Mrs P is worried we might not be fit enough to handle the babysitting duties.
You may recall that some months ago, Mrs P and I welcomed a new grandson to the whānau.
No 1 Son and his Fair Lady were living in England on a year-long contract when the little tacker arrived and, sadly, we weren’t able to hop on a plane to check he had the requisite number of fingers and toes.
Since then, regular video calls to the other side of the world have been held and they are all there.
Anyway, we’ve been counting down the days till he, and they, return to our shores and suddenly, next Tuesday is the big day.
We will be meeting them in Auckland and spending a few days catching up before they head down to start their new lives in Wellington. Mrs P and I are already booked in for some babysitting duty in a month or so.
Naturally, because it’s us – or rather one of us who doesn’t write a newspaper column each week – there’s an issue.
Mrs P is worried we might not be fit enough to handle the task sufficiently. As a result, she’s embarked on an exercise programme designed to have us in top shape, come the assignment.
Accordingly, where we are at present is: we’ve marching up and down the beach. On occasion, she’s had me carrying a heavy piece of driftwood, to simulate carrying tasks.
I have to admit that a couple of times, as I stumbled across the sand on a cold winter’s morning, wind howling through the hole I missed under the armpit when I bought my op-shop sweatshirt, I thought about tossing the baby, er I mean, driftwood in the sea and heading for the coffee cart I could see in the distance.
But Mrs P reminded me of the old adage “no pain, no gain”. Which is all well and good but I didn’t see her carting any driftwood around.
And worse was to come.
About a week ago, she realised all the streets around where No 1 Son and his family will live in Welly are extremely steep.
So steep, in fact, if we were going to push the Little Tacker round his new neighbourhood in his pushchair at all, we’d need to do some extra training.
Typically, No 1 Son and his ever-organised Fair Lady have already purchased an appropriate beast of a pushchair which looks like a tank, weighs about as much and probably cost an arm and a leg plus a kidney or two.
It would be perfect, No 1 Son assured me, plus there would be plenty of space for the “emergency bag” too.
For the uninitiated, this is essentially a bottomless bag into which you put everything the child will need from age 1 month till they leave for university. Plus snacks and the kitchen sink. Just in case.
As a result, it’s always rather heavy. Groan.
So. Mrs P has had me doing extra work charging up the sand dunes to get in shape. I’ve not been doing too bad, particularly with a new hip and dodgy shoulder, and I’m told the whip marks on my back will eventually fade, but just the other day I had had enough.
Refusing to move one more step, and in spite of a shameful and transparent offer of a, er, “cuddle” later on if I continued, I told My Beloved she should be doing the same workout so she could take the baby in a walk in his pushchair too.
At this point, Mrs P agreed but my legs had gone on strike halfway up a sand dune. I can’t – and she doesn’t want to – go back down and pick up a piece of driftwood so I suggest maybe she should push me to the top.
So she does. It’s fair to say there was a lot of laughing going on right till we got to the top and came across a surprised-looking couple waiting to go down.
It was then Mrs P came out with one of those comments which just assumed other people are fully aware of what we were doing, why and what we’d been talking about.
I’m sure you know what I mean?
So what did she say as she placed her hands on my rear and shoved her 61-year-old bald, arthritic, flabby old man to the top?
“I’m just pushing my baby grandson up the hill in his pushchair.”
The open-mouthed, stunned silence of the waiting duo was priceless – but I’d absolutely love to know what they were thinking.