S03E07: New Grandkid

[slow, deep-voiced singing]

Dandansoy, bayaan ta ikaw
Pauli ako sa payaw
Ugaling...

You're listening to Alan Partridge with the smash-hit Filipino lullaby, Dandansoy.

...imo lang lantawon
Dandansoy, kung imo apason...
[fades]

Shhh, hush, there now, go to sleep. Sssshhhhh!

That was a rather gentle opening to this episode of From the Oasthouse. A warm, aural bath. More Imperial Leather soak than Dettol sheep-dip. Why am I kicking off with a lullaby? Well, firstly, because I've been reading a lot about ASMR, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, a feeling of well-being creating a tingling sensation in the scalp and neck, often caused by the gentle pleasure of a particular sound. In this case, the sweet trill of a lullaby.

If the sound of my singing has given you a warm feeling in your scalp, neck or groin, don't worry, enjoy it. In fact, I've already made a couple of ASMR recordings myself. In one, I just slowly say the word 'Choc-o-late' over and over again. And the other one is me eating a bag of Quavers, one sitting, no drink. The less fluid, the less easy it is to masticate, the more aurally satisfying the crunch! 

And I hope to do more. I've put together a track list of sounds I plan to release as an ASMR album. Long yawn, followed by loud swallow. Dental hygienist saliva suction. Library shushing. Aboriginal groaning drone. A list of Greek surnames, e.g. Papadopoulos and Nicolopoulou. And, yeah, sex noises. 

The second reason for singing an ethnic lullaby, well, I was told by Audible it's best not to start the podcast at the beginning, because everyone does that. Start with something quite strange from the middle, so that you grab an audience's attention, or, to use their term, so the content becomes 'sticky'. Then go back and explain the reason afterwards. Although I may have already said that in recording earlier. Which comes later. 

So the next bit is the proper beginning. 

[opening theme music]

Hello, I'm sitting on a plastic chair in a café. Why? Well, I'll explain that later. Audible like me to start with something from the middle and explain later, so that the content becomes 'sticky'.

The Partridge family, not the TV show of the same name, for the over-50s, the Partridge family is about to welcome the pitter-patter of tiny feet at the end of the legs of a baby. A time for a cacophony of joy and quiet celebration.

And in my case, action stations, which is actually a line from Thunderbirds, a show some of you might remember. Don't really have time to digress, but for those not familiar with it, Thunderbirds was a children's show using a technique called Supermarination. What's supermarination? Again, don't have the time to explain, but very briefly, puppetry. Not silly puppetry like Chinese shadow theatre, but really good puppetry. Anyway, I'll move on. Should have moved on before, but definitely moving on now.

Yes, the Filipino lullaby was taught to me by my cleaner, Rosa. A lovely little gesture to commemorate the fact that I am, in the words of my assistant, about to become a granddad for the third time. And even though you don't become a granddad three times, you become a granddad once and simply remain one thereafter, albeit with a growing number of grandchildren, I can see what she's trying to say.

That is, I'm about to welcome a third grandchild, all of them courtesy of my son, Fernando, and his wife, India. None from my daughter, Denise. She lives in Hebden Bridge and she's altogether a more... Yeah, she's not... She's... Denise has gone in a different direction.

I hesitate to use the word lesbian because, er, labels are limiting. I think a certain Guardian journalist said that. Labels are limiting. Actually, I think probably a lot of Guardian journalists have said that. 

That's the kind of thing Denise says, too, and I do agree with them because, well, it's just easier that way. I decided when the next baby was born unto this family, I was going to get to the hospital quick-smart. The last two times I'd been out-manoeuvred, beaten to the scene by my ex-wife, Carol, and kept away from the child, effectively, for weeks or even months. 

She did that with the first two grandkids, and I simply made the decision that I wasn't going to let it happen for a third time. Yeah.

If I can get in there under the radar and pre-empt the cordon that she will bring down, the look of surprise and delight on the faces of my son and his wife will be a joy to behold. And even more joyous will be the aghast expression on my ex-wife's face when she realises, I've beaten her to it! That will be... How can I describe it? It's delicious! 

