#marthajunehurst

When Martha was a tiny newborn, and mum and I were actually still in control of the TV remote, she would stop whatever she was doing when she heard the theme tune of The Big Bang Theory on TV, and just stare at the screen for its duration. Now that she's five, our chances of choosing TV viewing are definitely remote, and Martha has definitely developed several Sheldon like personality traits, the most obvious being that she has a favourite spot on the sofa that nobody else is allowed to sit on. Like Sheldon's, Martha's spot to sit is on the left hand side of the sofa. She also has a cushion that she likes that nobody else is allowed to use. It’s a Habitat cushion in a classic mid century modern design, so I get why she loves it. I paid for it, so I don’t get how I’m not allowed to use it.

This morning, Martha sat on the right hand side of the sofa and began crafting a miniature top hat out of several Post-it notes and seven rolls of Sellotape. Standard Martha. I sat down next to her in an attempt to collaborate on the hat project, which meant I was sitting in the designated Martha spot.

She looked around at me said "dad are you in my seat?"

I replied with a very factual response. "Yes Martha, because you're sitting on the other side of the sofa, and I don't want to squash you".

"Are you touching my cushion?"

Focus on the facts dad. Stay strong. "Yes Martha, because it's behind me".

I got the dead eye stare. "Don't touch my cushion dad".

"You are not using it Martha, and it's comfy on my back".

"I KNOW that dad, but that's MY cushion".

"Do you want it Martha? I'll swap with the one behind you".

"No. I just don't want you to have it".

"OK" (time for a subject change) "Do you need any help with your hat?"

"Erm NO. Just move my cushion please".

I moved Martha's cushion. Hilariously, we have two of these cushions, identical in every way, one on each of our sofas, and mum had to move Martha's precious cushion last week after aunty had committed the heinous crime of cushion touching. Mum simply swapped Martha’s special cushion with its poor unloved twin. And hasn’t swapped it back since. Martha told mum that she knows which of the identical cushions is hers as she has written an M in pen on the inner cushion. She obviously didn’t know it had been swapped out, and has taken the placebo cushion as the real deal since then. I made a mental note to tell Martha the hilarious tale of the swapped cushion when she was older, making sure that I'd clearly point out that umm had done the swapping, not me. When Martha announced that she was going upstairs for her morning poo, I went over to the other sofa and unzipped the cover of her beloved cushion, the one that had been subject to a sneaky switcheroo. No letter ‘M’. Aha! She was bluffing.

Or was she?

Martha and I were nearing the end of one of our regular early morning pre-school time YouTube boy band marathons. I guess that a 5 year-old girl being into boy bands is a normal thing. But this is Martha’s World. She currently loves both New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys. Only not the multibillion selling early stuff. That would be too predictable. Martha likes the recent output from both groups, definitely in the 'men' side of the Boyz II Men divide.

She loves watching the video of NKOTB dressed as (even) old (er) men doing a music history lesson in a high school for the track ‘Boys in the Band’. In the middle of the song, Donnie Wahlberg raps a list of boybands. Martha always joins in for this bit, opening one of her brain boxes and reciting it in unison with Donnie.

80s teen pop sensation Debbie Gibson makes an appearance as a milfy teacher in the hallway flanked by a gaggle of cheerleaders and lip syncs “we like the boys, the boys in the band” to a singer with a really broad New York accent. Martha loves the crazy lady. She’s as yet unaware of Debbie’s pre-milfy days, and I am staggered that YouTube hasn’t thrown ‘Shake Your Love’ or similar onto our screen with its all encompassing algorithm.

Her favourite Backstreet Boys videos go from the sublime to the ridiculous. The most played video is a live set from 2017 in a TV studio to mark their Las Vegas residency, and close second in the running is a 1993 news segment from a Florida news channel, where the boys made their debut with an incredible effort. The then barely teenaged Nick Carter attempted to thrust his prepubescent pecker at the audience of screaming daughters of TV weathermen and sportscasters, while Kevin (who was already the grand old age of 22) looked very awkward and acutely aware of the Savile scale of the dance routine. The song never appeared on any Backstreet Boys album. Go and take a look. You’ll see why.

