Love letters

“Daddy” says my daughter, coming up behind the sofa and leaning over towards me. “Can I have a piece of paper please?”

I give her a sheet and she goes away to her room.

A little later she re-appears and hands the paper back saying “Look, I’ve done this for my friend.”

I take it and find in amazement that it is filled with writing. Something strange has happened recently: my daughter now reads to me the books I used to read to her. She trips through the words using the same intonations I used to. And then there’s the writing. Some of the words are familiar, others not. But it’s undeniably writing.

It says:

I’ve got 46 stickers I countid them on Tuesday 2009 17th the 17.03.09 March. Yor my best frend. I hoap you have a sooper holoday and Il tri and get my mummy to have a play date

Love from Xxxxx

I congratulate her on her efforts. She smiles broadly back, but suddenly I don’t see the straight-backed girl with fraying pigtails and biscuity mouth in front of me. Instead I see the baby I fed with milk from a tiny bottle and rocked to sleep in an attic bedroom five years earlier. I can’t remember any of the countless tiny moments in between and I can’t begin to understand how the change has happened.

Reality TV #2

It’s dark outside; inside the windows are laced with moisture and the radiators are groaning with the effort of heating the space around them. I am sitting on the sofa with my computer on my lap. Although I no longer go to an office I still have to get up early to work. Sometimes when I tiptoe downstairs a floorboard creaks and my daughter squeaks and half-awakes from dreams of princesses and monsters.

Between key-taps I watch a man and a woman in the glow of the television. Like me, they are sitting on a sofa. They repeat smiling interviews with uncomfortable guests over the course of the morning. The talk is of strikes, economic crisis, financial bail-outs. Then there is a feature about shoppers, then a weather forecaster standing in a snowy garden.

My daughter comes downstairs and heads over to where I’m sitting. I say hello and she sits down against the arm of the sofa with her thumb in her mouth. I switch over to a children’s channel and bright cartoon figures jump from the screen.

I am poring over my computer, tapping and flicking my eyeline up towards the screen every so often to see what I’ve written. I change a spelling here and there, red lines underscore words the computer doesn’t understand. My daughter narrates the plot of the programme she is watching but I am only half-paying attention, grumpily grunting as I scour the financial world for interest. The figures at the bottom of my screen tell me my deadline is fast approaching. Suddenly my daughter’s voice drops and I look up.

“Daddy… you’re not even listening to me.” She reproaches me tearfully.

I look at her, my fingers poised over the keyboard, images of financial ruin on the computer screen. And I realise, suddenly, that it’s not important. The world my daughter lives in: the cartoons, the good-natured babble – that’s the important one.

I lean over, give her a kiss and put my arm around her.

“Ok” I say, looking at the television “Tell me what’s happening”.

Reality TV

I am sitting under the comforting low-light of a table-lamp, while in the corner of the room the television sparkles. My daughter is sitting tight against the sofa-arm, knees drawn up to her chest, thumb in mouth. Her eyes are fixed to the screen as a dancer sweeps from corner to corner in perfect princess circles. I am next to her, arm around her shoulders, also lost in TV half-life. Brucie smiles in the LCD brightness, performing with comforting, barely-remembered ease. My daughter reaches her hand towards me. “Daddy, I like holding hands with you.” she says. I smile and squeeze her fingers tightly.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“I wish Bruce was your daddy and then he could come and make jokes and we could all laugh.”

“Me too” I say, smiling again. I can’t begin to know how to reply to her sometimes. She’d like me to have a father and she’s a little disturbed that I no longer have one. If I think hard I can remember life in flannel pyjamas too. Small things are big, big things don’t exist and everything is simple.

“Daddy…” she says

“Yes?”

“Maybe you can ask for Christmas.”

Space and Time

The seagulls followed us home. I watch in the playground as they skid overhead yelping and flapping. Then they are gone. I wonder why they were here, where they are going.

My daughter slams into me and hugs my legs, her face pressed sideways and arms spread wide. I try to enjoy these moments. I know you must. But still time leaches through me. As I hug her in return I can feel it escaping between my arms.

I have a new feeling now, in the playground. I stand watching my daughter as she jumps up and down climbing frames, remembering the early faltering steps, the clutching at the handrail, the worried looks back. Then I would loiter nearby, ready to catch her if she fell, now I hardly need to pay attention.

My daughter sees me looking upwards and follows my gaze.

“Can birds touch the sky daddy?”

Her questions have become more tricky. She throws queries out and expects a neatly packaged response. It takes more knowledge than I have to do it properly. People write books on these sorts of things. I tell her something about air and wings.

“Oh.” she says, seriously. Then her little lop-sided smile returns. “Pretend I’m a fairy, daddy.”

I pretend and she whirls around the playground in her fairy world. A little girl about eighteen months old stands watching her in fascination, the way my daughter used to look at the older girls. My daughter skips around her, stops, smiles and moves on. When we leave the playground I say to her

“That little girl is the same age as you were when I started looking after you. What do you think about that?”

“Hmm” she says. “Can I have an ice cream?”

Devon Dreams

I am standing with my daughter on Baggy Point in the thin sunshine which comes after a squall. I grip her hand more tightly than usual as we look into the frothing water below, where the rock has fallen away from the cliff in dense slices. Gulls wheel and mewl and flap against the sheer edge. The scale is so unfamiliar it is hard to get into perspective. I gaze into the distance towards other land masses over silent seas. I remember when it was my hand that was held firmly and I felt and saw for the first time. Memories haunt me. It’s so long ago and I don’t know how that's happened. So suddenly. And now here I am, creating ghosts for my daughter.

She looks across the grassy space to the bay and gets out her little binoculars. She peers intently into them and squeals “Everything is so close!” and giggles. Squeal, giggle squeal, giggle. Looking towards where the boats are moored she says “Daddy…”

“Yes?”

“Are those buoys or girls?”

I start to explain but I can’t make her understand the spellings and the pronunciation and anyway it doesn’t matter. “Buoys.” I say. “They’re all buoys.”

She thinks for a moment and then says. “What do you do if you want to have a cup of tea on a boat?”

“Well, some of them have tiny kitchens.” I reply.

“Are they as small as an ant?”

I smile. Perspective is a difficult thing up here in this strange rocky world. As the wind gets up I suggest we go and get some hot chocolate. My daughter’s eyes sparkle and a memory starts to form.

Moving

I am surrounded by packing boxes. They spill their contents like urban rubbish bins. We filled them up in one life and now we’re unpacking them in a different one. Without the packing cases I’d move on more easily. It’s really only all this stuff that attaches us to the past. I have driven along our old road and looked at the houses where the people opposite live. People whose lives I have known, although I have not known them; who no doubt casually observed ours too. They’re usually not at home when I pass by. I wonder what they think of the change that has happened opposite them. Do they think about it at all? Have they noticed?

I see a little bit of grey material underneath the top layer of one of the boxes and give it a tug. Up it comes from the depths as though a lucky dip win. It is my daughter’s old coat, a little crumpled, very small. The label says age 2. Three buttons are aligned each side of its double-breasted front. On each the smiley face on a luminous sticker grins out. Already I have difficulty remembering where they came from. I think they were given out each time we went to a little toddlers' art group. Placed there perfunctorily by the kind lady who ran it, but well-loved by my daughter. Now I remember. A different time. A different place. I suddenly feel a keen sense of change; of loss. But of course we haven’t lost anything. Just time. I want to wrap my daughter up in her little coat and transport us back to those days, simply because we can never return.

My daughter wanders into the room and comes towards me. “What are you doing daddy?” she asks.

“Just unpacking” I say.

“That’s my coat!” she exclaims “Oh! Look at all the little faces.”

I smile.

“Daddy...” She says. “Do you think the little boys and girls in my old school miss me?”

“I’m sure they do” I tell her supportively. “Do you miss them?”

“Uh, well, not really” she says. “I like my new friends more.”

I smile again and put my arm around her shoulders. Then I fold up the coat and put it into the bottom of a drawer.

Christmas Spirit

I am upstairs tapping at the computer. My daughter is nearby, sitting on the carpet. She has collected a number of her toys and dolls around her and is gesticulating and talking in a hushed voice. I turn my head slightly and listen as she leans close to one of the dolls. She is talking to her about bedtimes and eating tea and being good. She strokes a dress here and pats some hair into place there. I can just hear what she is saying but not every word. I love to watch her caring for all her little inanimate toys.

“Who are they?” I ask, pointing to some dolls near her.

“They are my children.”

“And those too?”

“No, those two are having a playdate” she says. “They’re both boys. That one’s a bit older though, because he was born on Christmas Day.”

“Oh, like Jesus?” I ask.

“No daddy” she says, smiling indulgently. “He’s called Tom.”

She tucks them up under a little blanket. They look loved and cared for and somehow happier than usual. I thought my daughter had an imaginary sister. In fact she has a whole extended family.

Giving Thanks

I am waiting outside the school gates for my daughter. Four wheel drives hug the pavement, mothers chat and laugh. I have perfected my timing so that I arrive as the children come out, so that I don't need to stand around uncomfortably, not being talked to.

My daughter emerges wearing a cardboard hat, with something dangling from the front. Like one of those American joke caps with the hand and the hammer. It turns out I'm not far wrong. It’s Thanksgiving, my daughter informs me (I would never have known) and they have been constructing headwear all day, with the help of some American mums. It’s a magnificent effort, boasting a spring-loaded turkey head at the front and multi-coloured feather-tail arrangement behind. We set off for home on the Tube and people smile, elderly ladies come up and exchange a few words with my daughter at every opportunity. I seem to have a lot in common with elderly ladies nowadays.

As we enter the Tube my daughter asks what I’ve got for her to eat. I usually give her a little chocolate for the trip home. When I tell her it’s a chocolate fish she suddenly jumps up and down, her hat waving around like a gobbling turkey.
“I don't want a fish.” she shouts. “I want a lolly.”
I tell her she won’t get anything at all if she doesn’t behave herself, which sends her into an even worse tantrum. She jumps up and down on the platform, snot spraying around her face like a New York fire hydrant.
“Right, that’s it, you're not getting anything” I tell her.

She is now too upset to do anything. We sit down and wait for the train. I am stony-faced, she whimpers like a small dog. But I stay firm. We don't talk.

I get her home with a firm grip and the odd command. When we arrive I suggest an apology is in order.
“Sorry daddy.” She says. Then she adds “I want to say something else daddy. It’s not sorry.”
“What is it?” I ask.
“I want to say thank you” she replies.
“For what?”
“For making my food and giving me a bath” she says.

It’s little short of a miracle I think to myself. I ask her why she thought of telling me that.
“I didn't” she says. “My teacher told me to. It’s Thanksgiving. I told you.”

Running Away

We have run away from nursery school for a few days. It’s the week after half-term and at Westonbirt Arboretum the leaves are a delicate palette of yellows, ochres and browns. An insistent breeze is blowing them in a stream of whirls and spirals. My daughter runs from leaf-fall to leaf-fall with her arms outstretched trying to catch them as they jag around her open palms. She laughs and spins round on the spot, and the elderly people watching her laugh too.

When the wind dies, she stands beneath a huge oak and bends back her head to look right to the top. She blows to dislodge the leaves, puffing out her reddening cheeks and putting all her force into her breaths. Disappointed at the effect she puts her hands on her hips and looks at the tree accusingly.

Going from tree to tree she picks at the ground like a magpie, making a collection of leaves, pinecones, acorns. “Here are some things to put in your study” she says to me. “You can look at them and they can remind you of autumn, and you don’t throw them away. Ever.”

I put them in my pocket and stoop down and kiss her hair, which smells a little of baby, a little of shampoo, a little of her.

“Thank you. I will” I say, putting the handful in my pocket.

A few days later, when I am at home again I put my hand in my coat pocket and feel the dry bundle beneath my fingers. I pull it out and discover the leaves have been fired in crisp shades of brown and red.

I put them on my desk and I do look at them. And I won’t throw them away. Ever.

Injury Time

I am at work. My half day a week in an office. Young people, older bosses, a pregnant woman I see and imagine the weeks, months, years ahead. I talk to her occasionally: she spends a lot of time waiting for lifts and coming and going and leaning and puffing out her cheeks. I don’t want to tell her too much of course, so I just tell her my wife was the same. She wouldn’t know I had a child if I didn’t tell her that. The office is one of the few places I have no link to childcare. I am not a stay at home dad there.

I sit at a computer, clicking buttons, looking at newspapers, listening to the things the young people (really young, scarcely in their twenties) say to each other. It brings back memories. I don’t know what they think of the bearded, long-haired man who passes among them for a few hours a week. (Thank you to Sebastien Chabal, by the way, for making the image respectable, attractive even.) I sometimes rejoice in the lack of expectation, the lack of interest; sometimes I want to stand up and shout “I used to work on trading floors, wear suits, transact deals, shout into telephones, entertain in restaurants. I used to be someone else…”

My mobile phone rings. It’s my daughter’s school. She has fallen over and has “a small hole” in her head. I finish my work at ten times the usual speed (I’d like to know how to do that) and head for the nearby hospital. On the roads, nobody seems to understand I’m in a rush and cars loiter and arc lazily. When I arrive finally, she is sitting on her teacher’s lap, draped in a blanket as they wait to be seen. She seems dazed. I hug her and take a look at the cut. It looks as though she has been caught by a stray stud in a ruck. Her teacher tells me how loud the thump was when her head hit the floor, which is not something I really want to recap.

