Prodigal Sun

The door knocker went ‘thud’ yesterday and Smeeton nearly had a heart attack when he went to answer it.

For who was standing there, clad in unlaced spiked Doctor Martens, ripped leggings and an oversized Pink Floyd t-shirt?  That's right.  The Other One.  (Taking her cue from Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne’s eldest, she refuses to be mentioned by name in these pages.)

She grunted something about having the baby at home in its ancestral land, which is probably all the rage in California.  After all, Peter O’Toole (who is in point of fact from Leeds) popped over to Dublin for his.  On top of which, one apparently has to pay for maternity care in the US, so she's decided to move home for nine months and have the baby in Scotland where it's free, and her parents have a castle.

As we had closed up her room semi-permanently (i.e. with bricks but no mortar), we had to put her up in a guest room whilst we coaxed the colony of bats into Alistair's old room.

After that, it was off to the kitchen to remove all the foods The Other One can no longer eat for one reason or another.  Henry and I put our feet down about the wine and other alcohol.  Out went the brie, liver paté and caffeinated hot drinks.  Or rather, she thinks we threw them out.  What really happened was Henry and I had a fantastic midnight snack, and as a residual benefit now have a stash of Earl Grey in our bedroom.  Smeeton is going to use his ancestral thieving skills to obtain some tea- and coffee-making facilities, akin to those in hotels and perhaps the very same ones.  It will feel like camping in our own house, but without the aggravation of a tent.

Even though it's not Spring and we officially turned the heating off at the weekend, The Other One complained it was cold and draughty, so we had to turn her bedroom radiator on (after checking none of the pipes had cracked or been eaten by mice in her absence) and keep the fire going, that is, after firing uncle Haldenstovare’s 4-bore goose-gun up the chimney to clear out all the soot.

Jolly punting weather.

Then we all had to go the nearest ‘health food’ shop and buy all sorts of weird and 'healthy' things, including something called dried acai berries, and vitamin D – in an oral spray.  Though Henry managed to sneak in a bottle of organic gin, with a royal warrant, so perhaps it wasn't all bad.

All these exhaustive and exhausting preparations being finished, naturally she sits in the sitting room reading Melody Maker with her feet up on the antique French-polished chess/coffee table.  Smeeton’s harrumphing was, no doubt, visible from space.

After a bit of ‘creative accounting’ regarding how long she's been in the UK (definitely at least a year, yes definitely – only a holiday to America in that time – Holidays don't count?  Perfect.  Then, yes, definitely been the country for at least a year), her booking appointment with the midwife is now on the calendar.

And now it's a matter of waiting, I suppose.  At any rate, that's all The Other One seems to be doing.  She's not helping out much about the house or on the estate.  She said something about having ordered a ‘step machine’ online and waiting for it to arrive so she can keep up with her fitness regime.  Step machine?  There are eleven different flights of stairs in this house, each with its own unique degree of twist, angle of slope, and amusing traps for the unwary.  Can't she just use those?  Or go walking up the nearest Munro?

A Munro is probably safer.

Pregnancy has definitely changed since my time, largely, into a vast laundry list of dos and don’ts where a mere handful of old wives’ tales used to serve.  Reading The Other One’s voluminous NHS bumf – for goodness knows she won’t – I’m stunned that our three didn’t come out even sillier than they are.