But ultimately, I want to do it to show my unqualified, unconditional love for this new child. Love is the way forward, and if it puts my ex-wife's nose out of joint, that is merely happy happenstance. The look at that fucking face!

Which is why, thirty minutes ago, I initiated Operation GD3, or Grandad 3, a plan devised in conjunction with the military strategist, and history fan, Dan Snow. Yeah, it raised a few eyebrows among friends, some even find it amusing. Is it amusing when you practise a fire drill that can save lives? 'Tee hee hee?', don't think so. Is it amusing to map out your survival plan in the event of an all-out nuclear attack? Answer, doesn't need one, but the answer's no. So why, I ask them, is it amusing to drill how you're going to get the first greetings card and teddy bear to a new-born baby? You can feel the silence.

As I speak to you now, I'm sitting in a café, still sitting in a café, plastic chair, just off the A148 in Fakenham, a spot equidistant between the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn and Cromer & District Hospital, forty miles away. My assistant is parked beside a crematorium on the A149 at Martham, slap bang between James Padgett NHS Hospital in Great Yarmouth and North Walsham Cottage Hospital. 

My cleaner Rosa doesn't drive, but she moves rapidly, it's why she got the cleaning gig. For a small additional fee paid in kind, two sliced loaves, she's sitting on a bench between Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and the neighbouring Spire Hospital, a private facility less than a mile away. Between us, we can cover the six leading Norfolk maternity hospitals, and be at any one of them within twenty minutes. 

Lynne figured it out, she did all the logistics. I was quite impressed, I said, "You're like a human algorithm!", and she just stared at me, didn't know what I meant. 

On the seats to my left sit two teddy bears, one with a pink bow, one with a blue bow. A card is splayed open and I have a ballpoint pen at the ready to quickly scribble a congratulations card for the as yet unnamed new-born. My assistant and my housekeeper have identical teddies and cards. The second we get wind of the baby's birth and its' location, we can spring into action.

Whichever of us is the closest pens a brief message in the card, bags up the correctly-gendered bear, and skedaddles to the maternity ward of the relevant hospital. The bears are only gendered by the coloured ribbons, they're not actually physically any different. Uniformly smooth at the gusset. I suppose in a way, teddies were gender-neutral before it was even a thing. Worth thinking about.

Eventually, the five surplus teddies could be donated to an orphanage or the family unit of a police station to be used as visual aids, e.g. to indicate where the perpetrator grabbed ya. Yeah, bad stuff. So, why the need for such a tightly-choreographed sting operation? Well, I'm slightly out of the comms-loop and haven't been able to ascertain which hospital the baby is to be born in. And that's cool. That's cool. That's cool.

I did ask Fernando and his wife India, but neither have texted back. They've got a lot on the plate. They've got two young kids, India is heavily pregnant. Not to blame her, but she definitely wears the trousers. I hate to say it, but she's something of a Yoko character.

We got off on the wrong foot because, when I first met her, I said, "It's funny how no-one called India is ever from India!". Just an observation, but she thought it was an attack and took umbrage. When I talked to her about the country, India, she didn't seem to know much about it. I said, "I thought that was odd", and she said, "That's a daft thing to say!", which I did not like. I said, "Well, I've got a friend called Chester who lives in Dover, but if you ask him about Chester, he'll at least know it was a Roman city and retains some of the historic walls". Which was a lie, but permissible because I was making a valid point. 

So, rather than badgering them for a running commentary, I'm sitting in a café with a mug of tea, plastic chair, relying on Facebook updates and gleaning what intel I can from that. I suppose we're like the three wise men following the star. Er... or one wise man and two women. Mind you, these days, you probably can't have three wise men. It'd have to be three wise women! [scoffs] Good luck with that. No, I'm just mucking about, that's daft.

No, it's one wise man. Lynn's quite wise and Rosa, yeah, well, she's a cleaner. I can tell you that birth is imminent, we're told labour has started and I believe India's waters have broken. Which might sound like something they say on the banks of the Ganges during monsoon season, but, er...  that's good... but for those of you who are interested, it simply means the membrane of my daughter-in-law's amniotic sack has ruptured and her waters have... sluiced.

