Sights not seen before

Have you ever had the feeling you were being pushed out?

Not that I begrudge my recently born son anything, you understand. Of course not. It's just that I seem to have gone right down the pecking order in our house over the last couple of weeks.

To give an example, I fancied doing a bit of washing last night. But he'd got there first, put a load on and laid it all out on our only clothes maiden, leaving no room for any of my stuff.

Shortly afterwards, I thought it would be nice to have some tea. However, he was hungry and neither Vanessa or I were eating 'til he'd had his. And every time we thought he'd had his, he fancied a little more. And then some more. By the time it came to our turn, we were almost beyond the hungry stage.

But nothing can compete with this morning's episode. Following the reappearance of his clothes peg - and the health visitor has since insisted that there's no way he could've swallowed it, thus deepening the mystery - he didn't really sleep at all last night, meaning neither did we.

I was comforting him around 7am when I needed to go to the loo. So, I laid him down on our mattress, laid his head on my pillow and covered him up with the duvet to keep him warm.

Two minutes later I was back but he was sound asleep and clearly had no intention of moving. Plus, I was loathe to wake him up given the night he'd had. The only option was to surrender my side of the bed and head off to put the kettle on.

Thinking about all of this on the way to work, I was reminded of my great friend Sean's favourite song which he's sung more times and in more locations than I care to remember over the last 20 years or so.

It's called Seven Drunken Nights and was made famous by legendary Irish group The Dubliners. Only five verses are generally ever sung as the last two are ultra-rude, but basically each verse describes a separate night in which a man comes home in a drunken state to find hard evidence of another man having been with his wife - evidence that she then attempts to explain away as gifts from her mother, totally unconvincingly.

He first finds a horse outside the door, which she argues is actually a sow (with a saddle on). Then a coat - nope, a blanket (with buttons on) says she. Then a pipe - wrong, a tin whistle (filled with tobacco). And two boots, which she claims are flowers pots (with laces in). You get the idea.

On the fifth night, the poor drunken man comes home to find a head peering out from beneath the covers of his marital bed. The wife argues it is a baby boy, to which the husband retorts, "a baby boy with his whiskers on sure I never saw before."

OK, in my case it was actually a real baby boy peering up from the bit of bed where I was supposed to be. And yet I cannot help but feel great empathy with the man in the song.

By the way, the picture opposite is of my mate Sean - Detective Inspector Fitzpatrick to his enemies.