I take over and after a while we see the doctor, who refers us to a nurse, who glues her head back together. The hairwash holiday she will be having brings a watery smile to her lips. “I didn’t cry.” she tells me. I ask why not. “I wanted the doctor to say I was very brave.” she replies. I stroke the left side of her head. “It’s alright to cry.” I tell her.

Imaginings

My daughter has an imaginary sister called Charlotte. She comes and goes, but she is always there. Much like a real sister I suppose. She generally arrives when other people are talking about their own siblings. Along with another hairline crack in my heart.

This is what it is like to fail your child. To feel you have failed them, anyway. The sense parents have when their child falls downstairs behind a turned back, or is bullied by faceless tormentors at school. It is a melancholic stab, a powerless ache accompanied by the throb of guilt. To begin with I tried not to mention Charlotte, for fear of encouraging the fantasy. But recently, since she (both of them) are a bit older and wiser, I decided to ask for a bit of information about her. She lives with her mummy and daddy - she has different parents - a little way away and is older than my daughter. She helps out when my daughter is feeling lonely or out-siblinged, which really amounts to the same thing.

I think I suggested that she wasn’t a real sister at some point. “No, I know she’s not real” my daughter replied and cuddled closer on the sofa.

When it is time for bed, I ask her to take her clothes off herself and then put on her pyjamas. “Hmmph. I can’t do everything daddy”, she says.

That’s true. Sometimes you need a little help from someone nearby, and sometimes, perhaps, you need a little bit more than that.

“Will you do some computering daddy, before you go downstairs?”, she says, when it’s time to go to sleep. “I want you to look after me.”

I kiss her cheek and she whirls around onto her side, flinging an arm casually around my neck.

I go next door, amused that the mouse-clicking made by writing about her, is a comfort to her. One day when she is too old for mouse-clicking, the words might be a comfort to her too, I hope.

The Princess and the Palace

One sunny afternoon after nursery I take my daughter to Kensington Palace. We drive past it every day in the car and I have seen the bouquets through the trees. A decade ago I went to have a look at the reef of flowers circling the palace and took a swim in the sadness. Before marriage, before children. I could have stayed forever surrounded by such melancholy.

I had asked my daughter if she wanted to see the Princess’s Palace. She shot back her “yes” so fast that it made me smile. What could interest her more than a trip to a princess’s palace? “Which princess?” she asked. “The princess who died ten years ago. I replied. “What happened?” “She died in a car crash.” I said. “I think it’s right to tell the truth about these things. You can’t go wrong telling the truth. It’s when you don’t that the trouble starts. I have no problem telling my daughter about death. There’s only one I couldn't tell her about. And that’s probably just because I can’t yet face the chronology of life myself.

The sun bears down on us as we park near to the park gate and walk in. It is a little like approaching a palace. All paths lead there. It looms as you walk among the trees. We stand looking at the pictures and the flowers for a while and are then drawn through the open gates.

“So the princess died and everyone put flowers on the railings so they could get happy again?” my daughter asks. “Yes” I say. I find she often puts things better than I can.

I cheat, taking her to the shop rather than paying the money to go on the tour. She is fascinated by the jewellery on offer, the pictures of the princess in her tiaras. We argue when I won’t buy her a princess doll. It’s a rule I have not to buy something at every place we go to.

I think she is a bit disappointed overall; expected something more. Certainly a toy. Once she has got over her sulk she asks “Did the princess have a fairy godmother?”

“I don’t think so” I say, “Not a fairy one anyway”.

She looks dispirited for a moment and then brightens and runs off into the shade of the trees.

Real Life

Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen. They lived in a castle in a kingdom in a land far away. One day they decided to have a child and sure enough the queen soon had a little baby princess and everyone was very happy. And they called the princess Princess Pink

We are enjoying the last days of the holidays, without papers and television news updates, in the watery heat of the summer’s end. I look out from my favourite vantage point above the back garden. My wife is reading at the green metal table, while my daughter plays next to her in the paddling pool, sunlight flickering on its silvery surface. The hosepipe lies nearby. Earlier I had pointed out a rainbow in the fine spray, sliding into the flowerbed. “Look, there it is! Can you see it?” “In real life is there a rainbow?” my daughter asked. She is very keen to work out what is real and what is not nowadays. “Yes, in real life I said. “Oh yes! I see it!” she replied, beaming.

But soon the queen became ill and the king was sad and all the subjects were sad too. The finest physicians in the land tried to find a cure but they couldn’t. So the king took care of Princess Pink. And in return she slept in a little basket next to him every night and kept the sadness away.

I’m not near enough to smell the sun lotion, but I can sense it. The splashing and the singing and the giggling I can hear. I look at her playing and I can see she’s happy, or at least not unhappy. But I worry she’ll not be as happy later, on her own. It doesn’t matter now, of course. To everyone else it might seem that a brother or sister could come along. Many of her friends have them already. But it is unlikely to happen. I know that. And I hope she won’t mind. I’ll explain one day and I know she’ll understand. As for me, later on in the day she makes me happier than she could ever know. Just by lying there asleep against me, story books scattered on the floor, her light breathing matching mine.

In the end, a clever wizard came to the kingdom and he found the cure for the queen. She returned to live with the king and Princess Pink in their castle and got better over the years until she was the same old happy queen. But the king never forgot what Princess Pink did for him and he always tried to keep the sadness away for her too.

HappySad

It’s bedtime, in fact past bedtime, as usual, and my daughter lies in her little bed beneath her little duvet with little fairies embroidered on it. I have kissed her good night and moved next door to the room with the computer. There is a bit of rustling and then I hear her voice, clear and steady.

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!

Slowly, then quickly …

If you’re happy and you know it, andyoureallywanttoshowit,ifyou’rehappyandyouknowitclapyourhands!

Verse after verse of clapping hands, stamping feet, being happy.

Does it mean she’s happy? I think so. I’d like to think so. Does she know what happiness is? Do any of us? Is feeling loved happiness? Knowing someone else you love feels loved? I know that I am happy, listening to her at that moment.

Did the sad boy in the photo sing contentedly to himself as he fell asleep at night? I hope he did, at one time. I asked my mother who he was and she said she thought he was her half-brother. You can imagine he might have been a little sad, if you know the story. You can imagine she might have been sad if you know the story. Her father, one moment here, the next on a different continent. Then with a different family. There was a lot of sadness around, in those days. You were lucky if you weren’t gripped by it. You took happiness where you could find it; in small things, in minor, everyday, joys.

The singing has tailed off into thumb-sucking. A couple of moments later I peer through the doorway and her thumb has slipped from her lips. Her head is in profile, as if in silent communication with the gaggle of soft toys. The pillow is splashed by her milky-coffee curls. She looks content, serene; asleep in her little, happy, world.

Family Gold

A few years ago my great aunt gave me a little black and white photograph, in a mottled brass frame. It shows a boy in dungarees, about three or four years old, standing with his hands to his face, looking contemplative and a little sad and lonely. Yes, that’s me, I thought when she handed it over. I wondered where and when it was taken and treasured this little link to my past. A few years later my mother told me that it wasn’t in fact me, but a relation. “I didn’t want to tell you before” she said, and seeing that I looked downcast “I thought you might be a little upset”. That’s how secrets start, I thought. But in fact it’s a bit of a relief. There’s something about the child all alone with that worried look. I wonder what happened to him and if he still has that expression.

My great aunt was Polish and lived in a creaky house in Fulham, long after her husband, an artist who had survived time in a gulag, had died. I used to stay there from time to time when I was between flats. In a little self-contained apartment downstairs that had a 1960s kitchen with formica cabinets, a fridge that smelled of fridge and a cooker with a grill pan that slotted in at the top. I would go upstairs to eat with her and sit in her own little kitchen while she told me about her past and how much I looked like her brother. She was in her seventies then but she seemed much younger, and we chatted like friends. She would offer me gin and tonic in a grimy glass and cheese straws from a big square tin that were probably as old as their container. I would wander around the studio containing all my great uncle’s paintings, creaking across the shiny parquet floor and leaning down to look at the sun-faded spines of his old books, layered on shelves.

Eventually she became ill and moved somewhere she could be looked after. The house was sold and is probably a banker’s palace now, with slate bathrooms and recessed lighting. Although she died before my daughter was born, shortly before her death she gave me the gold coin she had brought with her when she first came to this country as a refugee. It was her emergency money, and she had carried it deep in her clothing. She told me it was for my daughter. Wrapped in a little cloth it still shines warmly, the eagle gazing out imperiously and proudly.

Sammy Shrimp

It’s an old-fashioned holiday: cloudless skies, constant, lazy, heat, while at home the skies are crumbling into huge slabs of rain.

We are sitting next to an umbrella by the pool, my daughter and I. My wife is inside the villa, sleeping perhaps, or doing something unremarkable. It’s easy when you’re away for little things to expand to fill great chunks of holiday time. It is all perfect, apart from the road the other side of the hedge, but I don’t mind that as much as my wife or our friends do. We have just emerged from the shiny coolness of the water and I lie steaming in the sun with my head and shoulders propped up, while my daughter sits in the shade with her knees drawn to her chin, wrapped in a towel. I put my hand absent-mindedly on her head and feel the warmth below my palm. She smiles and puts her hand on mine. Just her and me under the umbrella. Stillness around us. The breeze and the rustle of palm leaves. I am in my own world of heat and memories and she is in her own. But our worlds overlap. Is that what makes for a happy childhood I wonder? Not too much togetherness, not too much separation.

In the evening we go to dinner in the old town. We find a restaurant on the beach, where the children can run on the sand while we sample a range of wines of different hues. The giant prawns are the hit of the night. Not least with my daughter who wraps a discarded head in a napkin and christens it Sammy Shrimp. Sammy accompanies her everywhere for the rest of the evening. She looks at him adoringly. And I think he feels the same about her too.

On the way home in the taxi I am vaguely wondering what the pungent smell is and realise it is Sammy. I remove him from my sleeping daughter’s grasp and when we arrive home I toss him in the bin.

The next morning my daughter wakes up and asks simultaneously “Where’s Sammy Shrimp?”
“Er, he’s gone to back to see all his other shrimp friends” I say.
She looks crestfallen.
“But I love him.” She says, lips quivering and tears squeezing their way out.
We hug her and reassure her, as if a beloved pet has had to be put down.
She soon recovers but I fervently hope she doesn’t decide to look inside the rubbish bin.

Theatre Land

We go to a friend’s for dinner on Friday night. The next day, early, it’s my daughter’s end of term performance. My wife and I spend so long reminding each other not to drink too much that we end up drinking all night. Consequently we are both slightly dazed on Saturday morning. In the car on the way there my daughter suddenly breaks into our conversation to say “I’m a bit nervous”. We both hesitate. We tell her she’ll be fine. We tell her not to be nervous. We tell her everybody gets nervous. As ever we tell her a lot of stuff. She considers our advice for a few seconds and it seems to do the trick.

At the theatre, cars are double and treble parked and everyone is smarter than me. I’ve selected a t-shirt with a surfing motif and my usual jeans and trainers. While my daughter shakes the head’s hand enthusiastically I cringe a little and try to move through the door as rapidly as possible. I hate school. Even someone else’s. I recently remembered how I used to tick the days off, literally, when I was young. I still have the school diaries with neat little biro marks. When I left school I started to tick less, but then I started working and the ticking started again in earnest, accompanied by new little sums, indicating how much time I needed to continue before I could stop. As I worked longer the sums got more complex, until seventeen years after starting work and thirty five years after starting school I finally started out on my own.

We say hello to a few people. It makes me feel ill seeing all these weektime people at the weekend in chinos and jackets. I meet the Japanese expat’s husband, who shakes my hand formally. He seems to be wearing a suit made entirely from chino. To fit in, I suppose. I look at his wife smiling uncertainly and wish I was somewhere else. I remember a story she told me at the farm park. She said she wasn’t looking forward to going back to Tokyo in a year’s time. I asked her why. “Because here my husband comes home from work at 10pm.” Perhaps she doesn’t like her husband, I thought. Seeing my confusion she added “In Japan he sleeps in the office. On a couch. He doesn’t come home during the week.” I look at her husband and wonder whether I dislike him or feel sorry for him.

The curtain goes up. We are sitting way up near the back, where I like it. But I realize now that we can’t see my daughter. And she can’t see us either. The little row of children, of whom my daughter is one, scan the audience desperately trying to locate their parents. We wave but we’re too far away. The spotlight is on them. For a moment I think my daughter is going to struggle to her feet and burst into tears. And perhaps stick her finger up her nostril for good measure too. But she doesn’t. She calmly takes the hand of the girl next to her, mutters something soothing to her and they all clamber to their feet like 50 stone men, the way the young do. There is a pause for the music to start, then they execute a word perfect rendition of their song. Flashes burst around us. A thousand different versions play on LCD screens. I was prepared to be proud of a nose-picker, but what I’ve just seen makes me even more proud.