Because, as I say, this time I intend to be part of the new baby's life from the get-go. With my other grandkids, Jack and Ruby, things got off to a slow start. Today, I have a wonderful relationship with the privately-educated little smashers but, my god, it's been an uphill struggle. Early on, I was kept very much at arm's length by Carol. And for a woman, she does have long arms. Not weirdly long, like Mr. Tickle or Richard Osman, but slightly long. In the same way that Matthew McConaughey's arms are slightly short. Hardly worth mentioning. Although I'm sure he looks on enviously when he sees men walking around with their hands in their trouser pockets. But, as I say, it's something and nothing. 

Carol's arms are a touch long, my friends would refer to her as a sasquatch. Not so much when we were together, but after the marriage failed, they started to be more negative about her, and I appreciated that. They exaggerated her flaws in quite a mean way, and I found that immensely helpful. But, yeah, the arms thing, it's... I don't want to give it too much weight. I mean, she was a pretty attractive woman, but her arms are slightly lengthier than the average person's. I sometimes used to joke that she'd be an ideal candidate to join the police. The Long Arm of the Carol! She'd feel collars better than anyone. 

One time I said, "You should take up darts! You'd be able to stand behind the line and just push the darts into the board!", she wasn't keen on that one, but she did like the one about the long arm of the law. And now it's extended to the grandkids, whether it's because of a hormonal imbalance or resentment that she never had a career to speak of, or because she left me for a fitness instructor who was younger than me, but then he ended up leaving her for a woman that was younger than her, is not really for me to say.

But as a grandmother, Carol has seen the grandkids as her own personal fiefdom and one she guards jealously, because without her grandchildren, there's sort of no point to her. Do you know what I mean? And, yes, she's weaponised them. If she could put them in a cannon and fire them at me, she probably would. Ruby would love that, being a human cannonball! Jack wouldn't. He's... he's a bit more sensitive... Oh, god. 

But because Carol's closer to Fernando and India than I am, she knows what's happening and when.
She has what I call first-mover advantage and, my god she will use it. The second she hears of the birth, Carol will swoop in and erect a ring of steel, installing herself as Gatekeeper-in-Chief. Literally. Literally. Literally. 

She'll move in with them for the first few weeks and it will be she who opens the door when flowers get delivered, she who answers the landline to well-wishers, she who intercepts the postman. The only way Alan Partridge is breaching that cordon is if he's hiding inside a giant teddy bear. Believe me, in some of my more desperate moments I've considered turning up on a Trojan teddy.

The more you think about it, the more you realise it's not workable, you'd have to approach the front door as a big ted and that's going to raise eyebrows.

I remember when Jack was born, I came by the house with a balloon and a card and some nipple cream, because I read that was useful, and Carol answered the door then. I asked if I could come in.
She said, "They're all very tired, it's not a good time, but if you give me the presents, I'll see they get them". I said, "It's okay, I'd rather hand them over myself". She said, "It's really no problem", I said, "No, it's no problem for me either!".

She said, "Suit yourself, but it might be a long wait!". I said, "Yeah, although if you die or become incapacitated, I can just go and speak to them directly". She said, "Yeah, well, that's not going to happen", I said, "Yeah, well, you might get food poisoning because you've eaten bad seafood at one of those cheap restaurants you like, and then you wouldn't be at the door, you'd be vomiting in the downstairs loo". 

She tried to slam the door, but I just jammed the teddy's head in the hinges. I said, "Oh, look, you've crushed a teddy's head. If that was a kid, you'd go to prison for the rest of your life. Bye, Carol!", then I just walked away with my head held high, it was a brilliant line! 

No, the only way gifts will get through, the only way to establish contact is if I get there first, because I am not going to let my grandkids go without a fight. One day, when they're old and grey, I want to be able to look them in the eye, if I've been cryogenically preserved in a high-tech nitrogen fridge freezer, I want to be able to look them in the eye and through some sort of synthesizer say, "I was there for you. I was there for you. I... I was there for you". Yeah, that one. 

Hence Operation GD3. It's given me peace of mind, that when the time came, my ducks would all be in a row and no time would be wasted dithering, dawdling, or in the case of my assistant, faffing. They knew that if they got a text from me saying, "GD3 is Go!", they should drop what they're doing and make their way to their post. I, holed up in this café, placky chairs, Facebook open. Then when we glean the location of the birth, it's scramble, scramble, scramble! 

