Finding the right words

I'll be brief because it's late and he's worn me out.

Vanessa was out tonight and I was planning several hours of "me" time - something of a rarity these days.

I'd got a big steak in, I already had lots of Guinness in and I'd been saving a documentary about Willie John McBride's '74 Lions in South Africa to watch.

Jamie normally goes down around about 7pm - even when I'm doing his bottle.

But occasionally (again, when I'm on duty) he refuses to play ball and reinforcements are called in who answer to the name of "Mummy" (if you can talk, that is).

However, I don't know what it is and it has happened several times before but, when it's only me in the house, occasionally our boy decides there is no way he's going to sleep and he's staying up for some boys' fun time. Tonight was one such occasion.

To cut a long story short - because it is almost tomorrow - I eventually got him down at just after 9.35pm tonight, i.e. more than two and a half hours later than normal. And, to be fair, it was a lot of fun.

He played and he smiled, then he played a bit more and smiled a bit more. And then when I threatened to attempt to put him down for about the fourth occasion of the evening, he poured a bottle of water over himself - forcing me to change his clean-on sleepsuit and fresh nappy.

What finally did the trick was an old song from my not particularly dim but certainly distant past.

To explain, once I had got to around 8.15pm, I decided that I would put the Lions documentary on in any case - Jamie would just have to cope. And the sight of Willie John McBride must, ultimately, have had a subliminal effect on me.

I have tried several songs on Jamie over the last 12 months - most of which I'd rather not talk about - in my quest to get him snoozing. But tonight, from nowhere, The Wild Rover suddenly entered my head.

The Wild Rover is one of the few songs I know from start to finish; the reason being that, along with my teammates, I'd attended choir practice to learn the words in advance of my school 1st XV's rugby tour of Japan in 1989 - a tour captained by Willie John McBride's son Paul.

And, as I say, it worked a treat with Jamie nodding off in the midst of verse two (although I was having such a good time that I decided to sing the whole song through anyway- not even missing a chorus).

So there's the bright spot of tonight - Jamie and I have perhaps found our own song. And as an added bonus, it's not rude.