Tar Baby

The birth of our daughter,
Brought the landlord to our door,
With a grumble of late rent,
But little Jade, with her moonstruck eyes,
Sent a shiver through his wallet,
And Mammon his god was supplanted,
Temporarily that night, by another more divine,
What caused the change of heart,
And his subsequent reduction in rent,
I guess we will never really know,
A saving of five hundred rupees is no small amount,
And you can buy a lot of Pampers in Sri Lanka,
With that amount of dough.

The above poem was rather pretentiously titled by me Create in Me a Clean Heart O' God (The Change of Heart of Jimmy Rockwood). It was written the night after J was born in Colombo on 29th January 1992, and just after our Rigsby-like landlord Jimmy Rockwood had called to pay his respects to the new arrival, whilst also chasing up our late rent. Fortunately, J's beautiful eyes that night seemed to do the trick and we got a rent reduction out of nowhere. The poem's main title was lifted from one of Jimmy's many prayer sheets left lying around the flat.

J's name is actually Jadine, and this came from the main character of a favourite Toni Morrison book of mine called Tar Baby. As it happened, me and MrsB could only think of this girls name, as secretly I think that is what we really wanted. We hadn't had a scan done, and were so delighted on the big day.

I write this now some 21 years later on another big day as it just turns midnight, and the same "little Jade with her moonstruck eyes" is now back home from Sheffield to celebrate her coming of age birthday.

As usual my blip is left too late, but tonight's photo shows J's hand laid on top of our saved baby book with her tiny first paw print traced-out. It also shows both J's new 'Magnetic' Sparkle Blue nail varnish (that is literally finished off with a magnet), and the very faint but still visible mark from the hand-stamp of the Leadmill nightclub in Sheffield.

She's all grown up now, that's for sure, but she is still our little baby girl!