Play Acting

My daughter has been rehearsing at home for the end of term play.

“Together we will garden! Together we will garden!” she sings, whirling her arms around introductorily.
“Dig the soyul! Dig the soyul!” she continues, swooping expansively with an imaginary spade.
“All day long…” She collapses to the floor, dragging the back of her hand across her brow.

I clap supportively, but am interrupted by more verses about stones and weeds.

Based on her last effort, at Christmas, I don’t hold out much hope for the actual performance. She spent the majority of the Nativity with her finger up her nose, sniffling unhappily while her classmates belted out the festive numbers.

Coming back from nursery I lean across to strap her into her seat. She grabs the seatbelt and says “No, I’ll do it.” She says this a lot nowadays. She marches into the loo and closes the door, behind her. “I can do it!”. She wants to prepare her own meals. “No daddy, I’ll do it.” What happened to the dribbling incompetent who needed everything to be done for her? That’s over already. That's me, soon.

From the back of the car my daughter tells me about the dress rehearsal at school. “There are curtains, but you can’t open them with your hands.” “Mmm, difficult” I say, distracted by suicidal tourists on Gloucester Road. It’s like Beachy Head around there. They step off the kerb and rely on me to save them. I think they must have notes in their pockets explaining to their families why they came to a busy street in central London to end it all.

“Yes it’s tricky daddy.”
“I’m sure."
"Daddy."
"Yes?"
“XXXX hurts my feelings”
“What” I ask, peering into the rear view mirror.
“She says I’m naughty, but I’m not naughty”
I came across this girl at the farm park. She is naughty. Whatever she is told to do she does the opposite.
“No, you’re a good girl.”
“But she’s still my friend. The children at school are all my friends. All the children in the world are my friends. Even when they’re naughty. Even XXXX is my friend.”
I feel like stopping the car, unstrapping my daughter and hugging her tightly there on the pavement, among the pigeons and the dog poo and the suicidal tourists. Instead I mutter reassuringly and pull away from the lights.

Mere Complexities

…All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins. W B Yeats

In the playground at the farm park my daughter effortfully drags herself across the rope bridge and then jumps down and turns back towards the line of ashen-faced children behind her. Standing next to them she shouts “Come on, you can do it!” like an army sergeant at an assault course. “Well done” she says as they make their way down one by one, while I fish off those too scared to move. There are older children than her pushing and fighting and plunging in front of others, and she’s stepping back and encouraging people. It makes me want to weep for myself and my craven self-indulgence and sell all my possessions and become a Buddhist. Well, maybe weep anyway.

It comes from my wife, this stubborn streak of niceness. What I saw twenty years ago in my wife I am now seeing all over again in my daughter. I had forgotten about it one way or another, and it’s a treat to be reminded. It’s not the only thing of course. I see my wife in a turn of the foot here, a wrinkle of the eyebrow there. I see my father too. When my daughter shrugs it is as if there’s a thumbprint on her genetic code that means like a stuck CD she replicates his shoulders to ears flinch time after time. On other occasions I turn round and find myself caught in my sister’s or mother’s gaze. I treasure all these little parts of other people and I want to find more. My daughter sometimes catches me looking at her and grins, lopsidedly, like me.

My father had lung problems and heart problems by the end. His body just gave out. If he had been a car you wouldn’t have wanted to open up the bonnet. You’d have just carried on sticking in the leaded and hoping. He knew, but he didn’t want the doctors to confirm it. I imagined them telling him to cut out the drinking and pack in the smoking. They might as well have told him to go easy on the breathing. He couldn’t really see the point of life a lot of the time. Sometimes I can understand that, sometimes though I think he didn’t search the most obvious places. I look at my daughter and see the glimpses of others that make time less lost.

Farmed Out

I have been dreading it since my daughter’s nursery teacher casually invited me on the outing to the farm park. “We don’t get many men” she told me. I could believe that, judging by the crisp-suited fathers I see prodding their children through classroom doors then sprinting in relief for the tube. “Yes that’ll be fine” I said, airily waving at an imaginary diary, every page of which stretched blank into the future.

So I rise ludicrously early and take my daughter and her packed lunch to nursery. In the rush-hour bus I am squeezed speechless, as we hurtle through the streets like an out-of-control carousel. Like everywhere else in London it is full of men in suits, mums, pushchairs, children in uniforms, builders, people with bags.

I drift down into the tube station with my daughter, ancient urges suddenly propelling me towards the Metro dispenser; a strange parody of the two years ago me. There’s pushing and rushing all around us. Everyone seems desperate in some way. To get to somewhere or from somewhere. Or away from something. The tube workers bristle with the tension of rush-hour problems.

At nursery there is an assortment of mothers perfectly prepared for a shopping trip to the West End, in heels, sunglasses, casual, but unmistakably designer, clothes. I say hello in my pretend relaxed way. I’m ok at this stuff after two years. The two years ago me would have shrieked inwardly, and maybe outwardly, and felt like running away. My daughter is a great help in this. She comes and chats to me when I am running short of amiable claptrap. It helps tremendously.

When it is time to board the coach I say hello to the male driver. Engrossed in his copy of the Sun, he doesn’t pick up on my cry for help and carries on fiddling with his sunglasses. I realize I’m on my own. I end up sitting next to a French boy who looks at me as only a Frenchman can, when he discovers I am neither French nor his mother. I want to scream at him “LOOK AT ME! I AM SUFFERING FOR ALL MEN! I. AM. YOU!” Instead I busy myself looking at roads and waving at my daughter when she gets bored with her neighbour.

At the farm park the mums totter around, desperately looking for somewhere to spend their money. A £3.99 fluffy cat in the farm gift shop proves popular. It allows them at least to get out their purses and take off their sunglasses. Outside they stand around in groups, chatting like they’re in a bar, only breaking off their conversations to catch a falling body. They look at me with distaste. One of them is complaining loudly that she can’t get coffee served to her at the goat enclosure. I chat to the more eccentric mums. The Japanese expat, the arty mum picking her way through the sheep turds in her designer wedges. This keeps me going between frantic shuttling from toilet to playground. Toilet to picnic area. Toilet to sheep pens.

Frankly, it’s six hours of hell. But then at last we’re back on the coach heading home. I’ve been to the toilet countless times, I have sheep turds smeared all over my trousers. The only thing I have eaten all day is a quarter of my daughter’s ham sandwich and I have two four year olds kicking me in the small of my back through the seat.

My daughter is asleep by this time. But suddenly one of the designer women talks to me! I lean forward to listen. “Oh dear” she says, gesturing at the figure dozing next to me. I raise my eyebrows. “She isn’t going to sleep later. Her mother won’t be happy.” I smile and look out of the window, seeing nothing. Everything is a blur. I think for a moment I am going to cry.

Friday's Child

My daughter is downstairs in the bath. I can hear her giggling as my wife plays with her. The laughter floats up like birdsong. Bang, thump, giggle. Now she’s out of the bath and she’s talking, although I can’t quite hear what she’s saying.

My wife got home late from work and was getting ready to give her a bath, when she said “I want daddy to give me a bath, I love him more than you”. I felt uncomfortable; my wife a little heartbroken. This all started a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure if it means the balance has shifted too far, or if it’s a natural reaction to the at-home parent. But it is a difficult problem to solve. How can you advise who to love?

It all goes silent. Suddenly the day of swimming, nursery, TV, shopping, collapses in on top of her and she is a crumpled heap on the floor with her thumb in her mouth and a towel round her, wanting to be cradled and cooed to, like a baby. I can imagine my wife holding her and kissing her damp forehead through the comma curls.

Now they’re next door in her bedroom. There’s laughing again and my wife is joking with her and my daughter says “You’re pulling my leg”, which is a useful phrase to know in our house. My wife tries to persuade her to go downstairs and brush her teeth. More giggling. She gives up and tickles her instead.

Tickle.
Giggle.
“Again!”

Tickle.
Giggle.
“Again!”

Eventually they go back down to the bathroom and she brushes her teeth. Then it’s my turn to read stories. She sniffles a little. Earlier she said to me, sniffling, “Daddy, one of my noses (sic) can’t sniff. Look!” I peered forward thinking she was going to sniff in, but instead she blew out through her nose, covering my face in a fine spray of snot.

Now she is in bed, eyes closed, circled by soft toys like a portrait in oil. She usually asks for more milk at this point, but since she is usually asleep by the time I come back, I no longer come back. Tonight she says. “You don’t normally bring the milk, do you daddy?” I grin guiltily and wonder when she started noticing.

In the Night Garden

In the Night Garden is my latest fascination. Igglepiggle? Ninky Nonk? Makka Pakka? It’s disturbingly close to madness. But as soon as the music starts I am entranced. I think I like it even more than my daughter does and glance anxiously at my watch when it gets to six o’clock. That recurring, hypnotic tune. The haunting counterpoint of musical boxes, lullabies and nursery rhymes. The other-worldliness. I have absolutely no idea what is going on and I do drift away in the middle, but I fear missing the magical end-titles. I want to go to bed then myself and fly away into a childhood dreamland. Its makers say it is a "magical picture book place that exists between waking and sleeping". It’s that alright. I don’t think there’s anything that more successfully conveys what it is to be a child.

My daughter waves her hands, conducting the opening theme and we have conversations like:

“Look, Makka Pakka!”

“No, it’s Igglepiggle!”

“That’s the Pinky Ponk!”

“It’s the Ninky Nonk!”

“No it’s the Pinky Ponk.!”

“Shhhhhhh!”

“I like this bit.”

“No, daddy, this is my favourite programme. If you want to watch something, you have to watch a grown up programme.”

“Can’t it can be both our favourites?”

“No daddy. Oh! It’s finishing already. It’s so short!”

My daughter is slap-bang in the middle pages of the magical picture book. She is still open and trusting and lacking in artifice. She assumes everyone’s motivation is pure. I was telling her about how they put the road back after roadworks. “You mean so everyone can go on the pavement again and have a nice walk?” she replied. Everything works out for the best in her world.

She whispers confidentially to me about absolutely nothing. “Daddy I love Coco Pops Mega Munchers”. Other times she tickles my ear with an indecipherable “Whissoowissoowiss….”

She says “Oh God!” and then puts her hand to her mouth in shocked yet smiling embarrassment.

She breaks her food in half unasked and gives me a piece for myself.

It’s a lovely world and if alarming strangeness like In the Night Garden can help me enter it for a few minutes, then I am grateful.

Secrets and Lies

Two days before Father’s Day, my daughter handed me the card she had made for me at nursery.



“Shhh! It’s a secret.” She said, putting her finger to her lips. “I can’t tell anyone about it.”

“Oh…”

“And I can’t tell you about it.”

“Really…”

“And you can’t tell anyone about it. Not even yourself.”

What is a lie if not the big brother of the secret? My daughter is just as poor at both. I ask her if she has eaten all her fruit at nursery. “Er, no daddy.” She says.

“What did you do with it?”

“I threw it in the bin” she admits, a little shamefaced.

I grin and tousle her hair, feeling the lack of a fib is far more important than the actual deed.

I can see the temptation to lie emerging though. Three and a half years without one is a long time. More than I’ve managed. This morning when I saw the buttery toast my wife had made for her sitting on the plate-with-piggies-on-it, I asked “Did you lick off all the jam?” She hesitated and then confirmed that was the case; but I could have sworn I’d seen her first blush. Or perhaps it was just the strawberry.

Sleepyheads

After school my daughter and I stop off at the park. We sit in the shadow of the Albert Memorial sucking Fabs and chatting. I learn an awful lot over lollipops. Today she tells me how PC Turtle came to visit her nursery.

“What did he do?” I asked, unsure if she was telling me about a book or something real.

“He talked to us about strangers.”

“What did he say?”

“You don’t talk to them.”

“Very good. Anything else?”

“If you tell somebody, they’ll run away.”

At first I wonder if this is all a bit too much at three and a half. But then I realise we’ve already had the same conversation. I don’t really think she understands what a stranger is though, if she did she wouldn’t speak to anyone at all.

On the way back home she falls asleep, with her legs daintily crossed and her hand under her chin. We gently squeak to a halt (the silent Prius parking means the manoeuvre is all clanking and swishing). I carefully lift her out of her seat. Perhaps a little too carefully. After I’ve gone a few steps she raises her head suddenly and sings loudly

“I like to move it, move it….”

“What?” I ask, open-mouthed.

“It’s from Madagascar ,daddy.”

We bought the DVD a few months ago and haven’t watched it since then. Don’t ask me why or how it came into her mind at that moment.

“IS it?” I laugh. She laughs. We both laugh.

After lunch it’s my turn. I close my eyes, sitting on the sofa, while children’s programmes play. Music threads its way through my consciousness as I drift in and out of sleep. Nothing I can quite put my finger on, but flashes of youth, summer, the days before marriage and children.

Daylight crashes back in, accompanied by a hard jab in my leg

“Wake up daddy.”

“What?” I yawn.

“I don’t want you to be asleep.”

“Why?”

“We need to watch together.”

I watch, as an insane-looking presenter fashions a snowflake out of talcum powder and a doily.

