Birthday Boy. David Baddiel

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      Grandpa Mike didn’t swear as much as Grandpa Sam, but he did speak in an accent that sounded as if it came from an old British film, and he waved his fists around a lot and suggested he was going to fight people (mainly Grandpa Sam). This was because he thought of himself, even though he was seventy-seven, as hard. As a tough guy. He sometimes referred, with a dark air of mystery, to time spent in his earlier life “inside”. Which sometimes means prison, which is what Grandpa Mike wanted you to think. But what he actually meant was inside. His house. Because he didn’t much like going out.

      Grandpa Sam reacted to Grandpa Mike’s aggression by whistling a happy tune. Which he always did when Grandpa Mike got cross, which only made Grandpa Mike more furious.

      “Shut your whistle ’ole! I said I’ll do yer.”

      “He will! That’s right! Don’t call my husband stupid names!” said Grandma Glenda to Grandpa Sam. She was married – as you may have been able to work out – to Grandpa Mike.

      “Don’t you tell my husband not to tell your husband to shut up!” said Grandma Poppy, who – I don’t have to tell you this, do I? – was married to Grandpa Sam. Poppy was very thin. She ate an awful lot of sponge cake, and toffees, and biscuits with jam in the middle, and other stuff that old people like, but without ever putting on weight.

      This was not true of Grandma Glenda, who ate virtually nothing – constantly counting calories, and demanding no butter on her bread, and refusing pudding unless it was the dullest puddings, rice ones with skimmed milk and NO JAM, for example – but was shaped not unlike a large balloon. Although one filled with flesh, rather than air.

      “Oh yeah?” said Grandma Glenda, getting up from her chair and leaning over the table and putting her face very close to Grandma Poppy’s. “And who’s going to stop me?”

      “I am!” said Vicky, coming into the living room with a teapot. “Come on, Mum, Dad, Glenda, Mike … We’re not going to be fighting today, remember, because” – and here she glanced significantly in Sam’s direction – “it’s a special day.”

      All the grandparents looked at each other.

      “Oh yes!” they said at once. “Happy birthday, Sam!” they chorused.

      “Yes, it’s strange,” said Grandma Poppy. “We all woke up with those words in our heads, didn’t we?”

      “I suppose so,” said Grandma Glenda, as if it was hard to agree with Grandma Poppy about anything. “Well, I mean, yes, we did. All of us.”

      Then they folded their arms and sat back in their chairs and did their best to smile at each other.

      That was when Sam really started to believe it was true. Because what his grandparents usually liked to do, when they came round, was fight. And shout and swear at each other.

      The only days they didn’t do that were his birthday, and Ruby’s birthday. He knew it wasn’t Ruby’s birthday. So it must be his birthday. Again. Today.

      For a second, it bothered him that his mum had referred to today as a special day. Because if it was a special day, what did that make the day before, which had been Sam’s real birthday?

      But, then again, today was feeling pretty real, birthday-wise. His dad had come back from the shops with loads of new presents. Stuff left over from his birthday list that he hadn’t got the day before. A chess set, a lava lamp, two video games, three new T-shirts and a pair of headphones! Wireless, with Bluetooth, and noise reduction! Plus his mum had nipped out when his dad had got back and got him a book to go with his telescope, with maps of stars and constellations to find and check against the night sky.

      And his grandparents had brought him presents too! Rubbish ones, of course, but they always did that. Well, not rubbish ones – ones that they would have got when they were children, basically. Grandma Poppy had got him a pipe that blew bubbles; Grandpa Sam gave him an old watch, which he said he’d like to see him – Sam – wear every day; and Grandpa Mike and Grandma Glenda had got him a pack of cards with which you could play Happy Families. So … yes, rubbish ones.

      But Sam still thought: Well, it’s not actually going to be like a birthday. Yes, I’ve got presents, and, yes, my mum brought me breakfast in bed, and, yes, my grandparents aren’t fighting, but it’s not— and then the doorbell rang.

      “Who’s that?” said Sam.

      “Why don’t you go and see?” said his dad.

      Sam shrugged, and went to the door, assuming that it would be the man with the shaven head and the tattoos on his face who sold dusters and kitchen cloths for £10 each and had a card saying he’d recently come out of prison. He often came round on a Sunday afternoon.

      But, as Sam approached the door, he could tell that it wasn’t him. It looked like a much bigger person, with about ten strange heads. When he opened the door, though, it wasn’t a much bigger person with about ten heads. It was Finn and Jake and the Ice Queen and … and a whole bunch of other characters from Adventure Time! And, weirdly, Richard the rabbit dad from The Amazing World of Gumball.