Crumbsnatched

By Mark Babbins

Crumbsnatched is the true story of a single man raising a three year old daughter Lilly he never knew he had following the death of her mother. His account is full of British humor, warmth and some industrial language. It fully describes the trials and tribulations every parent can relate to when it comes to parenthood. From weird visits to the zoo, to the dreaded playground mafia and exhausting kiddy birthday parties, Crumbsnatched covers it all with drop dead laugh out loud honesty. Overall, the book captures the moments of utter joy and the endless frustrations of raising a child, PERFECTLY!!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543945140

Book preview

Daddy!

Chapter 1

The calendar proclaims it is 1999. Billy Clinton is staring at impeachment. The Sopranos debuts on TV and Michael Jordan retires from the NBA.On a considerably smaller wage than the afore mentioned gentlemen I finished another hard day’s work. You know how it is. Your bosses can be fools; your workmates can be bigger ones! Being an independent man of the world I did what any self-respecting only child would do faced with a similar situation. I went straight to my old mum’s house for a good old whine and a cup of tea!

My mother by the way is what you would call ‘old school’, polite respectful and overall one of the best mothers to have ever walked the planet! Kind, honest and loving are just a few of the platitudes that I could give to her, she did not like swearing or ungentlemanly conduct of any sort so you can imagine my surprise when my greeting of

Hello mother dearest, how are you today? Was met with

What the bloody hell have you been up to?

I was more than a little taken aback by this reply and together with the tone of her voice it all made for one serious looking mother!

Sit there and tell me the truth, She said with a stern look on her face

I’ve just had a visitor; some woman has just knocked on the door with a little two year old girl in a pushchair and said, AND SAID! This is your son’s daughter, your granddaughter and I thought you should know!

Well, you can imagine can’t you, Who, What, When, How all followed quickly. The When I made an educated guess of two years and nine months ago. The what; well WHAT! Was the word I found myself repeating several times over.

My mother’s face was one of confused worry, she had always wanted a grandchild, but I guess this was not the way she had imagined it happening. As it turned out the only question left was who? The woman who had come to the door was a neighbor of the birth mother and she had handed my mum a scrap of paper with the mother’s phone number on it.

Who’s the Mother my dear mum wanted to know with more than a little hint of urgency in her voice.

I; I; I don’t know I stuttered,

It can’t be mine. Can it?

I don’t bloody well know, she screamed,

Ring the number and find out

Well folk’s I am sure we have all had to make awkward phone calls in our time but this one was going to be right up there. My mother was getting more agitated by the minute

Ring it now! she kept saying,

I just stood there in a daze, hoping that the situation would somehow resolve itself without me having to call the number. I paced up and down, my mother paced up and down and then after about five minutes I realized that there was nothing else I could do, I would just have to bite the bullet and make the call. I am almost ashamed to admit that I picked up and then put down that receiver at least four times trying to find the courage to speak to whoever was on the other end of the phone. As I was about to put the phone down for the fifth time my dear mother gave me all the incentive I needed by saying

If you don’t call her then I bloody well will!

So I dial the number, sweating like a fat kid playing dodge ball I can tell you. Waiting for someone to pick up that phone was not the most pleasant minute I have ever spent that is for sure. My hands were actually shaking, my heart was pounding, and I do not mind admitting my bowels were standing by awaiting further instructions!

As soon as she answered I knew who it was, three years ago in a half drunken state a girl had got into my taxi as I was leaving a nightclub, one thing led to another and the rest of that evening was spent paving the way for Gods great plan to be put into action. Without blowing my own trumpet I had managed to become a dad in two minutes flat, I only mention this as I have heard it can take some men up to ten minutes! Only joking! But it is amazing isn’t it? Two minutes of fornication lets you be crowned a dad yet it takes upwards of fifty years to become a qualified parent. So there you have it, a one night [two minute] stand that nearly three years later resulted in a surprise knock at the door! I was now two and a half years behind the times so to speak and found myself needing to know what was what!