Sometimes a song called ‘Get Down’ (You’re the One for Me) appears on YouTube. It is a 1996 classic, with little Nick carter in full on bleached blonde curtain hair mode. The boys are precariously balanced on a floating, rotating circular platform similar to the one that Flash Gordon had his scrap with Timothy Dalton on. The floating platform is surrounded by thousands of screens with girls dancing while they watch the boys. Martha seemed concerned watching ‘Get Down’. Stupidly, I asked her what the matter was.

“Dad, do the Backstreet Boys have sore penises?”

I hadn't given much (okay, ANY) thought to the penile health of the Backstreet Boys, but Martha may well have actually been on to something. I imagine that young virile men in Globally famous pop groups at their peak of popularity, with girls in every city in the World flinging themselves at their feet, may well have had sore penises, through overuse if nothing else. “Ummmm I don’t know Martha, I’ve never really discussed it with them, even though they are obviously my close personal friends. Why do you ask?”

“Well, they keep touching them, like when I have a sore lip and you tell me off because I keep picking it like you did when you were a boy and it made it bleed.”

“Ummm, I don’t know the answer. I’ll ask them next time I see them...”

Martha chuckled. “Silly dad!” Shit. Was my ruse blown? Had my daughter realised that I actually bought the tickets to take her to see the Backstreet Boys on their last tour in Manchester, and that Nick Carter didn’t really send them to us as a gift for his close personal friend and occasional stunt double? “Just message them and ask.” Phew. I pinky promised to message the Backstreet Boys in our Whatsapp group chat ‘the boyz’ and ask if they collectively or individually had sore penises.

Martha’s bigger concern than the health of the members of her favourite band members was who they were singing the song to. “Is it to the girls on the screens dad, or to me? Because they are looking at me.”

“I think they are singing to everyone, Martha.”

She rolled her eyes. Martha has never used the actual internet, but had recently undergone an online safety session at school. “But they have to be careful dad, because they don’t know who they are talking to on the screen.” So far, so good. “And if they are singing it to more than one girl, it could be very bad because they would need to get an extra chair if they went out on a date. And if they had kids, the kids might call the wrong person ‘mummy’, which is not good. Annnnnnd They would be tired going from one house to the other ones all the time, so they really should just choose one person to sing it to.”

“I think that the Backstreet Boys have also had their internet safety lesson at pop star school. I think that they are probably just singing it to you then Martha.”

“Silly dad. This isn’t real. This is old Backstreet Boys when they were younger. Look, there’s classic AJ. And that’s baby Nick Carter. It isn’t now.”

I sighed and wished for Peppa Pig. Coming swiftly to my senses, I came up with a far better distraction. I made a semi-realistic 'PING' noise and instantly looked at my phone. "Oh Martha, Howie D has replied in the group chat! He says that his penis is fine, thanks for asking. Let's get your coat on and get to school please."

It was 6:34pm on a Tuesday. I was basking in the glorious post teatime, pre bedtime golden hour, a time to reflect on the day and do the dishes or coral a billion toys back into their clearly labelled boxes, where they would languish until 5:59am the next day, when their great Liberator would once more grant their freedom to lay on the floor under dad’s feet. Martha had turned the bathtub into a ‘spa’. Poor mum had been in the bath with Martha for about twenty-three hours as usual. Once a penguin floated past her face on a tiny iceberg, she decided that it was time to get out. Martha didn’t follow suit. She shouted “DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD”, which was normally the signal to tell Alexa to cease playing some maudlin Radiohead B-Sides on the kitchen smart speaker while I washed up, and head up to get her out of the bath and ready for bed. Today was different. In a bad way. I got up to the bathroom, and saw my Smurf blue wife wrapped in a bath towel, and my daughter still in the bath. “Dad, come in to my spa, it’s still open”. Oh fuck.

