between baby and toddler. With the toddler phase haunting us like a spectre.

No longer can we bend her to our will like a tyrant - she is forging desires of her own (like indulging in a torrid one week love affair with a rather naff leather camera case which was then discarded in a scorching square in Provence) and will not be denied - particularly if you are on Skype - she will not rest until she is sat on the keyboard hammering away at it like Rachmaninov until your computer can take no more and it all goes very very wrong. She is on the very cusp of fully fledged humanity - although this humanity is stripped somewhat when she is exposed to temperatures above 28 degrees Celsius she turns into a sweating mass of Englishness unable to really cope with such extremes - and much like Barcelona have become everyone's second team (because in the straitened mind of footballing fundamentalists they football in its purest form - to which I reply with this) Bertie has becharmed all and sundry to become everryone's Barca baby. Or that could be my misplaced sense of paternal Bertie-o-vision playing havoc with my rational self.

What have I learnt? Firstly, if you are a young father and home alone never ever watch the Road.It will scar you for life. Nor should you listen to James Corden's Tony acceptance speech or in fact anything with an emotional resonance greater than that of the classified football results (although this is a great danish documentary on the legendary James Alexander Gordon for all you sports fans out there) unless you want to end up a gooey mess. Even if you have a famously strong constitution as I do.

And secondly, Bertie is the most wonderful, glorious, awe inspiring little bean beyond anything I thought possible.

Oi, Dave get me a pain au chocolate. Ta love.

Swinger.

Pa, I've accidentally eaten all my clothes. 

We're going to need a bigger boat.

More is known about the surface on the moon and the bottom of the ocean than is known about Bertie's ankles. Their even existence is itself an article of faith.