“Now, concentrate daddy” advises my daughter.

Bunny Redux

We’re on our way to Bunny World for the start of the summer season. Gilbert O’Sullivan is playing in the car, just like he always does. He’s reliable like that.

It's over now
you've had your fun

It seems it’s not just me. Or maybe I’ve been listening to him too much (some would say any O’Sullivan is too much). Is it the move? Is it age? Will I be like this forever now? Or just while my daughter is growing up? Is this what being a parent is?

..that much easier to be gone

One way to mask all this is to sit in an office doing something you don’t care about but which occupies most of your time. Not me, I’m off to Bunny World.

We arrive, my daughter drooping in her seat like a thirsty flower. I wake her up and she totters towards the turnstile with her thumb in her mouth and her hand in mine. We buy our tickets and bag of feed (one bag only allowed today, as the animals ‘might not be hungry’). We move through to the play area outside and the mums everywhere. I had forgotten the mums everywhere. They cluster. They chat. They laugh. I like mums as much as the next stay at home dad. But it’s always a shock. They watch me, I think. Well you would. A hairy guy with a girl in a bunny mask. It’s amazing to think I used to sit in an office pretending to be interested in computer screens and telephones. While the mums were all at Bunny World. I had no idea.

A few weeks ago at the Cotswold Farm Park there was a maze with questions and answers, one of which sent you down a dead end, the other onto the next question. I got half of them wrong, sending us careering down cul-de-sacs and having to squeeze back past annoyed parents and children. I feel like that nowadays. I’m a little lost. But it’s ok. It’s better than the charts and meetings and suits and all the stuff I could never work out the meaning of. I know now. There isn’t one.

My daughter runs to the swings, feet flapping and arms whirring. “Chase me daddy, chase me…”

Normal Service

It’s Monday and my daughter is in a bad mood. My wife was up early and did the pink-cup-with-cats-on-it and the chocolate-cereal-in-a-bowl. I arrive downstairs and say hello and then fetch the pink-brush-with-fairies-on-it. I brush my daughter’s hair as gently as I can.

“OWWWW-EERRR!!!”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you think her white dress looks lovely?” says my wife from the other side of the room.

“Yes”, I say “Very pretty”.

“No, don’t talk about me” says my daughter grumpily, ramming her finger up her nose.

“Why not?” asks my wife, smiling gently.

“Now you’re laughing at me” she says.

My wife is about to say something. I say “No we’re not”, and stroke my daughter's hair, since I’m sitting closer.

We both watch her silently. It reminds me of the other times she has shown signs of growing up; adult traits appearing suddenly like shoots. I think you have to nurture these. It is easy to miss them as life rumbles past. If you trample on them each re-growth is more difficult. One moment you’re changing a nappy, the next they’re buying you a drink. It all happens more quickly than you’re prepared for.

I’m in a bad mood too, I realize, as I make my way through London traffic like a wave through mud. Pedestrians try to throw themselves under my wheels, roads are mysteriously closed off, inside other vehicles faces are clenched and set. I lose my temper with a minicab which veers into my lane and a schoolboy who is walking along the middle of the road, hooting grumpily and at length. In the end I drop my daughter off at nursery and my wife at the tube station.

Later I am at home, typing and listening to the radio. The Daily Service is on. It’s somehow become my favourite programme. I don’t really listen much to the spoken parts, I have to admit; but the music speaks calmly and poignantly. I may choose to ignore the message but I can’t resist the beauty of the telling.

Yesterday

The day is as still and limpid as a summer holiday; the skyline framed in azure like a painting. Time has slowed down, as it does in the sun, but for us time is running out fast. I set out for Portobello Road in the sunshine, thinking about how short our time here might be. I walk the familiar stretch of pavement, and emerge from shade into sunlight, next to the postbox with flaking paint, its royal crest ringed by black marker-pen tag. Beside my shadow, plant shapes tint the paving stones. I feel the heat on my skin.

A little further on, among tall trees, stands the imposing church, an abandoned street-cleaner’s cart outside. Branches sway in the breeze, mocking its immobility. The bells chime midday as an elderly couple pass by, pushing a shopping-cart effortfully. I move on, past the window of Mario’s shoe repair shop, through which he leers, like a murderous chimney-sweep. Opposite, a couple sit at a table outside the bar, drinking from pint glasses; smiling and talking, just out of earshot. I want to hear what they are saying, to get a shot of youth and certainty. If only for a few strides. On the corner of Portobello Road a black man with greying curls is playing a single steel drum with a removed yet faintly good-natured look. Yesterday… the metal resonates across the street.

Around the corner a man is sitting on a fold-up chair on the pavement in the shadow of a coffee shop, face turned towards the sky. People look as if they’re not quite prepared for the heat and are in hats, coats, t-shirts. Another man sits with his trousers hitched up, facing the road in an aggressive pose. The warmth has quietened the stall-holders, with only the fruit and veg man shouting and cursing as usual. He’s even angrier in the heat.

I’m not half the man I used to be… the drummer drums.

The market twists up and away. I used to push my daughter down this road from her first nursery. I would point out the big brown teapot hanging above the antiques shop. My daughter would marvel. I would laugh. I had already forgotten that. Soon we will forget other things about our lives here.

Oh, I believe in yesterday... beats the metal drum behind me.

Job Satisfaction

I am contacted (deluged with emails) by a firm with an overly self-conscious website and a name involving the letter e that makes it sound like a crack-den run by internet entrepreneurs. They want to come round and assist in the great pretence that we live in a grand residence with modern fittings and a back yard that is in fact an urban garden. “All our photos are retouched” they proudly boast. Their powers of deception even extend to the elements. “We can 'improve' the weather considerably” they gush. “WE. ARE. ALL-POWERFUL!” I expect Beelzebub to turn up on our doorstep but instead it is a young Spanish woman, who engagingly makes fun of our run-down surroundings. I like people like her. She cares enough to do a good job but is relaxed enough not to take it seriously. Is that an appropriate comment for the internet crack-heads’ ‘client satisfaction survey’ I wonder.

Apart from the photographer it is otherwise a return to corporate life. Agents call me, I call back. I end up listening to a recorded agent telling me how successful and professional the firm is; skills which obviously don’t extend to anyone answering their own telephone. “Hello. Sorryshe’sonthephone. CanItakeamessage?” I imagine a room full of manic youngsters in suits, waving their arms around, telephones clamped to both ears. That’s probably what they want me to think. They’re probably standing round the water-cooler talking about their weekends.

While the photographer is fish-eyeing and digitally-enhancing, the first viewing arrives. They trip over the photographer’s bag and look askance at the enormous pile of crap placed out of view of her camera. Making their excuses they sprint out as soon as is possible. It’s like running a small business, selling a house nowadays. I haven’t got round to filling in my money-laundering form yet. Later another agent comes round to “familarise” herself with something. Me? The house? The crap? I hadn’t been able to hear on the phone against the baying in the background. She asks me if I’m renting the house. “No, I’m just hairy” I reply. I tell her my daughter is having a nap upstairs and she backs away, visibly shocked. I can see in her eyes that she is already considering this job a challenge too far.

Moving

The doorbell rings somewhere above me, on the first floor (it’s a design fault). Outside, between the pub and the wheelie-bin stands a smartly-dressed estate agent, with the look of someone who has come to claim a prize, or is here to sell me something I don’t yet realize I don’t want.

I take him around the house, or rather up and down the house. It’s a sunny day and it looks nice; everything looks nice on a day like today. We tramp up the staircase, exchanging pleasantries, inasmuch as a smartly-dressed businessman and a hairy childcarer can trade their thoughts. We soon find ourselves standing in uncomfortable proximity at the top of the house.

“This is the room with the damp” I say, not adding that it was the room in which I rocked my daughter to sleep through her first dark winter. We move downstairs. “There’s a crack in this wall some people might notice” I point out, not mentioning the Boxing Day we once spent here giggling through games of charades with family and friends, during our only ever London Christmas.

I end up apologetically pointing out deficiencies all around the house. It’s lucky he’s not here on a viewing. At the end of our small journey together he sits me down. Suddenly he looks as if he’s going to give me bad news about a relative. I grip the table.

Instead he gives me a valuation which seems faintly ridiculous and I release my hold on the corner. I had been wavering over selling but this helps with the decision. Let someone younger than us enjoy the house and its charms. I’m sure they will come to love the damp patches, peeling wallpaper, cracking paint and dirty carpets as much as we do. More likely they will rip out our life and insert a shiny new one of their own.

He leaves me with all sorts of promises and an information pack. I decide to sit my daughter down in turn and talk her through moving. She sits silently for a moment then says quietly “I don’t want to leave my toys…” I tell her we can take them with us. She looks unconvinced. “But how do we carry them?” I tell her about the big lorry. “But we can’t take the toaster or the clock can we?” I tell her we can. “But who’s going to water the plants?” They come with us too, I say. I explain that it’s only big things that are left behind. “But what about the stairs?” she asks. “How will we go up if we don’t take the stairs with us?”

That’s not the least of our problems, it turns out. We also won’t know the way to various people’s houses if we move somewhere else. We will have a new address to remember. There are other complications. I enjoy her growing appreciation of the concept and talking her through it all find myself more and more convinced about what we are doing. I feel almost as if we have moved to our new life already.

Morning Glory

“DaDDYYYYY!!” comes the cry. “What IS it?” I ask grumpily. It’s not early, but it is morning.

I continue trudging upstairs with the pink-cup-with-cats –on-it full of milk and turn left into the living-room.

“Daddy. Look!” exclaims my daughter, surprisingly brightly, considering there is vomit on the sofa, vomit on the floor and vomit all over her and her nightie. It looks like an ectoplasmic explosion.

“Oh poor you…” I stammer. I fall to my knees and open my arms, but then think better of it.

I go and fetch the kitchen roll. (Douglas Adams was wrong: the most useful item in the universe is a roll of recycled kitchen paper.) I wipe up the semi-digested grapes and pasta, pull her nightie over her head and then put her in the bath as I used to do when she was a milk regurgitator. After she is washed and dressed I finish up the cleaning process, using a fork to dig out all the lumps from the weave of the sofa, and plenty of wet cloth arm-work. It is somehow reassuring to return to the simple days of babycare.

Later my wife emails me: Thanks for cleaning everything up. You are a true stay at home dad!

That’s nice: recognition. That’ll keep me going for a while. I may be two years into the job, but somehow I feel that it’s only now I’m passing my probation

My daughter sits on the dry end of the sofa, watching Big Cook Little Cook with a look of mild disgust. She refuses my optimistic offer of breakfast, but sips the water I have given her.

She complains that she still has a tummy ache. I reach over and rub her stomach solicitously, gladly wiping away the hurt. She shifts a little. “Is the rubbing making it better?” I ask. She looks uncomfortable, and after a pause replies “No daddy”.

It used to be that the tummy rubbing made her feel better; now it seems mainly to be for my benefit.

Bank Holiday

My daughter is on her knees next to the sofa, fringe hanging over her book as she sings a little song to her soft penguin. Rain spears resolutely past the windows outside. Inside, my wife and I are bickering. Me because its half term, her because she’s back at work tomorrow. It’s the usual holiday problem. I am leaving the childcare to my wife a bit too much and she wants to spend the time together. My wife and daughter tend to gang up on me. It’s not their fault. They love being together. But there’s an exclusivity to it. “I want mummy” my daughter wails when mummy’s at work and she is tired or has barked a knee. “Mummyyy!!” is the call first thing in the morning. When I’m telling her off she wrinkles her face and puts an arm out towards mummy. “But she was sticking her fork into the table!” I say. “Oh well” my wife says. “It’s a bank holiday”.

Since it’s a bank holiday I drive hundreds of miles to Hay on Wye to meet one of my literary heroes, Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. If only he knew the risks I had taken to be there. It is a beautiful journey in the sunshine but in the rain the motorways are deathly skidpans – water lies everywhere and the car wobbles when it hits. I acquaplane crazily from lane to lane. My wipers don’t seem to have a high enough speed to cope.

At Hay everywhere is muddy and everyone walks around with the Guardian and Guardian festival bags. I’m in the Eggers queue, near the front, because I know how to loiter just before the authors arrive. What do I say? “It’s my favourite book!” No, it’s not my favourite after all. It’s one of my favourites, along with the Nabokovs and the DeLillos and the Faulkners and the Prousts. But “It’s one of my favourite books” sounds slightly begrudging. “I’m a writer too, and...” NO! It’s just journalism and a blog.

In the end I smile and say please and thank you and he looks up after signing the book with an absent-minded “Thank you” of his own, as his agent leans down and whispers in his ear, clandestinely. I trudge out of the tent into the wind and mud and buy a punnet of strawberries from a bedgraggled farmer in wellingtons, pleased to find someone who looks more miserable than me. Inside Dave Eggers is grinning at the next customer, warm and desired and with the prospect of a nice meal in the authors’ tent with attentive agents and publishers.

I walk to my car in the charity car park, veering sideways in the wind, Guardian bag flapping, wondering just where it all went so right for him.

Men Only

I’ve traced the dip back further, to the weekend.

