Expectant Dad: The Movie

So how are you finding it all, this dad-to-be malarky? A bit like it’s all happening to someone else, is it? Does it all feel like you’re a character in some movie? Well, that’s not too bad an analogy, as it goes. In fact, a trilogy would be more accurate. And just like a real movie trilogy, the same rules of diminishing returns will apply.

Just as the original is inevitably better than the sequel, and the sequel in turn is superior to the third part – or “threequel” in movie geek-speak – so too will your own personal trilogy, your Action-Dadventure epic, deteriorate in quality as it progresses. For example, in the original, you would be played by Al Pacino. In the second, not-so-good instalment, you will be played by Jean Claude Van Damme. In part three, Tyrone out of Coronation Street will be offered the part. And he will probably turn it down.

Part one is set in the pub. Most important events of your life hitherto have probably been spent in the pub. Why change the habit of a lifetime? Most stages apart from conception, I hasten to add, although maybe that’s just me. Perhaps you have another story. If so, please don’t share it. Some things are better kept to yourself. (Although I suppose our conception could have taken place in a bar as Isobella is an IVF baby and one of the top drawer mixologists at Claridge’s or the Savoy’s American Bar could have made jiggly with the petrie dish.)

The pub is also where you will pick up the first flotsam and jetsam from the ocean known as the Sea of Wisdom. Nuggets will include: “You don’t want a girl, mate: boys’re less bovver as teenagers”. Luckily, like most pub pronouncements, you will have forgotten it all by the morning.

Part Two moves location away from the pub, and is subtitled The Provider Panic Months. This shift of location will make for a pretty dismal movie for the viewer, being set largely in the marital home. And it will start out as a love story in which the leading lady (your partner/wife) will be all moon-faced at the fact that you have at last grown up and are ready to shoulder your responsibilities. This will only last, however, for the first reel. After this she will grow increasingly annoyed at your fretting and paranoia and lectures on the dangers of half-a-glass of wine with Christmas dinner. Long before the credits have rolled she will be wishing you’d just piss off back to the pub where you belong.

Reviews for the sequel will be bad. So bad that moviegoers will stay away from the third instalment in their droves. This movie will be subtitled “Whatever Happened to Old Whatsisface?” due to the fact that you will be seen so seldom down the pub that sightings of Glenn Miller’s plane will be more commonplace. But you are the star of this movie. And it is the best part you will ever have. It will be a very long movie, too long to hold anyone’s interest other than your own. But this is a real case of art for art’s sake. You will be listed in the cast list at Happy/Confused/Tired Dad. And it will win you no Oscars. Your new co-star will steal every scene. And none of those scenes will be set in the pub. But you won’t care. In fact, you won’t care if you never see the inside of a pub again as long as you live. And then you will be a true star.