I went to our bedroom and hopped into my flamingo patterned swim shorts, then physically and emotionally took the plunge.Martha the Spa owner told me to relax in the ice bath. Once she could see that her spa client was suitably ‘relaxed’ (i.e. in the early stages of hypothermia), Martha promptly placed a wet flannel over my face and proceeded to get all Guantanamo on me by pouring a plastic measuring jug of cold water over the flannel ‘to relax you daddy’.I told her it was NOT relaxing, but a thing called ‘waterboarding’ or simulated drowning, and actually in direct contravention to the Geneva Convention, ESPECIALLY in a household setting as opposed to a Dark Ops site in an isolated shipping container in some far-flung land, manned by shadowy CIA operatives with an agenda, and a list of confessions to tick off. She didn’t care. The Geneva Convention did not apply in Martha’s spa.

I never thought that a shortage of cucumbers would ever have an effect on me, but since Martha asked for giant African land snails named Fred and Martha for her fifth birthday, a cucumber a week has been added to the shopping list. Fred and Martha munch a slice each every night. The cold spell has led to our heroes in a hard shell forming a crusty doorway over their shells and going in to hibernation, despite me spending approximately £256.70 per night in electricity usage on a heating mat in an attempt to replicate the African climate in midwinter Doncaster. The big news of the moment is a shortage of salad items in all supermarkets, a tomato travesty, a a veritable cucumber catastrophe. We had managed to snag a cucumber on our last trip to the shop, but I was keeping a close eye on it, as I was sure that neither Fred nor Martha had a tiny ration book.

After picking Martha up from school, I was ordered to lie on the sofa. Martha swiftly told Alexa to play a soundtrack of horrific new age hippie dippy spa music, and removed all cushions so that it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. “You’re going to come to my spa”. I broke out in a cold sweat, having flashbacks to Guantanamo Bath and the Martha state sanctioned waterboarding incident. She trotted off to the kitchen.

“Dad, where’s the cucumber?” I heard the sound of some very sleepy snails panicking. It was a very quiet sound.

“It’s in the fridge, but please don’t waste it, it is all Fred and Martha eat”.

“I’m not going to waste it, silly dad. It’s for your eyes. To RELAX YOU”.

A minute later, the spa owner appeared with two slices of cucumber, and told me to remove my glasses and close my eyes. I was filled with dread. Martha gently placed the freezing cold slices of cucumber over my eyes, and then pressed down on them just to make sure they were set to maximum relax mode. I felt like a spangle leotard clad pro wrestler in the USA mid title match, getting his eyes gouged by the ‘bad guy’. Except this shit was REAL.

“Ummm, Martha, that’s enough now, it’s hurting my eyes”.

“No it isn’t dad. It is RELAXING you”.

I submitted to the latest torture session and lay still, hoping that feigning death would lead to a cessation of the brutality. Thankfully, the cucumbers rested.

I then felt something on my nose. Then IN my nose. Then in my mouth. It tickled. It was a street feather. You’ve never heard of a street feather? Let me enlighten you. Whenever we go anywhere, we do not return empty handed. At some point, Martha will spy a pigeon feather laid on the street. Martha fucking LOVES pigeons, going as far as becoming best friends with one called Pin. Pin was a pure white bird, who sat on our neighbours roof and looked in at Martha’s window every morning, then flew into our garden top eat seed at Martha’s feet. At some point, Pin the pigeon had been mauled by a cat (probably ours). She had lost an eye, and we feared for her demise. Somehow, she made it through, and lived a happy, half zombie faced life with an open eye socket. This led to a literal blind spot on her right side, and one day, our cat took full advantage and pounced. I screamed at him and chased him away, but pin was in a bad way. She managed to fly off, and came back into our garden the following day to see Martha, then vanished. Every white pigeon we see now is confirmed as an offspring of poor Pin.

Once Martha had accepted that Pin was not going to come back to the garden, she adopted another one. This poor bugger made made Pin look like Doncaster’s Next Top Avian Model. This one had been more likely mauled in the jaws of a dog, and had a gaping hole where its throat would have been. Martha took pity on this one, and kept feeding it. It kept coming over, and eating loads of seed, which instantly fell out of it’s throat hole onto the floor again. This went on for a few days. Martha even hatched a plan to cover the poor bird’s throat hole with either a bandage or some sellotape. I had thought of feeding it a spinach leaf, which would hopefully sit in front of the hole and allow seeds to pass to the belly. Neither happened.