Apparently, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety seven, my daughter arrived on this planet. She weighed approximately the same as four bags of sugar and was given the earth name Lilly! I have tried to gather as much information as I can on the exact details concerning the arrival of the said girl and I will relate to you all that I found out. To all intents and purposes it was said to be an unremarkable birth, there were no magi in attendance, astronomers at the time reported no unusual activity in the skies above and even the most tyrannical monarchs around the world hardly batted an eyelid! The child arrived under the sign of Aquarius and although it was rumored to be a relatively easy birth the child was so shocked at her sudden arrival on this lovely planet of ours that she did not speak for well over a year!

I have learned through various sources that her first year was spent eating, pooping, and sleeping. This I am led to believe by experts in the field of childcare is pretty much the norm. It was from one of these sources that I received details of the actual delivery. Even though I am far from shy and it is a fact, this story of mine contains some of the fruitier expressions found in the English language I feel it would be prudent of me not to repeat exactly what I was told. If I was to tell you that the mother had occasion to say ‘ouch that smarts a little’ and by Jove I am pushing’ I feel you will get the right idea.

Mother and Daughter soon recovered but it was not until midway through her second year that Lilly spoke her first words and again I have to relay secondhand what I was told, as I unfortunately was not there to hear for myself. It is said that on an unnamed day some two years before the start of the new millennium Lilly spoke her first words which were and I quote; ‘I would like to see my Daddy now, send for him at once as I have many questions for him.’

Those present on that day were said to be very shocked by this but in the subsequent years spent with my daughter I can honestly say that it does not surprise me one little bit!

I suppose in the end the dreaded phone call itself was not as bad as I or indeed my bowels thought it would be. The woman that answered the phone tells me that the child is my daughter and that she never knew where to find me to pass on this rather big piece of information! Do you want to see the child? Will you be the daddy? Etc.; were among her first questions.

Of course I would love to see her, I said,

So I arranged to meet her at the local park in a couple of days’ time. As you can imagine the next two days seemed like an eternity.

You will have to take a little gift for Lilly when you go to meet her, Advised my mother. Good idea I thought, so off I went to the toyshop to buy my brand new daughter a brand new present. When I got to the shop I asked the sales assistant for a good gift to give a two year old girl. She went out the back of the shop and came back with a cute cuddly teddy bear.

Is this what you had in mind sir? She said

Er yes I replied somewhat hesitantly

The bear is fine

[This turned out to be my first clue that I did not know anything whatsoever about two year old girls. If I had my way I would have bought her a calculator, a set of children’s encyclopedias and a set square!]

Even though I still thought my gifts would have been better, I gladly purchased the bear and counted the minutes until I could hand it over to Lilly. After two hours sleep, I awoke the next morning too nervous to eat and butterflies in my stomach like you would not believe. Any of you out there feeling nervous about an upcoming job interview? Well multiply, your nerves by ten and you still would not be close to how I was feeling! I showered and changed my clothes at least three times, fidgeted about like an old lady wanting one number on her bingo card and paced up and down relentlessly waiting for the time to pass before the meeting came about. Eventually it was time to face the music, so armed with the big fat teddy bear I went along to the local park to meet my daughter, hundreds of thoughts running through my mind; will she like me?, what will she look like? And probably the biggest one; Bloody hell I’m a dad!

Sitting there on the swings was a little blonde girl, two feet high with curly hair; cute as a button giggling about who knows what. The Mother awkwardly said

Hello this is your daughter Lilly, and say

Hello to your daddy Lilly

Hi, Te he he were pretty much the first words I heard my daughter Lilly speak [she’s since made up for that slow start and can now talk the hind legs off a donkey!]Now without getting to deep or spiritual about this it took me all of 5 seconds to fall in love with this kid, thoughts such as she looks like me to I would kill anyone that threatened her in any way came into my head. Just five seconds and I am thinking like that. How does that happen? I have gone from a single man with no brothers or sisters to a loving parent in the space of half a minute! Shit, this is going to take some getting used to I thought.

