The unexpected basket problem

I was woken early by an unexpected knocking on my back door. My clock read “4:35”, which meant that it was 5:32 a.m. Happy Island time, or 5.38 a.m. mainland time.

 

“How strange,” I thought, “Who could it be at this early hour?” Only myself and Alun live on the island, and it clearly wasn’t Alun’s knock, which is recognisable from three islands away.

 

I quickly dressed and rushed downstairs, but there was nobody in sight. However, whoever it was, they had left a basket by the back door.

 

“How strange,” I thought to myself, “It isn’t Sharing the Sheer Pleasure of Baskets Day for another month,” but a wail from inside the carrier alerted me to the unexpected truth: someone had abandoned a baby on my doorstep.

 

“Who could have left a baby on my doorstep?” I wondered. “And how? The early morning boat hasn’t even been yet.” But it was pointless wondering to myself, so I picked up the basket and walked over to Alun’s house. We could wonder together.

 

I never made it to Alun’s house. I passed him midway, walking towards my house and carrying an identical wailing basket.

 

“Morning Jed,” he said, “I was just coming over to let you know that someone’s left a baby on my doorstep.”

 

“The same thing’s happened to me,” I said. “I wonder who left them? I wonder what we should do.”

 

“The first thing we need to do with these wailing baskets, Jed,” Alun said, “Is stop them wailing.”

 

Alun was right. I took my baby out of the basket. “It’s a boy,” I said. “It’s still crying.”

 

“I can hear that Jed. Check its nappy.”

 

I checked the baby’s nappy.  “It looks fine,” I said.

 

“Now check it with your hand.”

 

I gritted my teeth and checked it with my hand.

 

“It’s still fine.”

 

“It must be hungry then, Jed. Let’s go back to yours and feed it.”

 

I took some geeps’ milk out of the fridge. “The bottle’s a bit big,” I said. “The baby won’t be able to get it in its mouth.”

 

“You need to make a teat for the bottle, Jed. It’s easy enough to make one, you just need a condom and a pair of scissors. I saw it on Blue Peter.”

 

Luckily I had an unused condom and in no time at all my baby was feeding. Having thus feasted, he fell immediately asleep.

 

We checked Alun’s wailing basket (another boy) and repeated the process. Within five minutes Alun’s baby was also asleep.

 

“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “Now we have peace and quiet we can start the investigation into who could possibly have left babies on our doorstep.”

 

“Investigation Jed? Let’s start this ‘investigation’ with a question. Who have you slept with in the past year or so?”

 

“Ah, only one person actually, Elaine the sailor lass I took up with, who abandoned me suddenly several months ago with no explanation.”

 

“And my sailor girlfriend Jess abandoned me around the same time, Jed.”

“It could be them,” I confessed. “It would explain how they were able to drop off the babies before the morning boat arrived. There’s no other way of getting here unless you’re a sailor.”

 

“Yes Jed, talking of which we should go and see the Boatman. We’ll need nappies, baby food, baby clothes, not to mention a babies bottle. If only you’d thought of using that condom for its intended purpose instead of saving it to use as a temporary teat, we’d only be in half the trouble we’re in.”

 

As you might imagine, our lives became dominated by our new children, who woke us early every morning with their demands for food, nappy change and general affection and amusement. Luckily I had just finished my latest novel (I write New York crime thrillers) and I had the time available to give the unexpected infant 24/7 attention.

 

We tried to locate their mothers, putting a regular advert in the Off-Mainlander Magazine, and putting out a broadcast on the Off-Mainland radio station. We tried locating them through naval sources, shipping companies, websites, social media, there was even a full-page feature about our plight in the Saucy Sailor Magazine, but because we only ever knew their mothers’ first names we never managed to trace them.

 

The mainland council wrote to us, attaching a swathe of forms. Amongst there numerous other demands, the babies needed birth certificates, which meant that they needed names.

 

“I’ve decided to call mine Jed, Jed,” Alun said.  “Jess always loved the name, I’ve no idea why.”

 

“And I’ll call my baby Alun,” I said, “after my great, great, great, great, grandfather.” (A very great man, who changed his name to the Welsh spelling and only ever spoke a made-up language of phlegm and gibberish, in order to convince mainland tax collectors that the island was Welsh. The scam would have worked, except that Alun’s great, great, great, great grandfather, Jed was pretending that the island was Scottish. The confusion about Happy Island’s nationality continues to this day, and is the main reason it’s impossible to locate the island on a map, as it exists on the Scottish/Welsh/mainland/Ireland border region.)

 

We held a Naming Ceremony in the Empty House.  Alun conducted the ceremony, having inherited his father’s title of priest of all faiths, though the ceremony was unreligious in nature, merely a sworn statement never to let Jed and Alun become polluted by mainland thought or action. The Boatman was there, along with residents of all our surrounding islands. There was even an official from the mainland council, there to make sure that the babies really existed and “That it wasn’t those two mad buggers just making stuff up again.”

 

The months passed. The babies grew. Their demands changed, but the wailing continued. Alun and myself had become full-time fathers, though we remained rank amateurs at the role. We had few moments of peace, but in the evenings Alun would come round, we’d put the babies to bed, open a bottle of wine, and share our latest gossip and the latest news on the babies’ development. There was no official competition between us, we’re not the type, but obviously count was taken as to the first to teeth, the first to crawl, the first to speak, etc. By the end of nine months my baby was winning eleven-seven.

 

Sometimes though, in our more relaxed and philosophical moods, we’d speculate as to the future now that we were no longer human beings, rather full-time fathers.

 

“Just to think, Jed in no time at all they’ll grow up, just as we did. I wonder what life will hold in store for them. Maybe they’ll get their own series of tales on a writing website.”

 

“Oh god, not that,” I said. “I hate spin-offs.”