Day 32 - Spitting Rhymes

The ping of a text alert shocked me out of a very unsatisfactory night's sleep.  An exhausting series of weird dreams, mostly concerning the family from the bridge yesterday, had kept me from fully settling. It was obviously too much for my brain to compute - how were there still people confidently striding about, not even flinching when they made physical contact with strangers? They can't possibly have turned the News on in the last six weeks. I think Olivia had been in amongst all the weird nightmarish imagery too. I vaguely recalled her being pummelled on a massage table by the woman who led yesterday's rowdy procession. My poor brain had been clearly trying to make sense of it all overnight, so I wasn't exactly feeling refreshed to start with, when a text from my mother sent my blood pressure soaring:

Morning darling. Don't forget it's your father's birthday today.  It was such a lovely surprise to wake to find a basket of homemade scones and a bottle of Prosecco on our doorstep from your sister.  Your father was thrilled.  At least try to call him if you have time xx

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" She'd done it again.

     "What now?" John groaned from beside me. "You made your point yesterday, Daisy. Several times. Let me sleep."

     "Scones and Prosecco! I lent her fifty fucking quid!"

     "What? Who have you been lending money to?"

     Oops!  "No one.  It's my father's birthday.  It totally slipped my mind, that's all.  Go back to sleep, John."

     I climbed out of bed and plodded down the stairs, muttering to myself all the way. "Fifty quid! And I was the one who reminded her in the supermarket car park. Where did she get flour for the bloody scones anyway?  There's been none on the supermarket shelves for weeks.  She's always doing this to me.  It was the same with the Easter Eggs."  The cat looked at me like I was deranged: standing there in my pyjamas, orange hair sticking up on end and having what must have looked like a squabble with myself.  To be fair to Dennis, he probably had a point.

     There was only one thing for it, I decided as I glugged back coffee, hands trembling with rage.  I was going to have to come up with something extra special, making it look like I'd been planning it as a surprise all along.

"No way, Mum!" said Cleo. "No way am I singing on a shitty homemade video."
     "A poem then. I'll write a poem for us all to perform. All the proper shops are closed so I can't exactly buy him something special, can I?"
     "You'll write a poem?" asked John, looking up from his Weetabix.
     "I can write poems, thank you very much. I was pretty good at it at school. I actually came second in a competition once. But …. no, I don't think a poem's gonna cut it on this occasion. I think it's gonna have to be a song, guys. A bit of a production, you know."
     "Forget it!" exclaimed Cleo, disappearing into the garden.
     "No one's gonna see it apart from Grandma and Grandpa. Promise!" I shouted after her. "Now, what song could I change the words to?  Hmm …."
     "How about 'Happy Birthday To You' and you could …. you know ….. change the ending to include your father's name?"
     "No. What song does he love?  Let me ……. ooh, I know.  He loves Whitney Houston.  He saw 'The Bodyguard' like twenty times or something.  What's that song?"
     "You  don't mean 'I Will Always Love You', do you Daisy?"
     "Yep.  That's what I'll do.  I'll change the words to that song.  He's gonna love it!"
      "I tell you what Daisy, if you manage to change the words to 'I Will Always Love You', I'll sing in it myself.  He threw his dirty bowl in the sink and walked off.
     I'll show him. I'll show them all!!

"Ok, so I don't mind singing most of the verses, if you all come in on the chorus. But kids, you'll have to sing the first line - "I-it's your bi-irthday …… but we can't co-ome over to pla-a-ay," I demonstrated.  "It won't make sense if your father or I sing about playing." Nobody spoke for a few seconds, which was quite rare and unsettling.
     "Who's gonna do that high, trilly bit in the chorus?" John asked, breaking the awkwardness.
     "I was thinking we could leave that out."
     "You can't leave that out, Daisy.  It makes the whole song."
     "Ok. I suppose you're right.  I'll have a go at it. Oh, and we're gonna need costumes."
     "Costumes?" Cleo looked horrified. John left the room, shaking his head.
     "I need it to look like we've been working on this for weeks."
     "Yay!" shouted Molly. "Can I wear my old Elsa one?"
     "If you can get into it."
     "There's no way ….."
      I cut Cleo off. "Let me see if I can make it worth your while."  Time to negotiate.

"So what do you all think?  Pretty good, yeah?  Shall I send it?"
     Why were they all grimacing?
     "Perhaps you were right about taking that trilly bit out, Dais," John said at last. "And that line, 'We wish for you drinks in the hot tub. As you can't get down to the pub.'"
     "What? What's wrong with it?  It's what my father likes to do.  I was trying to make the lyrics personal. "
     "Well at least you ditched the rhyme about the Speedos."
     "Thinking about it now, it probably was inappropriate, even though the kids thought it was funny. It's a hard word to rhyme with."
     "You seem to have scraped the barrel with a few of your rhymes.  You're no Jay-Z, are you?"
      "Have you got nothing positive to say about it, John?"
     "Well ….. I like what you've done with the words in the chorus."
     "I only changed the word 'I' to 'We' "
     "Well, that's what I'm saying.  It works."
     "Ugh.  I'm pressing 'Send'. You'll see.  He's gonna love it."
     "If you say so, Dais."
     I'll take my sister's homemade scones and cheap plonk and raise it by one original track, specially dedicated to the birthday boy himself! Ha!
     "Mum.  You've sent it to me by mistake," Cleo said. And as she said it, John's phone beeped.
     "Daisy!  Oh for Christ's sake, Daisy.  I think you've sent it to all your contacts by mistake."