My wife and daughter are away on a joint sleepover the other side of town and I’m in a West London pool bar. Smoke swirls in the air. The windows in the roof show that it is still light outside, but in here it is dark. Men stand around pool tables with cigarettes dangling from their teeth; a few women with big belts and small t-shirts bend over tables unsteadily, inexpertly prodding cues.

It’s a place I used to come to a lot ten years ago. I was pretty good at pool in those days. But more importantly I walked around like I was a regular and went to the gym and had a career with prospects and a life stretching away into the future. Now it’s a terrain as unfamiliar to me as Saturday mornings in the playground. I stand with friends, gripping a pool cue in one hand and a pint of Guinness in the other, trying to remember the rules of the game. Have I been here since my daughter was born? I’m not sure. Probably not. I’ve walked past a lot. Around me men pad purposefully and look like they have plans. It’s all so familiar, but so unfamiliar. Like looking through someone else’s glasses. I’m not experiencing what I expected to.

I vaguely suspected that I was somewhere past my peak. But I wasn’t as painfully aware that the rot had set in. I’m worried about bumping into the players at the neighbouring tables and skip away trailing apologies. “Don’t hit me, I’ve got a daughter!” Is it because I’m more aware of mortality nowadays? Of risk? The truth, I’m coming to realize, is that I’m just not used to men anymore. Men in the office, men in bars. Men shouting above the music and jostling and guffawing and pouring drinks down their throats. Childcare doesn’t have much of that to it. In fact it’s mostly the opposite. It’s helping and responding and standing back and watching. I think I’m only just beginning to understand the full implication of taking it on.

As it happens I play quite well, pulling off some shots I can’t remember being able to play in the first place. Then it's back to my place for poker and pizzas. I seem to be getting the hang of it.

Hitting a Dip

I’ve had a bit of a mid-week lull. It started with my last post. I started thinking about the working dads and suddenly I wanted to have it all. I wanted to be out there wearing a shirt and confidently swapping banter and actually opening my bank statements, for goodness sake. And that sent me spiraling morosely downwards.

Then yesterday, after I had finished my one day’s paid work a week (which finishes next week), I took my daughter to the local playground again in an attempt to de-programme her from CBeebies. She’d been watching for too long with the glazed air that you have when your boss is telling you about his new marketing strategy or you’ve just woken up at 3am in front of a quiz show with the remnants of a cheese toastie in your lap. The trouble is I have to finish off after she’s come home from nursery, so I sit upstairs in the grip of guilt and corporate news, as she sits downstairs crunching party rings and watching Lazytown (again) then SMarteenies then Bobinogs then Numberjacks etc…

Anyway we get to the park and it’s the usual 5.30 selection of mums dads and kids. Not the weekend variety; low key. A couple of blokes reading newspapers, a mum helping her toddler walk. Kids of different ages expertly swinging around the garish equipment and bouncing on the rubberized trampoline that is the ground in play areas nowadays. There are also two boys, bigger than the rest. About 10-ish probably. They’re booting a football around, but that happens, and even though it’s patently too small a space to do that in, people let it go. Then the ball gets booted in our direction and hits me as I am bouncing my daughter on the see-saw. The boy near to me looks worried and I say:

“Look it’s really not a good idea to kick the ball here.”
“Why?”
“There are small children around.”
“Where?”
I start pointing and then he grins in an immensely irritating way.
He’s 10-ish and he’s taking the piss out of me!
“We’re going anyway” he says smugly.
“Good.” I say.
“What?” he says menacingly.
Now he’s threatening me!
“Good” I say, more uncertainly, having never been menaced by a 10 year old before. Not since I was 10, anyway.
I win the staring battle, not unsurprisingly since I’m twice his height and he exits with his friend, muttering about “dissing” and mentioning brothers or dads. I have visions of relations sprinting into the playground armed with knives and guns.

And on top of that, it may or may not be coincidental but since my wife gave up smoking on Saturday (well done her) we have been arguing constantly. By text, by email and then when she gets home in person:

“Well I wish I’d never ...”
“Well I wish you hadn’t either.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“Is that how you feel?”
“Well if that’s how you feel …”
“Doesn’t it look like it?”
“Well I will, then.”
“Well do …”
“Do you want me to?”
“Do you?”
“Right …”
Pause.
“What do you want for supper?”

I hope to recover my poise soon and post some emotive descriptions of countryside flowers.

Playground Games

On Saturday my wife was away for the morning so my daughter and I found ourselves on our own. It was a novel experience, since she usually takes my daughter shopping or goes for a coffee with her, like a lot of working dads who take over for a while.

Left to our own devices we watched TV, got dressed late and had bacon and egg muffins for brunch. Then we went to the playground. But I had forgotten about the Saturday morning dads. When men speak loudly to their children is it because they assume some deficiency on their part or is it because they want you to hear them? They commentate LOUDLY on what they are doing:

“Hey RUFUS! You’re going up the SLIDE! That’s IT, now you’re sliding DOWN! WHEEE!!!!!!!!”

“Yes Georgina. On the SEE-SAW! YES!! UP AND DOWN!!!”

Actually women do this as well sometimes. I remember activity groups when my daughter was a toddler. The mums would sit next to their child advising them on paper-sticking and playdough moulding in LOUD, CAPABLE VOICES. It was like they were speaking to my daughter too, and I think she was a little confused about getting advice on crinkly crepe when she had a handful of pink string. To be heard I would have had to talk at the same volume and we would have ended up bellowing across each other ridiculously. It’s a defensive reaction, of course. In the playgroups I was a surprising and somewhat threatening presence and I think they felt the need to emphasize their credentials.

It’s the same with the men in the playground. Men fresh from the office, still with a heightened sense of performance. They want everyone to see them doing good work. There was a whole bunch of them, charging around, chasing their screaming children and bellowing at the tops of their voices. I tiptoed around the edge, cowering and trying to avoid flying limbs. My daughter nipped to and fro in her usual unpredictable way, being hurdled by six foot men in shorts. Did I ever behave like that? Maybe, but it’s difficult to know now. I don’t really compete anymore, since there’s noone to compete with. I am just there.

Two of a kind

On holiday at the kitchen table over a hand of poker I am chatting with my brother-in-law. Old albums play on the i-pod, docked into speakers. Half empty wineglasses on the table in front of us contain red from the last available bottle in the house. Empty bottles cluster around the rubbish bin. Everyone else has gone to bed and someone shouts at us to turn the music down. We grin at each other, like much younger men. We used to talk a lot, in West London pubs mainly. Then work took the place of conversation. I went to work abroad; he started out in his career. I’ve mentioned the blog and he says, jokingly, that he’s ‘Never at home dad’. We laugh. But it is a more poignant comment than it seems on the surface. I imagine he’d like a lot more time at home and a lot less in the office. But he is good at doing both. I was never very good at doing both. A lot of men aren’t very good at doing both. They get caught up in work and lose touch with life at home. It’s a kind of addiction. They tell themselves that they need to do it for the money. But of course it becomes about standing and achievement and seniority and bonuses and image.

I see these men at the weekend, stiff and formal, thinking of other things. The evening routine. The morning commute. They push their pushchairs with the same grim expression. Heft their backpacks with narrow-eyed concentration. It’s not easy to separate different parts of your life. My wife comes home and after a few minutes is our daughter’s mummy, as if she hasn’t been in an office all day. When it was me, I found it difficult to turn into daddy. A drink after work with a colleague or friend was easier. Those dads have their weekend smiles, but I have today’s smiles and tomorrow’s as well.

I have a full house too. Grinning, I scoop my chips towards me.

Little Things

Ridiculous, isn’t it, how the little things occupy so much of your time. Some represent more than is apparent. Like the small globe in front of me, a gift from my daughter, containing purple and pink glitter and a picture of us in the misty chill of winter. But then there are the bills to be opened, emails to be sent, appointments to be arranged. Scouring pads to be bought. While around you people are getting sick, going missing, moving away, getting married, having babies.

I’m not quite sure where blogging belongs in all this. It brings with it problems of its own: template selection, etiquette, comments, quality of writing. And one of the biggest difficulties of all: keeping track of all the blogs. I’ve solved the problem by getting myself a ‘feed reader’. It took me a day to download (upload?) all the blogs onto it, but now it appears to work by sorcery. Every so often a little box pops up telling me that Wife in the North or Drunk Mummy have completed another small work of art.

Nevertheless it’s a little thing. Yesterday I was looking after my daughter and her friend, who were sitting on my head as I made my way through 100 of the world’s favourite nursery rhymes. Suddenly three fire engines lurched round the corner followed by an ambulance. Sirens whined, blue lights whirred, people arrived at windows clutching babies and looking on with fearful expressions. I opened the door and craned around the door jamb to see thick black smoke gushing out of the basement two houses along, across a small alleyway. Firemen in purple suits jumped dramatically from their vehicles, unfurling hoses and spinning taps. A couple of them ran down the steps into the basement and emerged a while later, panting, faces smeared with soot. It wasn’t like watching a fire on the news. It was real and urgent and frightening.

Although people with children were stopping to watch I didn’t want my daughter or her friend to look on so I closed the door. It seemed to be under control, but we carried on downstairs, just in case. Eventually I started cooking tea: browning chicken and boiling vegetables, listening to the girls chatting.

”Do you like pink or yellow?”
“Pink!”
“I like pink too!”
“Do you like pink fish, by any chance?”
“Actually I do.”
“I do too.”
“I’m going to be Sophie.”
“No, I’m going to be Sophie.”
“No, you can be Amy.”
“Oh.”
“But in the next game you can be Sophie.”
“Oh, alright.”

I have all but forgotten about the activity outside. The doorbell rings. Seeing it is the friend’s father I open the door and exclaim brightly “Burnt the toast again!”
Suddenly I see the look of horror on his face. “I came round the corner and I thought…”

Happy Endings

Waiting for coffee in the café at Fremington Quay I had a sharp sense of finality, of leaving behind, that reminded me of other occasions I couldn’t quite place. The windows were laced with steam, and an elderly man with uneven stubble in baggy trousers and a fishing jumper drilled holes in the wooden door, fixing something. Staff passed between the till and the kitchen. There was a calmness that I knew I would miss. As I watched the workman Mr Bojangles played quietly somewhere above:

I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you
In worn out shoes;
With silver hair, a ragged shirt, and baggy pants…

That’s the problem with holidays. You have to come back. Back to the grey and the rain. But city grey and rain is not the same as country grey and rain. When I listened to the cockerel crowing at the farm I was sure it sounded different in the rain. Or was it just me?

As he spoke right out
He talked of life, he talked of life,
He laugh-slapped his leg a step.

We arrive back in London, push open the grimy front door and pile all the bags in the kitchen. My wife sits on a chair looking unhappy to be back. Our daughter sits on her lap, thumb in mouth, gazing across the room. I sit down too. I feel completely certain that we are all thinking different things, but share a sadness that we will be going our separate ways in the week ahead: work, nursery, home.

Later when my daughter is brushing her teeth she realizes that she no longer needs the plastic step that has been accompanying her around the bathroom for the past few months. She is overjoyed. I am not convinced. I’m not sure I’m ready for all these endings.

Time To Go

It’s the last day of our holiday and it’s still raining. We visit Baggy Point, a rocky outcrop reaching into the roaring wind and surf. Fighting our way through the gale we flex our umbrellas against the whipping rain and come to a bench near the promontory. Surrounded by heather and gorse it looks onto the cliff edge, which is lined with grass and dotted with pink thrift. Beyond, the sea and sky are sandwiched together in different shades of grey. I look at the bench and see a small metal plaque with some lines engraved in it. Leaning close I can just make out the words:

Rest here beloved in your new life
As oft you did with me when in the old
The majesty and power of which you are now part
And I will come and ease my aching heart

Underneath this plaque is another, marking the death of the writer some ten years after his wife. I hope there was someone to comfort him in the years between. I hope he had children and that they visit this spot and sit on the bench in kinder weather, thinking about them both. That’s what I’d like to imagine, anyway.

We turn towards town and I brace myself against the gusting wind, gripping my daughter’s hand tightly.

Rain, Rain...

Ever since I mentioned that it was sunny in Saunton it has been raining. Blankets of rain. Vertical, horizontal and perpendicular rain. Rain that splashes up off the ground and meets rain coming the other way. But not wanting to be confined indoors to television, or table tennis or even the swimming pool, we have carried on as before. Locals have become used to our cagouled figures passing by, hoods tightened against the wet, determined to continue with our holiday schedule.

When we arrive at the bicycle hire shop, children in three coats each, adults wiping rain out of their eyes so that they can see the way ahead, it is so wet that the owner hasn’t even opened for business. We have to make an emergency call to him for equipment.

Kitted out, we cycle along the Tarka Trail through wheeling squalls and blustery showers. My daughter is behind me in a covered trailer, so is for the most part dry. Occasionally I shout backwards into the gale to find out whether she has succumbed to hypothermia yet. We lose some as we go along, but the core of the party reaches Instow, turns round and wearily cycles back on soggy saddles, clicking grimly through the gears, against the same blurred background. In the end the weather lifts a little and I open the front of the trailer so my daughter can see her surroundings. “Are you ok?” I shout over my shoulder as usual. “Yes daddy but I’m a bit wet” comes the reply. I’ve been cycling in the rain for an hour and a half, I think, and you complain about a little drizzle? “Never mind, we’ll be back in a minute” I shout.

