Twice upon a Time

Do you know something filling in forms can be a bit difficult, but when the governments own departments don’t understand them what chance has anyone got.

To be honest my wife Mary is heavily pregnant and for most of her time has been unwell so I had to stay at home to look after her, so I applied for what they call Carer’s allowance as she has been unable to do lots of things for herself and what with the baby it made things very difficult.

Well we got a letter to say we had to go in front of a selection panel or something so we could put our case and we would be seen by a Mr. Gold and a Mr. Sense and a 

 Mr. Myrrh. That Mr. Sense could probably be the same Franky Sense I went to school with

You know talk about the three wise men, I tried explaining my case over the phone and I don’t think they had a brain between the three of them to be clever never mind about being wise men.

I told them it was very difficult for my wife to make the trip to the meeting but they said if we didn’t come in they couldn’t uphold our claim. Well I had to put the passenger seat of the car right forward to give my wife room to get in the back to get a comfortable position.

Well never mind I eventually got her into the car and as the journey would take a while I had to drive very carefully as she complained she could feel every bump.

When all of a sudden she shouted. “Joe, Joe you’ll have to stop I think the baby is coming.”

“I can’t stop the car here, there’s no room on the road it’s too narrow it’ll cause an accident.”

“There’ll be an accident right now if you don’t stop. She screamed. “Look turn in here there’s a building of some sorts there might be somebody to help.”

But there wasn’t anyone at all to help, it turned out that the building was a stable and each compartment had a horse in it or some kind of equipment or feed in them, apart from one that had fresh straw and some bails of straw in it.

I managed to get my wife into this compartment of the stables and settled down comfortably and no sooner had done this when a gentleman walked in carrying a newborn lamb under each arm, he explained he was a local farmer and had permission to keep some of his lambs in the stable.

He also saw the predicament we were in and said he would go and phone for an ambulance, he then put the new born lambs behind the bails of straw and left, but within minutes of this the baby was born, it was a little boy, it was just as well we always kept Mary’s hospital things in a bag in the car just in case she had to be rushed to hospital so I was able to make her and the baby reasonably comfortable.

I think the whole situation was starting to get to me when I asked Mary.

“What did we say we were going to call the baby if it was a boy?”

There was a moment’s silence then Mary gave me one of those looks.

“Jesus Christ, - Joseph Carpenter do you ever listen to what’s said?”

“Oh Yes I remember.”

Just then the farmer returned with the sound of an ambulance siren in the back ground and in no time at all my wife and the baby had been seen to and put in the ambulance and taken to hospital and I followed behind in the car. It was when leaving the stables I notice the name on a sign post “Bethlehem Stables.”