A June Christening: From Balmy to Barmy and Back again.
Jul
14
Written by:
14/07/2014 15:13
When we last met at The Melting Pot, I had a chaotic time just kicking off, with increasingly active twin babies and quite a few commissions on my plate to deal with.
June saw a sudden surge in activity over every possible area of our lives, plus the exciting, if more convoluted matter of the babies’ Christening. In no time at all the Melting Pot seemed to be mutating into more of a bubbling volcano; just waiting to erupt at any point, should the balance of manageable business turn into unmitigated bedlam. And so this was the form with which June was going to take, along with the small matter of the babies well and truly finding their feet (or rather, their hands and knees) in the middle of it all.
With only twelve days to go before a host of sixty people would turn up at the church and a hundred at the party venue for our big family event of the year, I had an unexpected phone call late one night, offering me a somewhat lucrative contract for work. Up until this point, we had been just about rumbling along as a reasonably functional working family. The elder boys stayed in after school club on hectic days, Steve nipped in and out to relieve me of my mum duties to go to meetings and ‘nanna’ came to sit with the babies when all else failed. Now, all of a sudden, there was the option of my having to leave the house every morning to attend high powered management meetings and drive all over town to discuss this, that and the other with Tom, Dick AND Harry. Not one to turn down a challenge, and seeing it as a short term contract, I agreed to take it on.
Mistake number 1. Within a single week, I could see that fourteen hour days of working and seeing very little of the babies was definitely not the way forward. Providing creative content for marketing a chain of city restaurants (as opposed to books; my normal area) was certainly not rewarding or interesting for me.
Mistake number 2. But more than anything, the clock was ticking away to celebrate the birth and being of our gorgeous baby boys and I wasn’t even able to spend time with them at all. On the odd hour when calm descended from relentless work calls, I grabbed every minute I could with the babies. Being nine months old and very healthy, they suddenly discovered crawling during this phase; darting off in different directions every time they were let loose on the floor…. Wind ‘em up and watch’ em go!
With half naked butlers to promote, service orders to straighten out, menus to discuss for parties and suits to buy for all four children, I did at one point hope I wouldn’t get it all completely muddled and end up with a half-naked vicar and wet wipes on the cover of a marketing board instead of events waiters.
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. On the day itself, everything was fine. The vicar- often prone to a ‘rap service’- attended fully clothed and whilst refraining from a Christening rap, had all children from the congregation dancing in the aisles with castanets and maracas. Comedy ensued when Steve was asked to name the child he was holding to be blessed…. he had to look down and check as he couldn’t work out which one he was holding. The whole church erupted with laughter and I leaned back with a sigh of relief that we had survived yet another hectic phase in the life of The Melting Pot.
© Tessa-Lynne Davies 2014