We arrive back at the cycle shop and the owner comes out. “Oh dear” he says, looking at my daughter. “Oh dear” he repeats.

I look round. Everyone looks round. Not being a frequent bike rider these days I have forgotten about the spray thrown up by the back wheel, most of which has found its way onto her face. She looks like she has been on night manoeuvres. Peering out from under the mud she says accusingly “I told you I was a bit wet.”

Stranded

More than the sweeping hills and clifftops, the coves and sandy beaches which stretch away endlessly, it is the boats that I have noticed since we have been here. In nearby Fremington Quay the track winds along next to an undulating pill, boats stranded in repose, a trickle of seawater carving its way through the sandbanks. Past a wreck lying on its side, rotten timbers jutting like ribs. Soon the trickle broadens and the sea comes into view, and a dredger, a long, rusty suction pipe resting along its length, ensign fluttering weakly in the breeze. Further along at Instow the smell of brine is stronger. Cranes circle the harbour and the masts of the brightly-coloured sailboats are gathered like cocktail sticks in sausages. Soft clinking blows in across the sand.

I feel a little like these beached boats, slightly ragged and waiting, lopsided, for the tide to come and lift them. Other people’s roles seem to be clearer than mine. Men are professional, or they are retired; not chasing round rooms with shark arms or preparing for the 3pm Family splash session.

It is a new world of etiquettes. What is the correct way to listen and respond to details of other people’s professional lives in this world? I am currently pitched at the level of an uncle who was in business himself many years ago. Au fait enough with the world of commerce to prompt a couple of interested questions. But I am quickly slipping towards the territory of a great aunt who responds with a “Well that’s all very nice deary. Would you like a cup of tea?” The old world is becoming hazier and hazier. And since noone understands what I am doing they don’t ask about me it. Which is a shame, since it is now that I would like a bit of interest. Still, I prefer this world – it is gentler and less populated and suits my rhthyms and cadences.

Devon Cream

It was £259 for the boiler. The boiler repair man turned up, nosed around a bit (mainly to make me feel better about the £259 I think) and then pressed a magic button on the underside of the unit. Everything immediately sprang into operation. It’s a great sound, the “wummpphhh!!” of gas re-igniting and the promise of effective radiators and hot water. Tempered by the cost of the resuscitation of course. I was left wishing I’d put more effort into solving the problem myself.

What stopped me spending the rest of the day sitting on the kitchen floor with my head in my hands was the knowledge that we were going to Devon for a few days around the bank holiday. It’s an annual jamboree with my wife’s parents and brother and his family.

The trip down was cold and grey until Somerset. Then suddenly there was warmth and teatime sunshine. As the clouds rolled away in clotted cream heaps, a plane dived high above the hills ahead of us like a shooting star. Finally we reached Devon and the winding gravelled road to the farm and neighbouring cottages.

Near our cottage is the computer room, where I sit at one of those all-in-one-seat-and-picnic-table constructions. Next to a playground containing no fewer than 4 trampolines (it’s a new playground trend). Outside the trees are rattling urgently in the wind, sounding like waves breaking onto a sandy coastline, or a band of zealous tambourine players. Sunlight filters through the leaves, creating a kaleidoscope. We knew it would be sunny, as my mother in law had confidently announced that morning. “If there is enough blue to make a sailor’s trousers, it will be a sunny day”. The row of trees means I can’t see the girls bouncing high and elegantly on the trampolines behind them. They are screaming so loudly I am almost tempted to go round there and see if they are alright.

My daughter is so happy with her beloved cousins and it is reciprocated. “I love you” she calls happily towards the younger one as she moves nearly out of earshot. ”I love yoouuu…” the answer comes floating back on a warm gust.

Room at the Top

Every day seems bluer and sunnier. I opened the window in my daughter’s bedroom this morning and my gaze was drawn to the sky, backlit blue and criss-crossed by a geometry of vapour threads. Below, the white stucco reflected sunlight like a Greek hilltop village.

This has been my daughter's room since she was born. Before that it was the least important room in the house: a spare bedroom for our occasional guests, containing a wrought-iron bed, a wooden chair and little else. In the months leading up to her birth I banged together flat-packed MDF into a cot, shelf and changing table and by the time our daughter came back with us it had become the most important room. I don’t spend much time in it anymore. In the early months I spent a lot of time there – time I can’t even recall now - sitting in the dark, rocking her gently and hoping desperately for sleep. Now the cot and changing table have given way to book shelves and a bed and her favourite pink toys. And my time is limited to a couple of stories at bedtime.

Since my sister gave birth a couple of weeks ago I have become an uncle as well as a father. Seeing her baby has made me think of those times. My daughter pulled some photos out the other day showing me with dark hair and beard, looking a lot more than three and a half years younger. Few hints yet of the grey to come. Our daughter grins when we point to her baby self and tell her that it’s her. I think she thinks we are joking. Or maybe just deluded. I can see what she means though, since it all seems so long ago. I’m absurdly nostalgic. I could sit for weeks looking at one photograph if left alone long enough. I feel nostalgic about people, places, even objects … and myself. I have great affection for my younger self. So innocent and unknowing. I’d like to have been able to put an avuncular arm around myself and say there wasn’t anything to worry about. I’d get through. The early years are very short. You’ll be alright. Just stick with it. It might even be useful advice for my daughter one day.

Boiling Over

Our hot water isn’t hot any more. It happened a couple of days ago but until the tank ran out we didn’t realise what was going on. Time then to reach for the well-thumbed directory of exorbitant London tradesmen. How much will it cost us this time? Somewhere between £200 and £300 if past experience is anything to go by. Just what type of person are these charges pitched at? The sort who don’t blink at spending half a million on a place to rest their heads between trips to the office I suppose. So I went to the gym to have a shower. While I was there I had a sauna too. So much more relaxing without the workout that should go before it. Gym membership is another ridiculous cost. Several hundred pounds a year to take my daughter swimming and have a shower when the boiler breaks. Mind you, compared to the cost of mending the boiler that’s quite good value.

Perhaps I should go on a DIY course. I should definitely be better at DIY with our cashflow situation as it is. I do what I can. I really do. But it's not just the DIY. There are other aspects of being a parent I just don’t seem to be able to get to grips with, no matter how much I might want to. Among these are:

Bag-packing.

It’s not so much that I forget to take my daughter's bag with us on trips and playdates, but that I don’t think of packing it in the first place.

Craft.

I was recently at a friend’s house admiring the intricate tiaras made of silver foil and little stick people she had fashioned from sparkly pipecleaners with her daughter. It’s just not me.

Baking.

I cook. But I don’t bake. Cupcakes are a mystery to me.

Shopping.

Spending half an hour choosing a fairy toothrush with my daughter like my wife does is beyond me. I just don’t have the patience. “How about this one? It’s pink.” is about my limit.

Mutual hairbrushing.

It seems to come so easily to mums. If my daughter wields the hairbrush in my direction I begin to feel a bit funny. “Great. Thanks. That’s enough!”

Nursing.

I kiss it better, of course. But extended sympathy for minor ailments doesn’t come easily. If she’s really sick I do leap into action though.

Imaginary play.

A bit of it is good. “Look, this is a pretend ice cream. Yes. Strawberry, Mmm.” That’s fine for a while, but eventually I just have to go on to something more…real. Like a newspaper.

Haircare.

I’m a shampoo man. Conditioner I don’t understand. Also, I never seem to dry my daughter’s hair enough for my wife’s tastes.

Milk.

I’m forever forgetting to buy milk when only a thin meniscus remains in the two pint bottle. (And quite often I find I haven’t bought any food either. Luckily I’m quite good at creating dishes from the contents of the food cupboard.)

Clothes.

I tend to leave my daughter’s discarded clothes (bath, bedtime etc) where they are taken off, meaning to pick them up later. Strangely, whenever I return someone else has already removed them…

Saying “I love you”.

Isn’t it about showing not telling? No? Well, I’m working on it.

Scooter Girl

It is such a nice evening that my daughter and I decide to go for a spontaneous scoot around the block before bathtime. She’s had the scooter – pink, three-wheeler, one on every street corner - for a few months now but has only just perfected her driving. Previously, every time she attempted to scoot she would crash into a wall and march away from the scene of the accident, windmilling her arms. Then, folding them, she would stamp her foot and exclaim “I’m NOT going to SCOOT any MORE.” Now, after plenty of practice during the school holidays she has successfully made it through the temper barrier and sails the streets in a flurry of pink.

The back streets near our house are empty so she is able to scoot freely along pavements and across roads, with me shadowing her like a bodyguard. We skirt the pub, with its leering Banksy rats in stucco, and arrive at Ledbury road. We turn left and sail past all the clothes shops and handbag shops, on towards another pub. The pavement is filled with drinkers, and men look on smiling, women giggle knowingly as we speed past. These are the rewards of childcare, I remark to myself. We motor on. More smiles, laughter. How the world loves us: a father and his daughter cruising the stucco streets of West London. Maybe they are laughing fondly at my daughter's pink satin glove which dangles from the handle of her scooter, I think.

Finally we complete our circuit and arrive home. After parking the scooter in the hall we tell my wife about our trip and how everyone was so happy to see us whizzing around the locale. My wife grins and points downwards. Suddenly I understand the smiles and the laughter. My flies are gaping wide open.

Fairy Tales

We have travelled west out of weekend London to Hughenden Manor and are sitting in a gently undulating orchard on a picnic-covered rug. The trees cast their shade in irregular inkblots. The sky is aquamarine and cloudless. A far-off jet engine echoes faintly. Our daughter is dressed in a pink gauze skirt and satin-effect pink top and looks a Midsummer Night’s Dream. She runs giggling through a clump of dead daffodils, fists pumping. “Oh it’s a woodland fairy!” says a lady in a kindly tone. Unseen birds toot and trill.

The orchard is planted in perfectly straight lines, which aren't obvious unless you are sitting next to one of them. Then you can see the rank stretching away. Tags dangle from branches, revealing unexpected names like Laxton’s Fortune. Lane’s Prince Albert. George Cave. Families sit at intervals quietly appreciating being near to the earth. I lie down on my back and let the breeze play on my face and tweak at my hair. Suddenly I am between sleep and consciousness, half-remembering fragments of childhood and holidays as my daughter’s shouts ebb and flow in the air. All the while the birds sing.

After some time we decide to investigate the gardens and wearily raise ourselves up from the ground. We pass a group of majestic fir trees. One, its needles pointing downwards, looks like it is dripping wax onto the earth below. On the other side we are flanked by a line of Horse Chestnut trees which is occasionally broken, giving tantalising flashes of raking Chiltern hillsides and buttercup meadows.

We plunge into the coolness of the woods, where cowslips and bluebells quiver in the draught. Two daffodils are flowering in the damp chill under a holly tree. We come almost into the sunshine again and our daughter runs under the shade of a wide and ancient fir tree, its trunk skeins of plaited wood.

We cross a broken fence into the meadow and our daughter runs ahead singing stories and entreating us to follow. “Come with me on my train!” We follow until she tires and then all sit down on a fallen tree trunk. She stands on the slippery bark and starts telling another story. She slides and falls – not far – but continues on in her excitement, incorporating the tumble into her tale. I get up and haul her to her feet. She realizes that she has scraped her legs and her eyes fill with tears. I look into their brown depths and see my wife, my mother and my sister, as usual. And hurt and sadness she doesn’t yet know. I hoist her up onto my shoulders and we return up the hill towards Disraeli’s grand house.

Time Decay

I've got a painful tooth today. ‘Sensitive’ I think they call it in the adverts. When I ran my tongue across it this morning it sent sharp, painful frissons along the surface. I'm getting to the tipping-point now, when illness and affliction become a daily constant rather than a periodical inconvenience. It’s a land inhabited by older people. When you ask the elderly how they are there is usually a list. And if you're not careful they'll go into detail. “Oh really?” I say, my mind deciding instead to freewheel down another avenue.

Personally I have become used not to talking about illness. Having lived with serious illness in someone close to me over the last few years it has frequently been the last thing I wanted to do. Sometimes though, I really did want to and couldn't. I suppose that's what separates the serious from the mundane. If you end up talking about it, its usually something minor. Have you noticed how nobody ever asks you how you are when it actually matters? The worse the illness the less likely people are to want to know. But when it comes to minor ailments like a sneeze, the world rushes to offer you their blessing.

My teeth, anyway. I suppose they are serving me right. I haven't always looked after them as well as I could. I haven’t visited the dentist often and when I have it has usually led to wrenching and uprooting and filling and injecting. My wife complains about my ‘gappy’ teeth. But actually the most obvious of those gaps - the one at the front - has gradually closed over the years. I still have a milk tooth too, which has done very well to keep going. I don't think it does much, crenellated between its younger siblings either side. But I appreciate it hanging around. It’s another symptom of my lack of oral conscientiousness and the result of a missed appointment when I was sixteen and didn’t care. It’s ok though, since I don’t smile much. Or perhaps that’s why I don’t smile much. In the future I'm expecting a lot more rebellion in various body parts, particularly from my teeth. But in the meantime I'll try to enjoy all my faculties, as my daughter does, unquestioningly. She didn't notice that illness surrounded her in her early years and continues to smile and a sing determinedly.

