Day 144 - Déjà Pooh

Déjà Pooh

This little face hasn't been this worried since her last bath-time.

“Honey!  Can you please stop watching the election!?  Mila keeps looking at the light on your phone and won’t go to sleep!” Zsuzsa whispers loudly.

“But it’s the American election!  A historic moment!  I just want to watch it until some of the results come in so that I can sleep soundly knowing that The Donald isn’t going to win.”

I’m actually watching an iguana fight a gang of snakes on YouTube.

“Okay, but at least go under the covers or something so that Mila can’t see the light.”

Under the covers I go.  Things are not looking good for the iguana.

I have been watching the election.  The reptilian battle royale was just a brief respite from the political, potential catastrophe.  For the last couple of days I’ve had a horrible feeling that the orange, leather faced, sex pesty one was going to clinch it.  The polls and the bookies all suggested that Hilary was going to reign victorious, but we’ve been here before haven't we?  My impending doom sensors had been tingling.  Less than five months ago I lay in the same bed in our Budapest flat, heavily pregnant wife beside me and watched in horror as my home country slowly committed hari kari and voted to leave the EU.  Now, I’m lying here again, twenty percent poorer due to the bastardly Brexit, wife and three month old baby by my side, worrying about the state of the world in which little Mila will blossom.

"Run you crazy little iguana!  Run as fast as your scaly little legs will carry you!  You must escape the clutches of these slithery beasts!"

It’s been a funny day full of anniversaries and achievements.  It’s exactly a year ago since my first book, Ferocious Dennis was published, and also exactly a year ago since Mila became more than just a twinkle in her mother’s eye.  I’ve also started a new job at a funky media agency in the beating heart of Pest.  I should be happy and proud, but there is an ominous orange shadow hanging over me, breathing it’s foreboding breath upon the nape of my neck.

Project Mila's year anniversary

A few minutes later and I’m still under the covers clutching my phone.  Things are not looking good.  The iguana is hopelessly outnumbered as the dastardly snakes attack!  As well as that, the first results from the first few states have trickled through.  Trump is leading 19 to 3.  I quickly check The New York Times forecaster.  They are still predicting a Clinton victory with an 82% likelihood.  Good odds, but I’m still uneasy.  Maybe it’s the sense of déjà vu engulfing me.

“Honey!  Mila can still see the light through the duvet!  Please!  I need to get to sleep and you’ve got work in the morning.”

“Okay, okay.”

“How’s it looking?”

“Well Trump is ahead, but the forecasts are still predicting a Clinton win.  Maybe he was always predicted to win these states.”

I don’t know who I’m trying to convince.  Zsuzsa or myself.  If it’s myself I’m doing a lousy job.

I watch the iguana make a miraculous escape, decide enough is enough, put my phone down and try to go to sleep.  It takes a while, but I eventually drift off.  I dream that I am in Wales.  I’m in my recently deceased Grandma’s house.  Donald Trump is sitting in her chair.  He’s wearing an ill-fitting t-shirt with a Welsh flag design.  He’s just sitting there, staring at me with his stupid face and silly hair flapping about.  A snake slithers passed.  I hear a baby cooing and I’m yanked from my dreamland.  It’s Mila.  She’s decided that as it’s 0600 it’s time to wake up.  I reach for my phone, check the news.  Bum.  This is like Steve Brookstein winning The X-Factor all over again, but much, much worse. 

A few hours later and I’m in the office for my second day at work.  I’m sitting on the toilet reading the outpouring of woe on social media.  I reach for the toilet paper.  Holy mother of God!  There isn’t any!  Armageddon has already begun!  I sit there panicking for a few moments trying to work out what to do?  What would Batman do if he was stuck on a toilet, on his second day at a new workplace?  I decide that he'd probably keep some spare toilet paper in his utility belt, the uber prepared rubber suited prick!  Well screw you and your utility belt Batman!  I'm going to do this my way!  So, absolutely terrified, I stealthily make my way across the toilet room floor, shuffling like a penguin with my trousers around my ankles.  I successfully complete my mission.  I will be clean!  I will not have an unspeakable second day at work that will haunt me forever!

Back at my desk I ponder the events of the last twenty four hours or so.  Things are looking decidedly bleak, but then I remember our friend the iguana.  Things didn’t look great for the iguana, but did he give up?  Did he fuck!

Maybe that's the answer!  Maybe we should all be more iguana.  Either way, I'm sure things will be alright in the end.

They will won't they?

The most thrilling action sequence of all time?

Day 6 - Radio Fame

Radio Fame

Today I was interviewed by one of Hungary’s biggest national radio stations about the Brexit.  And this is unusual as in my six days living in Hungary I have hardly ever been on the national radio.  So when I was contacted by the radio inviting me to share my thoughts, I decided to break my ominous radio silence and the whole of Hungary breathed a collective sigh of relief.  

“Would you prefer to speak in English or Hungarian?” I was asked.  I pondered this dilemma for a few moments before deciding that I’d probably struggle to get my succinct political thoughts across using only the four words of my Hungarian vocabulary.  Especially seeing as one of those is ‘paradiscom’ (tomato) and another ‘fogotmos’ (to clean ones teeth).  You can listen to the full interview below, but if you find yourself struggling to understand the Hungarian translation that has so rudely been placed on top of my sweet voice, it roughly translates as “Bollocks!  That’s me fucked then!”.

It’s crazy to think that I was the glue that kept the UK together.  Of course, I’d always expected that this was the case, but it was only once I actually left the country and witnessed it’s catastrophic collapse in to to chaos and parody from afar, that my instincts had been proven right.  We’ve voted to leave the EU, the prime minister has resigned, the candidates to replace Cameron remind me of the end of the film Ghostbusters when the heroes were asked to choose their destroyer.  Scotland might bugger off and they might take Northern Ireland with them.  The inhabitants of Hull have all turned blue. 

Pretty soon we’ll undoubtedly run out of petrol and be ruled over by Immortan Boris.  The next thing to go will be the food and we’ll have no choice but to become cannibals, or something much worse…vegans.  But I’m afraid I can’t come to the UK’s rescue on this occasion.  I’m out here for at least a year now and have a miniature wife and an even more miniature baby to think of, so the UK will just have to pull itself together and get on with things without me.

I’ve decided that I won’t let fame change me.  I may be Hungary’s hottest new radio celebrity, but I have to keep my feet on the ground.  I have a young family to think of.  I won’t go down the same route as the Justin Biebers and Kim Kardashians of this world.  You might be sceptical of this, but I promise you, I won’t.

But anyway, I imagine you're currently trying to work out what a Hungarian radio celebrity does to distract himself from the shitty mess that is The Brexit.  Well, the answer is get out of the city and enjoy some of the delights of Europe’s largest lake.  I’m of course talking about Lake Balaton.  So, we're now jumping in our Skoda Yeti hire car and will shortly by cruising down the M7 like some kind of Hungarian P-Diddy and Jo-Lo, Petofi Radio blaring out 80’s Hungarian hits as we go, in a desperate attempt to forget all of the chaos in my homeland.

Until next time.