Brothers and sisters! It is my great joy and privilege to share with you the news of the birth, this past Sunday, January 6th, 2013 AD, of our son:

HERCULES JAN NARKIEWICZ!

*applause!

Also, I share with you that beautiful photo at the top of the page!

*more applause!

He was born here at home in Don Studios at 3:30 in the pm, following a day of rightfully named LABOUR carried out by ninja warrior goddess Charlotte Whewell Narkiewicz, AKA My Wife, who was awoken at about 6:30 am by some relatively pleasant “flutters” that morphed into full on 3 minute interval CONTRACTIONS within two hours, upon which time I was awoken from my slumber, and launched immediately into ACTION, carrying out my Donly Duties of BIRTH PARTNER to the maximum  of my abilities.

I think the first thing I had to do was get rid of an unfinished bowl of cereal that was upsetting the contract-ee, then ring the delivery suite. An hour or so later two incredible and super-heroic human creatures calling themselves ”Midwives” rocked up at Don Studios and proceeded to help us deliver our child in the most relaxing and natural manner possible in this metropolis short of erecting a mountain with a garden of eden atop and getting THE SKYGOD HIMSELF to oversee proceedings and give everybody figs to protect their innocence and shit.

HALLELUJAH!

Yes, there was nudity and there was blood and there were tears, and there was poop and there was pee (via one of those superheroic Midwives’ clever tubing systems), and there was an orgy of gas and air (of which I, far too busy in my Supportive Donly Duties partook of precisely NONE, news I know will shock some of my readers)… Indeed, gas and air was imbibed as if there weren’t a drought (which I hear there is) and it wasn’t running out (which I am told it is). HOOF! NGGGHHHH! HOOF! NGGGHHHHH!

“Herculeeeese! I LOVE YOU! But this is a LOT of pain!”

Since we were labouring at home, in the manner of the free and the righteous and the non-medically endangered, we were free to play whatever music we Charlotte liked (Leonard Cohen’s Old Ideas at least 5 times, A-Ha’s Foot Of A Mountain three, many hours  of Super Furry Animals) , and Charlotte was free to stagger from room to room going PUUUUUUUUUUSH with all she had, sometimes enjoying the luxury of our very own toilet to PUUUUUUUSH on, with her husband and two Superheoric Midwives helping her out and egging her on, like loving and professional cheerleaders with medical skills and diamond hard limbs that in no way hurt like buggery when crunched in the fist of the Labouree as she PUUUUUUUUUUSHed and PUUUUUUOOOGHHHHShhhhhhSSHHHHHed with all she had and then some.

Beautifully enough the Crowning Moment, when our baby’s head first touched the sweet air, occurred as Charlotte and I were entwined in a human pyramid embrace that bore down on the roof of the shop below with the force of a thousand suns. Charlotte fell backwards onto our brand new red sofa that I bought in a sale for a bargainous £200 last month and dragged up the metal stairs that lead to our front door on my own in the manner of a Warrior and True Impending Father, as the Superheroic Midwives began to ready their various Scientific Equipments, and with one, two, three more moon crushing PUUUUUUSHHHHHHHHHHHEs…

HERCULES, fists in front of his face like a boxer, burst forth from his nine month luxury incubation chamber and displaced 8 pounds and zero point two ounces of air in one fell swoop!

WOW.

“Would you like to cut the cord?” asked one of the Superheroic Midwives. Did I ever!

The crab claw scissors hovered tentatively around the unexpectedly thick and blue tube.

SNIP!

And then a sweet little sound, something like RTD2 dreaming about chasing asteroids, or a tiny Zoidberg falling down a mirrored crystal staircase into a pile of stars, fell into our world.

HERCULES.

(YES, I WAS RIGHT! HE’S A BOY! JUST LIKE I SAID FROM THE MOMENT I KNEW WE WERE EXPECTANT! AND NO WE DIDN’T FIND OUT AT THE SCAN! I JUST KNEW! AND I WAS RIGHT ABOUT HIM BEING EARLY TOO! EVEN IF IT WAS ONLY TWO DAYS AND NOT A WEEK! WOOOO! IN YOUR FACE DISBELIEVERS OF THE TELIKENETIC POWERS OF I, AKIRA THE DON! I WAS RIGHT ABOUT BILL MURRAY BEING GHOSTBUSTERS TOO! AND I’M GOING TO USE THE MONEY I WON ON THAT BET BUYING HERCULES A THRONE! BECAUSE HE IS A KING! ALL HAIL! YES, YOU AT THE BACK TOO! HAIL HERCULES! AMEN!)

Yes, brothers and sisters, it was a magical, beautiful, spiritual, cosmic, and full on 3D animal as fuck experience of a lifetime. The pride and awe I felt for my girl briefly snatched my breath, if not my duty-steeled composure… and the love I felt for my son was as obvious and as real as the sun.

I would like to thank the Hackney Homebirth Team for their selfless, entirely superheroic service to my family and to humanity. I would like to thank my wife, for her courage, and her strength and her excellent genes that have fused with my own to create an entirely perfect human creature. I’d like to thank you, for the warm wishes and the love you’ve sent our way, that I have no doubt contributed to what was pretty much the acest birth we could have wished for.

And now, finally, it is again my great honour and privilege to share with you some photographs taken during the first three days of the human, air-breathing life of the most beautiful boy in the whole multiverse.

TAKE IT AWAY HERCULES!

(Click here if you can’t see the gallery!)

Remember late last year I did a show for Oxjam in Walthamstow, and B Dolan came onstage and did BOOM! With us? And how everyone was like, damn, if only someone had taped that?

Well, someone taped that.

Woo!

Shout out Music Like Dirt and @ryanmcavoy for that lil slice of history right there.

Now, I have been rather Unwell, unfortunately… so I will not be writing a great deal here as I have a shitload to catch up on. My washing machine has also flooded the kitchen, which needs attending to.

But here’s a thing. After I posted the Interesting Times video, I pretty much went to bed for 24 hours, occasionally rising to vomit… therefore i didn’t do my usual emailing or tweeting about the thing. I didn’t even choose a thumbnail image for the video… Yet somehow it got more views in its first 24 hours online (15,000) than, say, Babydoll did in a month.

There was, of course, a perfectly scientific explanation, however:

Of course! Youtube’s auto generated picture of Charlotte. Genius. To think, had Youtube auto-generated an image of, say, me and my glorious torso, we could be in billion-plus Beiber territory. Amen.

Here, have some beautiful music and photography.

JOY UNTO MANKIND!

PLESE ENJOY THIS VIDEO!

I AM GOING TO COLLAPSE NOW< COS I AM UNWELL>

THANK YOU!

Interesting Times originally appeared on ATD25.

I was always told that “may you live interesting times” was an old Chinese curse, but it turns out, ironically enough, it came from the lips of John F Kennedy.

I was going to save this for LP3, but I swiftly realized that this song was very much a thing for now, and to hold on to it would be selfish.

You should have seen me recording it. You shouldn’t be able to rap and sing through a grin that wide, but I managed, somehow.

Obviously, I dedicate it to my wife. I can call her that. I am living in the future, after all.