I'm looking particularly healthy at the moment in fact, due to a tan acquired in the normal course of life-not-in-an-office, something which I am pleased to report office-bound types find extremely galling.

Perfection

I woke this morning full of worry. Was I late? I wondered as daylight rushed in at me, accompanied by the ching-clang-ching of scaffolding up the road. Where was my wife? What about school? As a revving circular saw around the corner and a rumbling rubbish truck joined the party I began to make out familiar shapes around the bedroom. Gradually I realised that it was in fact my morning off. One day a week my wife takes our daughter to school, leaving me to get up when I want, unless I have something better to do than sleep. It’s a glimpse of freedom; a rear view mirror into life before parenthood. For one morning I can leave the plastic crockery in the cupboard and pass over the pink-cup-with-cats-on-it in favour of the china cups.

The galling thing about childcare is how near to perfection it is. If you weren’t sitting at home watching Lazy Town you could be watching the Cricket World Cup, sipping on a beer. The bus taking you on the school run could instead be bringing you back from a long lunch with friends. And of course if you weren’t spending half your money on your children then you could be buying a lot of exciting stuff for yourself. And to cap it all, what did you do before all this freedom was lost? You spent your days in the confines of an office, surrounded by people you wouldn’t ordinarily have passed the time of day with in the kitchen at a party where you didn’t know anybody and you were reeling drunk.

As the result of a complex process of negotiation I arrived to pick up my daughter from nursery on foot today. It turned out to be a bad day to choose, since it was raining and I hadn’t brought an umbrella. Still, this was unlikely to be a disappointment to her, since it meant a chocolate lolly from Waitrose. As she emerged, laden with bags and coats I couldn’t help noticing a crumpled piece of paper in her swimming bag, nestled atop a damp towel. I unfolded it and discovered a picture of a pink sheep with blue legs. “Who’s this for?” I asked, expecting the worst. “It’s for … you daddy!” she said, beaming, before adding “I couldn’t do it with white. I very love you.” Not a victory for her in the short-term perhaps, but a perfectly judged long term strategy.

Forbidden Pleasure

Most days my daughter has some small work of art in her hands at the school gate. A piece of A4 paper revealing a roughly coloured bunny or a ragged splat of paint. She taunts me with them. “Ooh, is that for me?” I ask hopefully. “No daddy. This one's for … mummy”, she replies, matter-of-factly. “Oh”, I say, downhearted. Then she produces another one from behind her back and says without a flicker “And this one’s for ….” I brighten momentarily, “…me.”

There’s never one for me. Yesterday she said she had one for me, but that it was still at school. It’s become a daily routine. I don’t know whether she sees it all as humorous or if it’s simply that by my ever-presence I don’t rate such gestures. It does make me a little sad though. I want to be given something just for me. As it is I have to steal other people’s pictures to fix on my pinboard. I probably made a mistake by showing my disappointment the first time it happened and she fastened onto it as a little battle she can win in a war in which I generally have the upper hand. In the difficult and confusing world children inhabit, these victories must mean a lot.

Back to School

The grey morning after a sunny day is a mood not often expressed. It’s like waking up with a hangover, or suddenly recalled guilt. Momentum lost. A car braked. Nothing, where something was. The grey London pelmet can be a dispiriting sight and aptly signals the end of the school holidays.

So how did I do?

Helped arrange nice holiday in Cotswolds. A+
Trip to see grandparents. A
A couple of playdates. A-
Went to the park a lot. B+

“This was Stay at home dad’s first proper school holidays and he tried hard, with successes in several areas. Notably he displayed skill in arranging a very pleasant spring break. Some subjects do need to be addressed however: namely a tendency to permit too much television viewing. Promising overall.”

Well that’s just my take, of course. And I realized it was time for my daughter to start school again when I found myself having a stand-up row with her in the street over the correct theme tune to new CBeebies show Mama Mirabelle. I said it was “Mama Mirabelle’s ho-ome mo-vies…” She said "Mama Mirab-e-elle’s home movies…” (I was right.)

Talking of television. Another week, another child survey. Dr Aric Sigman’s survey on TV watching was recycled after his meeting with MPs yesterday. While I don’t necessarily disagree with some of his conclusions – although no TV for under 3s is patently absurd - I do object to being told how to bring up my child by a man with his own website (never trust someone with their photo plastered all over their home page).

“I’ve got four children myself” I heard him declare proudly on the radio yesterday in response to a mother’s pleas. Hmm. According to his website he frequently travels to exotic locations halfway across the globe (why?) and on website City Speakers International is listed as a broadcaster, consultant psychologist, business speaker (charge band £4000-£7000) and after dinner speaker. Now it may be unfair of me to suggest, but apart from having a vested interest in being controversial, does he really have time for much childcare do you think? Trying to feed a baby while a toddler moans about being bored and wanting to watch CBeebies? Desperately attempting to finish a household chore or bit of work, with a child at a loose end? I would suspect not. Thanks doctor but I’ll see myself out.

Chicken

Watching men in suits delivering their children at school is one of my favourite pastimes. At least they are making the effort, I suppose. “Come on” they hiss as they tug their child along the pavement, itching to get onto their Blackberry and thinking about their ten o’clock meetings. Don’t get me wrong, I remember those days, when I wore a suit and thought about different things. But allow me my moment.

How long will it be though? It's scary, this game of childcare chicken that I’m playing. I’m probably at the clenched-hands-on-the-steering-wheel stage, on a scale of hairs-raised-on–the-back-of-the-neck to needing-a-change-of-clothing. There I am, bolting along, surrounded by the aroma of burning savings, while childcare rattles towards me with fire leaping out of its expensive twin exhausts. Will I brake before childcare piles into me head on? Or will I jump out before impact? I really don’t know. It’s a funny thing, living on savings. That’s what they are for, after all. But it’s not human nature actually to want to use them.

Occasionally a friend gets made redundant and rediscovers his children; but then eventually gets another job. “I’ll miss the boys” said one the other day, shaking his head sadly as he contemplated returning to work after six months. It reminds me why I am doing what I am doing. It’s a privilege to be able to spend time with my daughter. I love her foibles and good humour, she appreciates my reliability and the change in my pocket for an ice cream. I don’t envy the men in suits anything, except of course their bank balances.

Paid in Full

I’m always deeply suspicious of men who say “I like women.” Yes, I always think. I bet you do. “I just love being around them.” Men in the weekend supplements say it. Generally powerful, attractive men. What does it mean anyway, apart from the obvious? Is it code? I’m not sure.

Anyway, I am increasingly finding that I like women too. Well, mums, anyway. On the occasions when we meet up with other families I drift towards the mums and enjoy chatting to them. I want to listen and swap stories. I am like them, after all. They have often left something behind too – a career - or they feel unappreciated, or are teetering on the brink of a massive mental breakdown.

I’ve stopped calling myself a stay at home dad in male company now. “But what do you really do?” men will ask. “Oh, you know, a bit of childcare, writing.” (They don’t.) “He’s not doing anything!” they declare, looking around knowingly. Yes, they’ve found me out. The combination of childcare and part–time work amounts to really almost nothing.

What my life no longer contains are any outward signs of success. Childcare is a readjustment to the rulebook. Who is there to congratulate you on a job well done? Where is the end of year party? I’d actually welcome a performance review, but even that isn’t going to happen.

Today I had a strange sensation while reading Topsy and Tim Go on an Aeroplane to my daughter before lunch. I suddenly remembered business trips with fondness. I always hated them then, but there was the feeling, niggling. The glamour! The importance! I had a bit of standing then. But not any more. Now I am paid in sticky kisses and tired hugs. Noone even notices me.

Dirty Old Town

The pigeon poo is still there. An irregular dried-on patch of white that seems to represent much about coming back to London. And perhaps even London itself. A semi-permanent reminder of the city’s immutable grime and thoughtless waste. Even the crusty drips stop short, never arriving at their target; stopped in time.

I’ve decided that I’ll clean it up when I re-paint the window frame, which has now almost entirely sloughed its coat of paint. This winter it had a fierce raking from the Southwesterly winds which I guess bring with them the stray seagulls I see outside from time to time, swaying drunkenly on TV aerials. Now, only a few flakes hang on, not enough to hide the spongey interior.

There’s no point endangering myself twice over I tell myself. I’ll get to it soon. I always seem to have a paintbrush or filler in my hands nowadays, trying to cure the latest problem before another piece of the house falls off. We’ve become inner city landed gentry: leaking, peeling and cracking, and without the cash necessary to repair it all properly. Perhaps I can charge for tours. Or let the roof fall in and call the National Trust.

While we were away, staff at the now-pristine pub next door forgot to lock the door to the store-shed which abuts us, and someone has moved in. Someone who isn’t choosy about where they sluice unmentionable matter which I can smell as I come downstairs. I thought I'd make use of having a vulnerable daughter in tow and touted her in the pub to illustrate the health risk. They promised to fix it, but I have no faith in London promises.

Going Home

The day is shimmeringly hot. So hot that the birdsong is muted and time has become disconnected. The electric blue sky descends into hazy heat near the horizon. A jet scores the perfect blueness with twin vapour trails, which quickly blur and fade like a healing scar. The only things moving are something in the flowerbed and the shade creeping around the garden in slow motion. A frond trembles, then a rustle, then silence.

It’s afternoon and the lunch plates lie on the table outside in the stillness. We’re sitting on the grass in deckchairs. Our daughter is sitting in a paddling pool I found in the shed, covered in snail trails and earth, and hosed down. She’s splashing, and singing as usual. We’re all lost in the light and the heat.

An end of holiday air hangs heavy. I have the feeling that I’m going back to school, or I’ve finished a term. We’re going home to London tomorrow. My wife is starting back at work and with nursery still closed for another week I’m returning to a week with my daughter.

I mention something about our return to my wife.

“OH!” says my daughter.

She’s taken to saying this recently in a Brief Encounter sort of accent, to denote her permanent state of surprise.

“Are we going home tomorrow?” she asks, aghast.
“Yes, mummy’s going back to work.”
“But what will I do?”
“You’re still on holiday next week.”
“But what about mummy?”
“She’s going back to work.”

She is sitting up to her waist in warm water in a candy-striped pink swimming costume and pink lacy hat. She looks intently at something not there in the bottom of the pool and the corners of her mouth turn down.
“It’s ok, I’ll be on holiday too…” I say, to forestall tears.
“OH!” she says, without relish, still looking into the water.

Everywhere I look I see finality. Things will not be like this again. We will be older. Our daughter will be older. The season will be different. The light. The heat. Perhaps what I’m feeling is the end of normality. The return to being a stay at home dad.

Power Cut

We had a power cut this morning. My daughter was watching a cartoon. I was blogging. My wife was in bed. I carried on blogging on battery power. My daughter was most concerned and went to tell my wife about the event. It sends you back thirty years, a power cut. Not to the days of labour unrest necessarily, but just Sundays when the shops didn’t open and there was nothing on television anyway and you had to play games with counters and dice.

I got to thinking, what if all this running out of oil baloney is a government ploy to stop teenagers playing on their Playstations? It would be a sensible move. Strategic power cuts; a few library forms distributed through the post. And a side benefit would be to rid the world of reality TV (don’t get me wrong, if it’s on I watch it) and TV chat shows featuring people from other TV shows … and Jordan. But what would I do of an evening without all this ‘entertainment?’ I wonder for a second and then realize I could re-read Cider with Rosie.

We enact the modern equivalent of singing around the piano for a while in the silence. I can hear the children next door. Ramblers crunching past on the road outside. Wood Pigeons whooping in the garden. My wife starts reading a book to our daughter.

Suddenly the television bursts back in a blaring of colour and voices and the modern world is arcing in on us with appliances whirring and lights flashing. The book gets put to one side. Even I am watching the cartoon in fascination. I remember I’ve left my copy of Cider with Rosie at home anyway.

Sahd in the North

It’s grim up North. The North Cotswolds, that is. We whizzed out of our Gloucestershire village and were bowling north along the winding backroads when we hit traffic at Stow on the Wold. Suddenly cars were stuck bonnet to boot like a line of hungry slugs, inching through the Slaughters and the Chippings. Arms were hanging out of car windows, the temperature rising. Outside there were people on their knees trimming their lawns with scissors, as they obviously do in Oxfordshire. At the first turning I took evasive action using my primitive satellite navigation system. (A map held in my left hand against the steering wheel. I know it’s dangerous but we were going at 5mph.) Eventually the cars thinned out and we arrived at Hidcote Manor.

My wife’s parents very kindly enrolled us in the National Trust last year when we were with them at their local NT attraction and my face fell at the prospect of shelling out £30 for us to walk around looking at flowers and eat cake. So we are bona fide members, although I haven’t got round to affixing the sticker to the screen yet. Like many other National Trust destinations Hidcote reeks of middle age. Its car park is full of Hondas and MGs, everyone is polite and noone runs around.