"White toast or brown?"

No. No, you can ignore that!

It's a woman, woman who thought I was ordering eggs. Quickly check we're all in position. [typing out a text] Lynn, are you in situ? [notification bing] Good. Rosa, are you in situ? [ding] No, I've eaten. She, she thinks I mean Itsu. I mean, she's a cleaner. Oh no, I did write Itsu. 

I shouldn't really have to check up on Lynn. We've been over this plan a thousand times, but you can never be sure these days if her head's in the game. You might remember in an earlier podcast, I explained that Lynn and her online sidekick Moira are spending all their time doing detective work. Moira's like an amateur Cagney and Lacey if you combined the ages of both Cagney and Lacey, then added a Dowager's Hump. Lin thinks they'd make a great TV series, but I don't. 

She's got it into her head that an old friend of mine called Michael who jumped off a pier during an armed siege, is still alive. He disappeared many years ago, almost certainly drowned. No body was recovered, but Lin says it doesn't add up because a storage facility only Michael and I had access to was entered four days after he died. Fairly flimsy, but she says she's got a hunch, not like her friend. I said, "Well, unlike Moira, at least your hunch is just inside your head", and she chuckled. 

She will not let it go, blagging and wangling, pestering local people online, scouring the internet for events that took place around that date. She's been poring over CCTV footage taken from a pub nearby the storage facility, which she says shows Michael entering the building. But the whole thing's a wild goose chase, not least because Michael's goose was cooked a long time ago and I'm afraid that's the end of it. 

I said, "I'm focusing on my family, and you should too". And she said, "But what is family? Family can come from all sorts of places, Alan". She said, "My two cats are my family", I said, "Cats are not family. They're just lodgers who pay their rent in the form of dead mice and birds". She said, "No, anyone can be family, like Michael was to you". 

In the end, I had to sit her down and say, "Lynn, people drift into our lives and drift out again. Michael was a bit of a drifter, who drifted into my life and eventually drifted out to sea. People come and go, it's no different to that organist from your church who cast his spell over you. You remember, you started kissing again in your late 50s. He turned out to be a con man". 

But she's not giving up, she thinks when I used to talk to Michael I was calmer and more centred. I said, "Yeah, post-marriage collapse and a mild brain-breakdown, the guy was just the ticket. But I'm better now, and he's not!". Well, he wasn't last time I saw him, I mean, looking back, the guy clearly had PTSD... ADHD... and probably BPD. Yeah, if it's a jumble of letters that ends with D, this guy had it. 

I admit, we were a good fit. He had a steady stream of army stories but I did most of the talking and as long as I didn't use any words more complicated than 'operational', then he was prepared to listen and occasionally punctuate my deep thoughts with the occasional "Aye", "Tha's canny" and "Reet man". 

I did make the mistake of saying I was a mentor to him, he said he didn't think I was mental but he knew a man in the army who was mental. Well, by the time he'd finished telling me the story about this utterly staggering but deranged fella called Docker, I'd forgotten to correct his misunderstanding of the word mentor. And that's how chats with Michael tended to go, we'd talk long into the night around a burning brazier, never knowing where the chats were going to lead. A conversation about World War II bridge-laying could easily morph into how to strangle a man with his own tie, all accompanied by hoots and cackles into the wee small hours. But, yeah, he was good company. I miss him. Happy times, but they're gone. You can't go back, and that's that. 

Oh, here we go, here we go. Uh, Facebook. Could this be... No. No, stand down, everyone, stand down. It's just a post from my friend Daryl Flench, the Norfolk sunbed tycoon. He used to be a lovely fella, but he's got himself pretty rabidly into COVID conspiracies these last few years. It's a shame, I said to him, you think thousands of people have all kept it a secret that the moon landings were faked, but you don't believe there's a link between sunbeds and cancer.

He said, "What's your problem, Alan?". I said, "Daryl, I'm saying this as a friend. You've got psychological problems, and you're just too brown! Your face looks like a leather holdall that's had its teeth whitened!". He said, "Okay, I will go and speak to a psychiatrist but I'm not too brown", and we just left it there. 

