Sweet Child O’Mine

I’ve tried to not swear for this but I can’t help a little burst.

I cannot emphasise enough how sorry I feel for anyone who has had or has cancer. This is not about cancer. This is about stupidity.

I remember being rather annoyed when this story kicked off a while ago. Then I forgot about it, as many do, and then lo, 9 months later a miracle is done unto the world and they saw that it was good. Only it’s not good, it’s fucking ridiculous. And I mean that very sincerely with an extra emphasis on both words – fucking ridiculous. A woman (45, though it doesn’t matter) has become a surrogate mother to the child of her own child (21, though it doesn’t matter) to compensate for the fact she (the original child) was left infertile through cervical cancer (which is the only thing that’s not ridiculous, because it’s sad).

I can’t deny the right for someone to procreate, it’s not my place to do so, but I can question the selfishness of those who wish to do so by transgressing all boundaries of logic and ultimately suppressible hormonal instinct. Not everyone can be an astronaut and so not everyone can be a parent. Indeed it’s worth pointing out that some people simply should not be parents. I do not have children and that’s not because I’m trying to balance out the numbers it’s just that my urge to do so is supremely minimal. Having said that I cannot speak for anyone else, let alone a member of the other sex.

Mother (or grandmother) Julie Bradford has fired out a baby boy called Jack, while her daughter Jessica described the little scamp as ‘perfect in every way’ except in being not her son and in fact the son of her mother and therefore just as much her brother. I should have warned you this would get weird in a hurry. Gushing Jessica went on to add ‘my mam is the most brave and amazing woman in the world’ (given all global events I struggle with that statement) and ‘I love her so much for giving me my son’. Whether she meant her (mum) giving her her own son rather than her actual son which isn’t really her son is a bit of a mystery but I am working on it for you.

‘From a young age’…. (I hope not frighteningly young)…. ‘I longed to be a mother and now OUR dream has come true’!!!!

Even more alarming is her joy that ‘In May this year we had an embryo defrosted and implanted into my mother’s womb for her to be the little oven helping our Jelly Bean grow’. Clearly young Jessica was away the day they taught reproduction. Have you ever put a jelly bean in an oven? She makes the embryo sound like a chicken dinner and the rest even worse. Perhaps she’ll take it back when the little jelly bean starts shitting 9 times a day. They’re the worst flavour of jelly bean anyway. To be honest the whole thing is awful and the reason is simple – do we not already have enough people around to justify not wasting money forcing even more sproglets out and are there not better things to spend that money on anyway? What if little Jelly Bean Jack turns out to be a criminal or a dictator or utterly bereft of any talent? Was it worth it in any way unless he turns out to be the man who found a cure for cancer or brokered world peace? Judging by the look on Julie and Jessica’s faces I’m guessing this is a very, very long shot.

I think Jessica has a ‘partner’ but history and statistics and common sense tell us that there’s a mighty good chance that won’t last forever. Either way there is now a child out there who will grow up into a life forever riddled with confusion and just wait until the other kids in the playground cotton on. There is also the chance that he is a very lucky young man and this whole story is a triumph of the human spirit and science and love. But those three things rarely come together and I’m afraid I’m not buying it. To re-cap – a woman has given birth to her grandchild. No she hasn’t. And that’s a fact. Oh, and biology.

G B Hewitt. 10.12.2016

A.A.Gill is dead. Most sad. Cancer. Of course.