Now why in the name of all that is good would a mother nick name her youngest child Father Jack, after a repellent character in a farcical Irish Comedy, and even call her it in public? Well, there are some uncanny resemblances. Father Jack, in the programme, can be ghastly. Snap. This one is an obstreperous article, even if unprovoked. You just never know when a wee leg might poke out and give you a kick, just in passing.
She is particularly partial to a bottle of milk, which she called her ‘bo’. God, how we the that word. ‘MY BO’ she’ll holler, and we’ll all prance around in a frenzy to find it, just to make her shut up. She has affected a walk, with said bottle, which makes her look like a drunk, staggering around, taking a swig and giving off. The early hours are her favourite time to torment, waking us up at any time from 5am, growling MIIIILK in our face, until someone (usually LSB) blunders down the stairs to the fridge. We kept losing bottles a while ago; turns out the little s**t was hiding them in infrequently used cupboards, so we would find bottles of yellow rancid awfulness. This was of course, during the height of summer. I’m not convinced that was a coincidence. She’s fairly sharp, for a 3 year old.
Another aspect of her Jackishness, is the hair. She screams if one dares to brandish a brush, only being cowed into submission by a granny, or maybe an aunt. Thus hair sticks perpetually at a rakish angle, as demonstrated in some of the expensive nursery photos we’ve stupidly purchased. Mornings are a treat, to be sure. After a night on the ‘bo’ she’ll present herself delightedly, with the hair plastered to one side of her face, sticky with congealed milk. It’s lovely.
So Father Jack she is, and Father Jack she’ll stay, until she behaves herself. And relinquishes that effing ‘bo’.
