LONDON LIFES 7
THE BABY MAN

Peter Fleurdelys is employed by Hackney Council as a Men’s Birthing Awareness Generation Officer.

I’m the Hackney Council Men’s Birthing Awareness Generation Officer. If you’ve ever attended an ante-natal class maybe you’ve already seen me. I come in late at the end of the official class wearing a cycling helmet, and hand out leaflets about my own classes to disinterested men, while mumbling, as the trained mid-wife sits on a table and rolls her eyes. But all that is about to change. Respect me, fathers of Hackney, and I will respect you. You need me. I am the Hackney Council Men’s Birthing Awareness Generation Officer.

My aim in life is to make fathers in the Hackney area feel more supported in their role as fathers. In Hackney, many role models for fathers are often negative and involve guns, drugs and garishly coloured sportswear. But don’t get me wrong. I too like the odd toke on a spliff, I own a pair of pink jogging bottoms, and I’ve been known to threaten any other Men’s Birthing Awareness Generation Officers that stray on to my patch with a starting pistol! Not really! I don’t own a pair of pink jogging bottoms! Anyway. What about me? Who am I? What do I do? Where did I come from? What is all this Men’s Birthing Awareness mallarkey anyhow?

I’ve lived in Hackney since graduating from Warwick University in the mid-90’s with a degree in Theoretical Applications. I’m not a father myself, and have no training in any areas relating to child rearing, but I suggested the idea of a Men’s Birthing Awareness Generation Officer to some Hackney Council councillors that I met at a birthday party a couple of years back, and then put forward myself for the post when it was advertised. Each month, I run a series of four sessions in the backroom of various Hackney pubs, where expectant fathers can come and ask questions like... “What is a baby?”, “Where does a baby come from?” and “What is approproiate touching?” A lot of the men ask when it is right to start having sex again, and why are their wives being such bitches, and so I try and introduce a bit of levity into the room by doing a role play. One of the guys is a horny husband and another is a pregnant wife who just isn’t in the mood, for example. Sometimes it works, but often my ideas are greeted with resistance, hostility and fists flying into my tiny face, and I have to cycle home through a haze of blood and mucous.

One night, as he was patching me up, my flatmate Robin, who works in a bakery designing new kinds of loaves, said, “What are you doing Peter? Why put yourself through this, week after week? It’s not worth it.” And I said, “There’ll always be babies Robin. And there’ll always be fathers. And those fathers will always need someone to tell them how to be better fathers. How else are they going to do it? By instinct?” And Robin said maybe they would. And I said, “There won’t always be bread Robin. The bread will run out. The babies won’t. And then where will you be? Eh? Standing in an empty shop with bread dust all over your apron, dough in your hair, and no future. And me? I’ll be the National Men’s Birthing Awareness Generation Officer. And all men will do as I say!” And then Robin went to the pub and I lay down on the bathroom floor in a little ball. The foetal position, I think they call it.

Peter Fleurdelys was talking to Stewart Lee