Today, 20 days into my 41st year on this planet called Earth, I’ve decided to make my first entry into the blog I’ve christened ‘Joe-Joe and Me’. Over the next year or two, perhaps, I intend to air my thoughts and most likely many, many pitiful cries of ‘help’ as I take on the full-time role of a stay-at-home Dad.
My wife Deborah and I expect to call our first child - a boy - Joseph ‘Joe-Joe’ Hawkins, although Deborah has stated that she still needs to see our son in the flesh before she commits to his name. “He might not look like a Joe,” she says. It’s got me wondering whether the mothers of Joseph Stalin and Joe McElderry went through the same indecisiveness? Who knows, maybe Mrs. Beckham was all set to call her son Joe before peering at the tiny bundle of joy in the hospital crib and declare: ‘You’re no Joe of mine, David’s your name from now on.’
Having been made redundant from my job as a financial news editor two years ago, I’ve had to swallow some pride and play second fiddle to wife in the earning stakes who is now the main bread winner in this family of two, soon to be three. Deborah’s career as an English teacher has seen her climb the career ladder as spectacularly in the last two years as I’ve fallen off my own. Since being shown the door after 13 years with financial information company Dow Jones Newswires, I have at least managed to fulfil one burning ambition. I wrote a football book and had the immense pleasure of seeing it being sold at my team Tottenham Hotspur’s megastore at White Hart Lane. 'Superfan - The Amazing Life of Morris Keston' has sold quite a few copies, but sadly it hasn’t made me a wealthy man. In fact, I’ve probably only earned about 50 pence for every hour of effort I put into it! Do low paid factory workers in China get paid more than that? Still, I wouldn’t have changed a thing and can count my priceless friendship with Tottenham Hotspur’s ‘Superfan’ as ample reward for that hard slog. I can also say that if I hadn’t written the book I would never have worn an England manager’s coat! Morris’s mate, former Spurs and England manager Terry Venables, left it behind after a book signing at Waterstones in Leadenhall Market. The temptation to wear the black Umbro raincoat before posting it back to ‘El Tel’ proved too much to resist. It fitted perfectly. To mark the occasion I also took a cool photo of my seven-year-old nephew Harrison in the England manager’s coat, just after I’d rifled through the pockets. Unfortunately, my search failed to secure a huge wad of fifty pound notes, just a solitary piece of paper containing a written scrawl with the name ‘Trevor Brooking’ and a mobile phone number. I never did call Sir Trev.
My wife of nine months is Head of English at an all-girls’ school in Bournemouth. We met in the Spring of 2005 when I interviewed her for a job as a copy editor at Dow Jones in London. I joked in my groom’s speech at our wedding in Malta last July that “she didn’t have the relevant degree or experience for the position on offer at my company, but she did have two things going for her - and they looked great in the tight top she wore to the interview!” After a kiss and grope at the 2005 office Christmas party, I finally succumbed to her begging and we embarked on a secret office romance made even more difficult by the fact that I was her boss and her desk was next to mine! Despite this, our work colleagues failed to rumble our affair and we came clean after she swapped her rented flat in lovely Greenwich (it was actually located in not so lovely Deptford Bridge, but Deborah claimed otherwise) and moved into my bachelor pad in Colchester, Essex.
Deborah left Dow Jones for another mundane editing job in the City soon afterwards, but when the 90-minute commute and 6 a.m. starts began to take their toil on the both of us we opted to pursue a change of lifestyle. The dream quickly became a reality when in December 2007 we jointly purchased a two-bedroom flat a stone’s throw from the beach in sunny Bournemouth. I managed to persuade Dow Jones to allow me to edit journalists’ copy full-time from home, albeit with £8,000 a year less on my pay slip, and Deborah started life as a newly qualified teacher just a 10-minute drive away. It’s a lifestyle change that’s worked well with regular trips to the beach at the bottom of our road and heaps more play time for both of us.
Deborah loves teaching. She was born to teach. And me, I’m not too sure what I was born to do. I wish it was to write, but sadly my earnings so far as a freelance writer have left me struggling to pay the bills! Things got so bad that I began training to become a driving instructor. I’ve failed the ADI Part 3 test twice in the last three months, so it’s quite possible that unlike my wife I’m not born to teach people (although I do take pleasure from the fact that I at least taught Deborah to drive - and she’d failed eight times before we met!)
This year to make ends meet I’ve been working two days a week for the minimum wage at Halfords in Poole. I’m the one without a name badge who spends most of his time avoiding customers by breaking down boxes out the back. When Deborah returns to work after taking six months maternity leave in January 2012, I’ll be on my own for most of the day with my new baby. The questions is, will I be wishing I was back at Halfords?
Granny Mary and Grandpa Mike have been trying to sell their three-bedroom house in rural Dorset for over a year with no luck - and now their woe has become mine following their decision to rent for the summer a stones throw from Joe-Joe and Me in sunny Bournemouth.