The one hour flew by and before I knew it she had said Bye Bye and was gone. The next meeting was in two more days, take it slowly, and do not rush it, that sort of thing. That was the advice from my mother. I didn’t want to hear that did I?, I wanted more of that precious little girl [my precious little girl] that I had met only a few hours before and I can assure you that I couldn’t wait to see her again. Over the next few weeks I saw her at least eight or nine times, slowly getting to know her ways and what she liked and did not like. I used to think that two and half year olds were still saying gaga and pooping their nappies but I was wrong, my little bundle of joy was saying please and thank you, out of nappies and acting for the entire world like a proper little grown up!

Do not forget that my previous experience of kids was just about zero, no siblings of my own to learn from and very few babies in my extended family to help me with looking after a toddler. I had been given the title of Daddy well before I had earned it, deserved it or indeed understood it! By the way, for those of you with a leaning to all things cinematic I should just like to remind you of the original Daddy brilliantly played on the silver screen by Mr. Ray Winstone in the film Scum. Just so you know Mr.Winstone, you west ham supporting actor of considerable artistic talent you, I think that I might just be the Daddy now! Anyway, it was on about the tenth visit that the mother said,

How do you fancy taking her on your own for two or three hours?

So with a big deep breath and my teeth chattering off I went pushing the pushchair with the most priceless thing I’ll ever own yapping away at me like she’s known me forever! Happy Days! Well not exactly, more like Happy Twenty five minutes!!Kiddiewink suddenly decides Mummy back now. Mummy back now! As the old joke goes ‘What’s the difference between a two year old and a terrorist? You can reason with a terrorist!

I think it was Earnest Hemmingway that said to be a successful father you should not even look at the child for the first two years of its life and without even trying I have followed that advice near enough to the day. As the urgency in Lillie’s voice was rising and people were starting to look over in my direction I got the feeling that Mr. H had a valid point.

She who must be obeyed was getting more upset by the minute, me saying ‘Mummy gone, she be back soon’ did as much good as if I was to tell Anne Coulter to leave the liberals alone! That is right, absolutely no good whatsoever, I tried Silly talk, funny talk, loud I am getting pissed off now Daddy talk, but she was having none of it!

Right stop crying and I will take you to meet your new Granny, I said, and as if by magic she stopped wailing and said

Granny yeah, me see Granny now! I could not believe it, all that upset cured instantly by the word Granny!

Now most parents out there will already know that the Phenomenon known as Grandmother/Grandfather is very real indeed. Kids love em, they take to them quickly, un- conditionally and seem to sense that it is good to be around them.

My precious little Lilly had never even met my mother apart from those two minutes on the doorstep yet one mention of the G word and she stopped crying quicker than a rat up a drainpipe. Magic I tell you! I got to grannies house and within two minutes they had taken to each other like ducks to water! You’d have thought that they had known each other for years. This however brought with it its own problems, I suddenly found myself second in line for the attention of my mother, thirty something years being the only son and all the privileges that came with that honored title are now forgotten in a heartbeat as

I’ll get to you in a minute, my granddaughter needs me and

Make your own tea she comes first have now become the everyday utterances of my once doting mother! And do you know what? I would not have it any other way!

Watching the two of them interact was a joy to behold, even though within three weeks my schoolboy photo, which had adorned the west wing of the family bungalow for some twenty years, had been replaced by a full color picture of Miss Kiddiewinks herself. Three weeks! The cheek of it!

Within a month my old bedroom was still an old bedroom except the word mine had been replaced by; yep you guessed it, hers! The little princess was nearly three by now and she said to me

Was this your bedroom Daddy? Nanny said it’s my room now, I love my Nanny!

She told me whenever we stay here this is where I sleep.

That’s right darling. I said, you deserve it.

Nanny said you will sleep on the couch but if you want this room I will sleep on the couch instead

What a beautiful thing to say! Obviously I would rather sleep standing up or even on a bed of broken glass rather than take the bed from her. Fatherhood, I thought, is easy and I love it!Yes,Yes Yes I know what you’re thinking, all you parents out there, things such as it gets harder boy and just you wait! Well all I can say to that is TELL ME ABOUT IT!

It was about this time that I had