up all night

3 and a half days ago I became a Dad! And I thought that would be the end of sitting around watching TV/reading blogs online etc.. but no.. not when on night two of your baby boy being at home he gets incredible wind because you cooked your wife a lovely dish involving loads of roast onions and garlic and that in turn is in her milk and now in the baby and bless him he's only just been using that stomach for 2 days so of course it'll make him ill, it's like putting aeroplane fuel in a brand new scooter... and then it spluttering and farting down the road. A lot.

So, bless him, he can't sleep on his back so one of us has to stay up for hours cuddling him so he can sleep.. and it's been my turn for the last few hours and after realising I can just about hold him in one arm whilst making a cup of tea, grabbing some hob nobs, sitting down, watching Family Guy for the first time in my life on some digital channel (and not finding the farting talking baby bit funny..), after getting up, juggling baby to other side, letting the cat in, opening a pouch of Felix with my mouth because one hand is busy and spraying my face in tuna juice, feeding the cat and getting myself settled with a blanket over me and a blanket over the boy and get the laptop out.. I figure I'd catch up on one of favourite blogs: The Write Girl.

She's a brilliant writer from Hertfordshire who currently finds herself in Japan teaching children English through play and Drama (so if a load of young Japanese men and women one day visit your town and can only converse by pretending to be a cow, or a crab on a sea bed.. then you know why..)

It's been brilliant as ever.. and has kept me busy for so long that i've had to readjust our little nest whilst I plugged in the laptop - getting a face full of baby fart whilst bending over to reach the cord (hmm, onion baby fart and eau d'tuna, I.. am.. hot). What she's up to in Japan is brilliant and part of me thought.. I've never done anything like that. Am I missing out?

But I wouldn't change where I am right now for the world.. both of us then, having incredible adventures with people who can't understand us or be understood by us and finding escape through our laptops. And both of us experiencing raw fish for breakfast.

Fraser has slept through three months of her adventures but when he wakes up he's going to see Daddy pretend he's a cow and that we're in a field full of grass and that he's a cow too. He certainly farts like one. Notice that no one ever feeds cows onions...

I'm a Dad!

Tuesday afternoon my life changed forever when at 16.56 little Fraser Edmund joined the Folland clan.

It was an emergency c-section. One moment my wife was in a bed and I'd been told to 'go and get the bags' out of the car; the next moment, I'm back with the bags and the room is full of people in blue/green scrubs uniforms and my wife's in a hospital gown and in a blur of activity a nurse grabs me and says that it's all about to happen and I need to get changed into scrubs and grabs me grabs the bags, rushes me down a corridor, points me to a cupboard and tells me to get changed and join them in theatre... If that sentence lacks punctuation, so did the moment itself. It just flowed. No. Rushed from one blurry verb to another.

In amongst all the action and overwhelming 'trying to remain calm for your wife when clearly this is terrifying for her' experience... I did manage to discover that I look good in scrubs. No really. A student mid wife even said in theatre, 'is dad in here yet?'.. when I was just standing 3 feet away from her. See? I looked like a doctor! Well, that's my memory. The scrub nurse will probably tell a different tale involving me being so nervous that I put the trousers on back to front so didn't see the tie up cord, so wandered down the corridor with them falling down and my pants showing and said nurse coming to tie me up (honestly! If I can't dress myself, what hope do I have?!)

Sorry for being rubbish

Wow. Just realised I have't written anything for the whole of October?! How lame is that?

Basically I've been just too busy waiting to become a Dad. We're now a week overdue and it's like someone keeps shifting what day Christmas Day is. You know it's going to be soon, you put up all the decorations and get yourself excited and then it turns out it isn't the 25th at all, nor the 26th, 27th etc.. You just know that eventually the present you'll get will be amazing and you have to be patient, even though you know what it is and you know where it's hidden, you're not allowed to open it. Be patient.

I've tried to tell my wife that this is a great excuse to start eating Quality Street, but she's not buying into the Christmas metaphor in the same way. She's also sick of finding a half drunk glass of sherry and mince pie crumbs each morning.

Anyway, if it doesn't pop out on its own accord (or umbilical cord) soon they'll tempt it out by the end of this week. If it's any child of mine they should just waft a bag of fresh doughnuts under there and it'll soon poke its head out. So yes, we're just sit tight and wait for our delivery whenever that might be. Anybody would think it was the Royal Mail in charge of its birth.

Gordon Brown's Generation Game

I tried to be grown up and listen to Gordon Brown's party conference speech yesterday in a sensible manner. But his list of achievements started to sound like those people trying to remember what they'd seen on The Generation Game didn't you think? There was just something about it...

Could this be my child?

So.. I'm about to become a Dad in a matter of weeks!

And it's at this point you can't help but think... what will my child be like?

Will it take after me? Will it look like me? Will it behave like me?

If you remember what happened to me back in April (and by the way it's still touring with Beyonce now on her World Tour don't forget!) then maybe this is glimpse of the future...

Falling over themselves to get on X-Factor

My favourite moment from the X Factor this year so far..
When reaching for fame..
It's good to stay grounded.

New Video Podcast

Ah, it's another Weird Week from Newslite.TV - including a woman who will carve a statue of your head as a present... out of cheese. Just imagine..

Scarlett Johansson Singing

If you're annoyed with Derren Brown this morning (or annoyed with yourself for having stayed up late when you knew you had to get up early, just to watch his stupid wizard ways)(or annoyed because your wife says he's quite hot.. when you know that he's just managed to somehow brainwash her..) then let this be your antedote.

It's singer Pete Yorn with that nice girl in the pants in that film with the bloke from Ghostbusters. Anyway it's a great song (there's a whole album to come) and a great video and I can't decide whether that's her real singing voice or if she's just trying to be Bridgette Bardot and I don't know whether those looks she gives are for real or not, because after all and she's an actress and therefore untrustworthy and thus much the same as Derren Brown, except I don't want to see him in his pants in a Tokyo hotel window. Unless he's about to jump from it.

If for some reason the video doesn't seem to be working (probably Derren's fault), click here to see the Scarlett Johnansson and Pete Yorn singing video.

Download Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson - Relator by clicking here.

Or click here to get the Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson album - Breakup

Hitler's reaction to the Oasis split

Precious Little Error

So, you know when a newspaper prints something in error and they have to make an apology in a later edition... Well, this is from The Sun.

"In an article published under the headline 'Golum joker killed in live rail horror', we incorrectly stated that Julian Brooker, 23, of Brighton, was blown 15ft into the air after accidentally touching a live railway line. His parents have asked us to make clear that he was not turned into a fireball and was not obsessed with the number 23. Julian's mother did not say, during or after the inquest, that her son often got on all fours creeping round the house pretending to be Gollum."

!!!!