AKA - The Return of Kris Akabusi
It’s a lovely sunny evening in Budapest and I’ve just arrived at a delightful restaurant. Zsuzsa, Mila and a couple of friends are already here, tucking in to unidentifiable meat and fröccs (wine spritzer).
“Hello!” I say cheerfully.
Zsuzsa looks at me with the same expression as a dog once did in Battersea Dog's Home.
“Please take her honey. She’s worn me out. I’ve got nothing left. I’m done.” she says, a broken woman.
She holds Mila out towards me. Mila squeals with delight, her eyes vibrant and wild. I nod and collect my little baby girl in my arms. She screams with joy and starts jigging up and down.
“She’s been like it all day.” says Zsuzsa. “She’s got so much energy! I don’t understand it!”
Mila grins at me and bounces up and down some more. I have to admit, she is acting uncannily like Kris Akabusi today. If she could talk she would undoubtedly be bellowing “Awooga!” at this moment.
I order a wienerschitzel and the four of us chat while I attempt to restrain our little wild child.
A waiter approaches with my wienerschnitzel. He has his back to us while he carefully places the dish in front of me.
Then it happened.
Out of the corner of my eye I notice a chubby little baby arm reach out and pinch the waiter's arse. Mila retracts her arm quickly and suddenly morphs in to a quiet, chilled out, perfectly behaved baby. The waiter spins around and glares at me. I know that glare! I’ve seen it before! It’s an incriminating glare!
It’s 1980 and I’m on a sunny-ish beach in West Wales. The beach is in a place called Porthmadog and I'm with my father and my brother (I can't remember where my mother was at this moment). I’m about four and my brother is one and a bit. The three of us are sitting in a row and if memory serves me correctly my father is wearing hideous, brown swimming trunks (that’s not relevant to the story, but still, he should be ashamed). A young woman wanders past in a bikini. My brother, Ross, chooses this moment to let out the loudest wolf whistle that any baby, anywhere in the world has ever produced. I have vivid memories of the young woman glaring at my father. It was an incriminating glare. She then burst in to a furious tirade, shouting whilst jabbing an angry finger in his direction.
“It was the baby.” I remember him saying while pointing to this tiny little baby boy.
She was having none of it.
Mamma pea and baby pea.
It’s now 2017 and we’re back in the Hungarian restaurant. I’m being glared at.
“It was the baby.” I say.
The waiter just gives me a withering look and wanders off shaking his head. I’m aghast. I turn to Zsuzsa.
“Mila just pinched that waiter's arse and I think he thinks it was me!” I say.
“That’s nice honey.” replies Zsuzsa.
“What!? No it’s not nice! Please tell the waiter when he comes over. Please tell him it was Mila. Please tell him that I didn't pinch his arse!”
Zsuzsa looks at me and I can instantly see that her mind is somewhere else. About five seconds of silence follows, before Zsuzsa speaks.
“I think Mila might be a bit like an Arab.” she says.
“What?”
“Well she seems to love drinking hot tea in hot weather.”
“What?”
I look at my tired wife and accept defeat. She has been temporarily broken by our little wild baby. She appears to be malfunctioning. I decide to drop it and accept that the waiter will always think of me as some kind of British, Donald Trump-esque deviant. But that’s fine. We just can never, ever come here ever again.