But, yes, a happy day, I've really taken to grandfatherhood! It combines all the pleasures of fatherhood; firemen's lifts, making a machine gun from Lego, you know, without having to administer discipline. Yeah, not that I've ever balked from that, I fathered two kids and, by living with my ex-girlfriend Angela, I step-fathered a couple more. So as a father of four, I was able to use the step-kids as guinea pigs to try out different approaches. And I found the most effective was a mixture of carrot and stick.

So I might say, "Tidy up your room, and we'll have apple crumble and custard!". But other times, I might say, "Do that again and I'm not going to punish you, I'm going to punish your brother. And when he's upset, it'll be your fault". Yeah, it's a well-known technique used by the Stasi, the Mafia, and the CIA, but it can be softened and adapted for the home. 

[notification ding] Message from Lynn, could this be the news we've been waiting for? No, just an email. She emailed me before. Oh, it's just this again. [reading email] "This is the footage I was telling you about. Queen Victoria pub in Norwich hosting talent show in car park on fixed camera. The entrance to Big Yellow Storage visible over back wall. After zero-zero-twenty-one seconds, suspect seen entering via east-side of premises". 

Why do- [sighs] There's only one door, Lynn! He went through the door into the building! She thinks it makes her sound military. "Leaves after zero-zero-eight minutes", she's adding all these bloody zeros! I think it's because she watched Zero Dark Thirty, she's seen it about five times. She just loved it when they killed Bin Laden, it's one of her favourite things. Made her really happy. I said, "Do you think they tried to arrest him?", "Naaah!", she said.

Just to describe what I'm seeing, the pub is one of those with a flat roof and a sandwich board saying Sky Sports and the price of a pint of lager, I'm sure you know the type. I bet you £100 that they raffle meat once a week. Nothing wrong with that. There's a building behind, over a concrete wall. What's this? A white van pulls up. Doors opening and... Oh my god, Lynn, is that it? That could be anyone. Out of focus, grainy. You can only just tell it's a person! Goodness sakes. What was it, eight minutes fifty, just spooling forward.

Okay, now he's leaving the building, carrying something. You can't really make out the face. It's just a man. Absolutely pointless! That is how Michael walks, that's a lot like his gait! He rolled his shoulders a bit when he walked, a bit like a camp Komodo dragon. That is an unmistakable Geordie gait and he had a... yes, he has a very slight limp on his right foot because he bet a man he could kick over a bollard and broke his foot. That was a good day. 

[phone rings] Lynn? 

"Did you get my messages?".

No.

"The baby's born, Queen Elizabeth Hospital. King's Lynn. Male. Operation GD3 is go!".

Actually, Lynn, Operation GD3 is stop. I've decided I'm going to play the long game. If Carol wants to be the first to hold him in her arms and pass him from one side of the room to the other while standing still, then so be it. I'm cool with that.

"What about the teddy?"

I'll keep him for another day. He's not going to go off, just keep him in a dry cupboard. You know, with towels. 

"Which towels?"

Just, I don't know, squeeze him into a surplus biscuit tin. 

"Alan, what's happened?"

That video. I think that might be Michael. 

"I knew it! I knew it from that very first day at the storage facility".

Yeah, Lynn, this isn't about your great detective work, it's about me being flabbergasted because a man I thought was dead might be alive! Your detective work is good, but we can talk about that later.

"Yes, yes, of course. Although thank God I went with my instincts!". 

Yeah, what did I just say? 

"I'm sorry. I'm just so pleased!". 

So pleased, with what? 

"Well, that you might be able to rekindle your friendship". 

Okay, okay. Right, well, I'll take it from here. 

"What are you going to do?".

Well, what would you do? 

"Well, I'd go to Newcastle, see if I can find anyone who's seen him". 

Yeah, well, I was going to do that. I mean, apart from that. 

"Well, if you're sure you don't need to beat Carol...". 

No, I'm pretty relaxed. Family comes in many forms. Important not to be, you know, too hard-boiled.

[woman in café] "White toast or brown?"

Stop trying to serve me eggs!