I finished work today for my holidays. Well actually I finished at lunchtime to go and look at my progeny my partner is growing inside her. I didn’t know whether to mention this at some stage in this blog. I haven’t done any mention on the social medias. I don’t really feel like sharing it with people, or indeed boring other people with it (and thirdly being bored by people talking to me about it). Of course the truth is that no-one cares or is interested. But I like to imagine people are.  And of course there is the other reason, the one that people don’t want to speak about*.

I have told most people who I interact with.  I liked telling people in different ways. I told one of my best friends in the middle of text messages about the third – and decisive – third test of the British Lions tour.

A few months ago I wanted to do a Facebook post that just said “Anyone interested in a threesome? No time wasters please.” The idea of it tickled me. My partner thought it wasn’t something with which she was comfortable. yes she is a prude. Since finding out some poor child will have me for a father I thought if I was going to announce it, on Facebook or whatever that “Anyone interested in a threesome involving a pregnant woman? No time wasters, please” would be the only sensible way to do it. But I didn’t.

After you’ve not gone with being very public about something then there is a moment, a social media moment, when you’re going to say something (“sharing a house with a pregnant woman is like throwing a hedgehog at a dartboard made of eggs”; “wow aren’t cots expensive? I know this because I’m cot shopping and the cot’s not for me – it’s for a small human I shall parent”) that is, to some extent, an announcement.

So the beauty of writing this in this blog is that it’s done now. And because no-one reads the blog there’s no danger of anyone really reading it. The only person who regularly reads every entry is me and I know this.

Anyway, a machine let me look at this child today. It is now more than halfway through the bit where it grows inside a woman’s stomach. This child is conveniently inside my partner’s stomach so I don’t have to get to know her AND prepare for a child like in that film Knocked Up. It doesn’t really seem like a chore when the woman is Katherine Heigl mind. That film is supposed to be like the scary prospect of a one night stand leading to having a child with a stranger. But the man is Seth Rogen and the woman is Katherine Heigl. She is amazingly beautiful and Rogen is not, if a duffle coat was a man it would be Seth Rogen. There isn’t a coat equivalent or Heigl. She is just a very beautiful woman.

I don’t know where people get the  idea I am in love with Katherine Heigl. I never even mentioned her. It was you who brought her name into this.

They give you pictures of the baby from inside the woman when you have these so-called scans. Even though the child was eight weeks older than the last time a machine, in fact the same machine, showed the developing human and looked a lot more developed the pictures weren’t as good as the other ones. You can’t really complain when they give you these pictures. Apart from anything else you’re quite happy that they’ve said it has legs and nostrils etc.

But I decided that I would complain. And after some negotiation the people at the scan clinic swapped the picture of my unborn child for two pictures of Katherine Heigl that they printed off a Google image search.

*I know people who have had the bad thing happen. One person found out I was in the family way and talked to me about when the bad thing happened to him. I didn’t want to be mean about it or anything but not really one of my best topics at the best of times, definitely not really now. I’m not saying it’s a taboo that people should not be free to talk about. Maybe not the thing you talk about with someone who clearly is at the early stages of being in the child growth business.