We had returned from walking our old and permanently tired dog around the local graveyard for an hour in the unseasonal and, indeed, decidedly non-British late March sunshine. This entailed an hour of either Martha or myself having to pretend to be a dog while the non-pretend dog of us threw a stick, and the non-pretend actual real life dog ignored every hurl of the stick, preferring instead to sniff round in search of tiny round nuggets of wild rabbit poo to devour and clumps of fox shit to drop her shoulder in and lay on her back to really get the fox shit embedded into her fur, wriggling around like something very excited to be covering its back in actual faeces. Delightful. On more than one occasion, I had to remind Martha dog that, while I applauded her commitment to the role (and I don’t mean the roll in fox shit), the stick DID NOT belong in her mouth. In terms of enthusiasm for the role of pretend dog, Martha definitely beat me. My apathetic mutterings of ‘woof woof’ as I walked in non-dog like fashion to bend over and pick up a stick whilst being as human as I could to passers by didn’t go unnoticed by Martha the drama teacher.

“Daaaaaad?” The elongated dad was always framed as the vaguest of questions.

“Yes my dear?”

“You can’t speak. You’re a dog”.

I cranked up my best Scooby Doo (or, more phonetically, ‘Rooby Roo’) impression. “Rat’s right Rartha, ri’m a rogg”. I was so pleased with its accuracy That made one of us.

“You’re being a rubbish dog. You need to try HARDER Dad”.

“Ruck off Rartha, ruck right off”.

Half way round the graveyard, Martha spied some daffodils. Now she LOVES a good daffodil. She even loves a bad daffodil.

“Daaaaad, can I pick those flowers?”

“No love. They have already been picked, and then bought from a shop by a person who has put them on the grave of where someone is buried, so that they can remember them. It wouldn’t be kind to take them”.

“Okayyyyyyy. What about THOSE flowers?”

“Well, they are not picked, and are not growing on a grave, which means that they are wild so, yes, I guess so”. Martha picked 3,463 wild daffodils and carried them home to give to mum as a Mother’s Day gift.

We followed the poor non-pretend, real life actual dog-tired dog home, and Martha went to set up a tea party in the back garden while I prepared her current favourite tea - pizza. This is Martha, so it was never going to just be as simple as making a bog standard circular pizza. Her brief this week was for me to get a sharp knife and cut around the shape of my hand, then do the same with the other hand, creating a left and right hand shaped pair of pizzas for her plate. I uttered a half arsed protest about being made to wield an extremely sharp blade in my non-cutting hand and trace it in close proximity to the delicate digits of my actual useful hand, knowing that the suggestion of using my left hand to cut around my right hand twice and then flipping the base over to create a left hand, with the added bonus of not losing any fingers would be dismissed in an instant by the tiny food prep dictator currently standing on her bright yellow modified Ikea Grundfaar (or some such like name) step stool, supervising my pizza cutting with a laser focus.

“Daaaaad, the knife isn’t close enough to your fingers”.

“Sorry love, I’m not used to really using my right hand, because I’m left handed”.

“That’s fine dad, just practice. Is that tomato sauce?”

“No Martha, it’s a teeny bit of blood”.

“Yeeeeeeeuk”.

“It’s okay, I’ll cut that finger off the pizza, just like I’ve done with my actual hand”.

“Thanks dad”.

I was left to finish making the pizza and self-administer first aid, while Martha set up the tea party. About three minutes later, Martha appeared clutching a posy of artificial flowers, looking to all the World like a kid from an NSPCC fundraiser (‘little Christabel will never get to smell flowers, because her dad sold her nose to buy booze. With YOUR help, we can stop this’.) She had her ‘big idea’ face on. I waited to hear what the big idea was.

“Daaaaad?”

“Yes my little pumpkin?”

“When you are ready to die, I am going to bury you in the graveyard and put these flowers on your grave”.

Many questions raced through my mind. Was my four-year-old daughter plotting to euthanize me? Were my groans of “oh dear” when forced to carry her my shoulders interpreted as a sign of my rapid decline to the warm embrace of death? What the actual fuck? I thought it wisest to let her know that I was onto her evil plan.

“That’s nice Martha, but I’m not quite ready to die yet”.

“Yes dad, I KNOW THAT. But you will be ready one day, and I’m going to bury you and put these flowers on your grave”.