Comerford - Corn Flakes for Dinner: A Heartbreaking Comedy About Family Life

Corn Flakes for
Dinner

A HEARTBREAKING COMEDY ABOUT FAMILY LIFE

Aidan Comerford

Gill Books

Contents

To Martha!

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase terrible beauty. Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: its a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone elses body.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, Hitch-22: A Memoir

Introduction

B y July 2015, our bedroom is so bedoodled that it looks like Banksy has had a stroke in there, except the artist in question is actually our seven-year-old daughter, Sophie.

She prefers to work with non-traditional materials, and she has a penchant for the permanent. Her 2014 Handprints with Baby Oil on The Wall is a fine example. Michelangelo has nothing on her extensive 2012 ceiling masterpiece, The Resilience of Ribena, and there is great promise in her early red nail varnish floor work, This Cream Carpet Was a Massive Mistake, You Eejits.

Like a true artiste, she doesnt say much; she lets her art speak for itself. What do you think shes trying to tell us, Martha? I asked my wife, one night. I think what shes saying is that she really likes to fuck shit up, Aidan, said Martha, quite astutely.

Both of our daughters are on the autistic spectrum, although Sophies nine-year-old sister, Ailbhe (pronounced Alva), is a breeze, whereas Sophie is more like a hurricane with opposable thumbs. She has obliterated any notions of interior design we once had. These days our home decor could be best described as Ongoing Burglary.

We had slightly different reactions after the girls were diagnosed in 2010. Martha doubled down on her post-natal depression and upgraded her pre-existing sleep condition to the chronic package (which comes with a free pillow), although she can function perfectly well so long as she gets twenty-three hours of sleep a day, and a nap.

I started a part-time musical comedy career.

I also lost my job working as a structural draughtsperson (I draw the bits of buildings that make them stand up), and I got a new job, doing the same thing, for half the wages. The pressure of paying our massive mortgage gave me beard alopecia and a hiatal hernia. I would relieve stress by writing silly songs, while dealing with the state of our house the same way I dealt with our mortgage arrears: by closing my eyes tightly and hoping that everything would be okay when I opened them again.

Not the basis of a sound financial plan The Bank, often.

In August 2015, I brought my debut musical comedy show to the month-long Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which Martha was obviously delighted about. Im obviously delighted about this, she said, which gave me a good opportunity to teach Ailbhe about sarcasm, and marital death threats. Granny and Grandad Marthas mam and dad, Sheila and Brendan practically moved in while I was away, and when Martha and Ailbhe flew over to visit in the middle of the festival for a few days, they looked after Sophie at home. I couldnt have gone to Edinburgh without their help.

When I arrived back at the end of the month, they told me to shut my eyes before I went into the bedroom. When I opened them, I saw that it had been beautifully redecorated. They had done everything (with a little help from Marthas uncle Dec) when Martha and Ailbhe were over in Edinburgh with me. This was the first and last time my shutting-my-eyes-and-hoping-it-works-itself-out plan had ever worked.

I looked at Granny and Grandad, and I said, as appreciatively as I could, Dont think this doesnt mean Im not putting you in a home when the time comes.

We maintain our bedroom now by locking the door during the day to keep Sophie out, although I think, somehow, she understands the consequences of restarting her artistic career: if you ever see an ad looking for a good home for a girl with autism from Ashbourne, youll know what has happened.

March 2005

T he spring sunshine streamed through the translucent bedroom curtains in our compact flat, turning the magnolia walls golden, as I lay on the soft, clean bed, alone, naked from the waist down, forlornly attacking Little Aidan. If I had been merely trying to achieve sexual release I would have ceased badgering myself long before, but I was, in fact, doing my bit for science.

It was nearly a year since wed been married, and as punishment for failing to impregnate Martha, I had to submit myself to the ignominy of a fertility test. I suspected that I might also have needed to get my ears examined, because when the doctor said, We need to check your sperm quality, what I heard was, We strongly suspect that you might not be a real man at all.

Martha had already been given the full Harry Potter thats a medical check-up where they put a wand up a woman, shout Lumos! and have a good search around her Forbidden Forest. She had received an Exceeds Expectations grade on that exam, so now they wanted to see if there was any magic in my wand, or if I was just a Muggle with a stick.

When I found out that I had to do the test, I had been appalled at the humiliating prospect of being forced to produce my preciousness in a public facility. Luckily, we were renting a flat in Cabinteely, a suburb of South-East Dublin, which happened to be within half an hours drive of the hospital that tested sperm for sperminess. This was the magical timeframe that would ensure that my boys would still be in a fit state for their exam by the time I got them there.

We lived in that flat because Martha taught Maths in a school that was a five-minute walk away, and it was on a bus route into the city, for my work. She would have probably been starting her first class of the day at that time. Oh, how I wished that I was in work as well.

When it comes to sins of the flesh, I would not be a professional sinner, but I am an enthusiastic and dedicated amateur, so I had thought that this would be easy. All I would have to do was think some sexy thoughts, produce a sexy sample and then get it to the sexy church on time. However, my brain had decided that the mornings masturbation material would be a panicked recitation of the rules:

if you touch any part of the jar with your penis you must report potential contamination to the laboratory upon submission

Contamination? This wasnt the sort of dirty talk I had been hoping for. It was bad enough that I had to go through the shame of handing a jar of my tepid love juice to a stranger, without also having to tell them that I had failed at one of the fundamentals of living. I had thought the instructions would be simple like Jizz. In. Jar. simple but instead, I had been presented with a novella of ejaculatory diktats.

For instance, if I failed to collect the first bit of ejaculate, I would have to report that as well. In terms of potency, that bit is the fire hose of fertilisation, whereas, relatively, what follows afterwards has all the penetrative power of a cracked squirt gun. It would seem obvious, then, that one should insert ones penis a little way into the jar to prevent such a tragedy occurring, especially as ones range of fire could be everything from squeezing out the last of a mayonnaise sachet to going off like a formula one champagne celebration. However, inserting my penis in that manner was fraught, because the aperture of the jar was a joke, leaving only millimetres of play. Im not bragging, by the way. This had nothing to do with my girth, which could only ever be described as adequate. I thought that they might have given me the wrong jar. Maybe this was the one for collecting tears? If this went on much longer, I could certainly collect some of those. All I could think was