It was an enjoyable day. The gardens weren’t crowded. The weather was good. There was no feeling that we should be getting the most for our money, since we hadn’t paid any. We had lunch, enjoyed tea and cakes and bought a few plants.

On the way back our daughter sings “I like to be-ee in the ca-aar!” into the dusk. I don’t know why. From my seat in the front all I can usually hear is back seat arguments. But very soon the singing has stopped. I crane to look back in the rear view mirror. Both passengers are sitting with their heads lolling at the same angle, mouths slightly open; both dreaming of gardens and scones.

Village Idiots

Well that’s the end of the Cider with Rosie idyll, then. This morning my wife went up to the village shop with our daughter to get the newspaper. (I stayed at home blogging, of course.) A few minutes later, she returned, red-faced, with a giggling daughter. What happened? I asked. Apparently, she (my wife) had pointed at the Chupa Chupp display on the counter and asked our daughter loudly which willy she would like. Laughter from both (male) shopkeeper and daughter, possibly for different reasons (I hope).

Mind you, while they were out I had a minor embarrassment of my own. I was blogging in front of a large window, which faces onto the street, with a three quarters-full bottle of wine beside me in order to describe it for Drunk Mummy. I turned round and found a group outside looking in, their eyes moving slowly from me to the bottle and back in true cartoon style.

Now we have been exposed as crazed nympho and desperate dipso we may be leaving sooner than we envisaged.

Simple Pleasures

Another hot day. It’s early but the last vestiges of moisture are quickly vanishing under the sun’s floodlight. Jackdaws shriek. Wood pigeons flap by with beaks full of twigs.

Welcome to the jungle!” says my daughter, beaming. “I’m the zookeeper. There are lions by the rhubarb, do you want to see them?”

It transpires there are also leopards up the slide, zebras near the trampoline and lions prowling by the see-saw. I visit the animals in turn and have brief conversations with all of them. “Hello. Are you well? Do you enjoy living in this garden?” “No daddy, it’s a JUNGLE.” “Oh sorry, er … jungle.” I feel like Prince Charles. My daughter is jumping up and down with excitement and skipping from one toy to the next to introduce the garden’s denizens.

There is a reason for this menagerie. The previous day we visited the Cotswold Wildlife Park with my wife’s parents. Our hearts sank as we handed over an assortment of banknotes and saw the blanket of parked cars stretching across the horizon. We left ours several fields away from the attractions and went off to get some lunch. With the queue for the canteen too long to contemplate we opted for the snackbar and came away with a selection of children’s lunchboxes, and chips smeared with translucent ketchup. As we grimly tucked into the processed feast, perched at a picnic table and silently bemoaning our misfortune, my daughter suddenly bounced up and down and said “This is the best picnic EVER!”

By her bed she has collected a holiday assortment of favoured possessions. A snail shell, a piece of felt, a pendant on a pink ribbon, a rabbit sticker, a padlock. I love the care with which she has assembled them so thoughtfully. Just by being there they mean so much. Right by her dreaming head.

Sunshine Dreams

Like everyone else, we are away on holiday. On Friday we rammed the car full of children’s toys, the remnants of the fridge and ourselves and set off west for the Cotswolds. Strangely not many others were on the roads and we zipped along the empty motorway, swept down the Chiltern escarpment and banked towards Oxford as the sun sent the thermometer ticking up by degrees. Eventually the motorway ran out and was replaced by single lane roads and a panorama of stone walls and farmland. The panorama slowly became dusty villages and the heat intensified.

It was getting to my wife and daughter, who started to argue.
“What can we do now?” asked our daughter.
“Read a book?”
“No, that’s boring.”
“No they’re not. Books aren’t boring.”
“Oohhhhhh…”
“Lets’ play flibbertigibit.”
“Yes!”

Flibbertigibit is a variant on a number of car games they play. This one entails counting 3 lampposts before shouting “flibbertigibit” to win. It’s a slow game though, on country lanes. On motorways it’s most entertaining. “Flibgibiflibgibflib…” stutters our daughter as the lights flash past. Other games in the series include “Jibbly jobbly” and “Jooby jobby”. When it reaches a crescendo of excitement and the shouting starts I have to admonish them like Topsy & Tim’s father on the motorway in Car Games.

In the end though we arrive at our destination in the South Cotswolds and pile out into the garden, the ice in our glasses clanking and footballs being punted. Here the stone is not the ochre of the North Cotswolds but a lighter grey, mostly covered in healthy-looking lichen. There are apple trees sheltering the lawn at the foot of the garden. Dainty flowers emerge from the mossy grass. If you sit still and listen, the noises are those of a child’s farmyard toy, with cocks crowing somewhere nearby, chickens clucking next door and the occasional dog’s bark.

And all the time the sun burns more brightly. I lie on one arm and my daughter lies near me looking at the daisies, singing contentedly. It reminds me of when I was young too. Lying on the lawn in the summer stillness, the faint buzz of aeroplanes above, the dank smell of earth below. The happiness of nothing in particular happening. Of everything being that moment.

“Time to unpack!” comes my mother’s voice, cutting through the birdsong. Only it’s not my mother, it’s my wife’s voice and our daughter is up, stumbling towards the house, churning turf beneath her feet.

It’s been a while; I’d forgotten about life in sunshine.

April Fools

I didn’t have a busy day yesterday. My wife took our daughter off to see a friend and I had nothing to do. So I headed straight for the PC with a hot cross bun in my hand and stared through the poo-stained window. Since I had some time on my hands I thought I’d pay a few visits. I dropped in on Wife in the North, Rilly Super, Mutterings and Meanderings, Pig in the Kitchen, Drunk Mummy. It felt like an extended coffee morning or something, without actually having to stick in my unshaven face and scare people. There were a couple of other places I stumbled into and felt uncomfortable. Where it was like being a man at a hen night. But I will visit the others regularly, especially Drunk Mummy, who serves wine rather then coffee.

Later, I was reading the Evening Standard and the April Fool thing got to me again. Big Brother microphones on posts? Fulham manager’s car bugged by wife? New Generation Game with Brucie? Bob Geldof’s outfit? Surely they had all slipped through late. I had to sit down, suddenly my head was throbbing.

Then I saw it – “Too many hours in nursery ‘turns toddlers into yobs’” the headline yelled dumbly. The topic comes up frequently of course. This government funded study concluded that long hours in nursery (more than 35 per week) “had both positive and negative effects” on children. They were “more sociable”, but also “more antisocial”. Eh? Why on earth do they bother? Oh yes, to elicit feedback from the likes of Councillor Chris Cooke from Tamworth who emails in his advice that children need “whispered parental love and care” interspersed with “occasional play”. Oh yes, and I bet he’s done a whole heap of that. I think I’ll stick with Allyson from Wolverhampton and Debbie from Leicester who choose to send their children to nursery and pay the mortgage. I mean, really.

Pigeon Poo

We’ve been very normal over the past few days. First we visited Windsor and met some friends for pizza and ice cream. It was nice, as far as the new UK weather system - which entails getting a suntan in the rain while getting your head blown off by a freak gust of wind - will allow. Then we went to Lewes, where we ate organic sandwiches and vegetables we’d never seen before in the sun/cold. Lewes is a lovely town, which reminds me of growing up. It has proper shops and nice green spaces and people who smile and speak to you in the street. It really felt like we were on holiday. We sat in our friend’s back garden with white wine and crisps, while our daughter responded to the countryside feel by playing vets.

On our return to London I found that a pigeon (I assume) has defecated on my window at the top of the house. It must have sat on the flashing with its nether regions (or wherever they do it from) over the edge and trickled it down gently. No mean feat. And a unique avian insult which I am aware of every time I look outside. I may even have to take my life in my hands and clean the window. If this is my last entry you will know what has happened.

Happy Holidays

Is it just me or is there something insidiously disturbing about April Fool’s Day? I end up scanning the paper for something jokey, but suddenly everything looks bizarre and I can’t tell anymore. Yesterday I found something in the Observer about Blair taking up acting, which I assume was a joke. But it could well be true. And there might be others I missed. It’s like when I read Time’s Arrow , a book in which everything runs backwards, and after extended periods in its pages I was confused about what I was meant to be doing next, or before, or… It devalues the news for me. I can no longer take a war hero’s funeral seriously or a childkiller being sentenced to life, for fear of being caught out by some fake piece. And for the rest of the year I frequently have to remind myself that it’s not April 1st, or on April 1st that it’s after 12pm. Or am I missing the joke?

Anyway, the contractors turned up to fix the road over the weekend. It was a very impressive endeavour, which I watched with a knot of shopkeepers and passers-by. We all looked on intently with folded arms as huge bleeping lorries unloaded molten asphalt, which was then artfully laid in smooth black blankets by big men with complex mechanical machinery. Then came the rollers. Huge contraptions that rattled and ground and shook the street with an otherworldly bass roar. It was, I imagine, a foretaste of how the end of the world will start. After this climax, all that was audible was the sound of alarms chirruping the length of the neighbouring street. Now it is back to the comparative quiet of the thundering buses.

My daughter starts her spring holidays today. Was it my imagination, or did her teacher hand her over on Friday with visible relief? Other children have already been on holiday for a week. When I visited the park with her last week we were approached by a large group of women and children of varying ages. As they passed by, I overheard one of the mums say “Well, that’s the first week over – another two to go, though.” [Sigh.] “Absolutely”, they all agreed. It wasn’t surprising in itself, I suppose, it was just the contrast with what was, at a distance, a happy scene; and the way she said it: so resigned to the lack of pleasure. My wife is taking time off work to spend the holidays with our daughter and me. So we will be a normal family group for a while. That might take a bit of getting used to.

Stop Press

She was in a better mood. I picked her up from school in a flurry of spray and windscreen wipers and got her home for a regulation lunch of chicken goujons, pasta and veg. Halfway through the meal I leant down to say something to her about broccoli and she kissed me firmly on the nose.

“Daddy, I love you” she said. And as a grin crept across my features “I like your face … and I like your voice”.

The grin is still there.

Mellow Fruitfulness

Weather? As I gaze out on the autumnal mist, spring already seems faraway. Raindrops hang morosely from the railing outside the window and the birdsong sounds low and lamenting. The thermostat, casually flicked down two days ago has been hastily turned up again, but the house stubbornly refuses the radiators' advances.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it is autumn before the roadworks around the corner are completed. The entire road is currently an empty concrete tundra, pockmarked by watery hollows. That’s half a kilometre of prime London street. I wondered why and then saw a notice pinned to the metal fence, which emerges from concrete shoes like a beach windbreak.

“There is no work being carried
out at this time as we are waiting
for the concrete to set. This will take
approximately 5 days depending
on the weather”

So there you are. I’m sure they’ll be along shortly.

Perhaps it’s the newly bad weather that has affected my daughter’s mood. Or maybe it was just my insistence that she is always happy. Yesterday we went over to my sister’s for another family gathering - the baby is very nearly here and we all seem to want to experience the fragile ephemerality of these last moments. My wife was in the car this time with the curly-cornered A-Z (this was were I was going wrong last time I realized – it dates from the 1980s and so doesn’t show half the one way streets in London) and although I didn’t have any major directional problems we did have a few terse exchanges:

“Is it left? Is it left? IS IT LEFT?”
“I don’t know where we are.”
“You’ve got the MAP.”
“Yes but where are we?”
“Look at the map!”
“I don’t know the name of this street.”
“It’s on the MAP!”
“Yes, but WHERE?”
“PAGE 95 G3!”
Silence.
“I’m never coming with you in the car again.”

On second thoughts maybe it was that that did it. Anyway later on, when my daughter was already tired she glimpsed her Easter present from my sister and husband and when we wouldn’t give it to her she started crying uncontrollably until she fell asleep on the journey back.

This morning she was still a bit weepy and not herself. It’s a lesson in the tenuous balance in children's emotions. She suddenly seems sad and frail and vulnerable. She’ll be over it by this afternoon I’m sure, but it reminds me I’m the one in charge, things are down to me, her happiness is not to be depended on.

Tea for Two

It’s nice, all this weather. Driving through Hyde Park I was hit by the heat haze, and the sparks of sunlight coming off the Serpentine reminded me of midsummer beaches. We were on our way to the Orangery – a café in the middle of Kensington Gardens which is a candidate for the grandest teashop in the country. It’s a little known spot and a favourite destination for West London mums, passed on by word of mouth in hushed tones down the generations. To enter is to enter a pushchair showroom. I was meeting a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while and who now has a two year old and a newborn and a nanny. She had arranged to meet another friend with a young daughter and we all sat down and ordered tea and flapjacks. I had the vague sensation that I was at the wrong table, but I always do when I’m out on trips like this. We chatted. The mum referred to me as “Mr Mom” and laughed, which might have been ironic, or perhaps not. The conversation got round to children. She wanted four and quickly. “So sad just to have two” she said. I smiled indulgently, thinking of our poor dysfunctional family. Were people staring at my daughter and me? “Call the social services. The police. Anyone.” Invariably things like this come to the fore when I’m in groups of mums. It’s never a particularly easy experience. Comments emerge like teabags shaken out of a teapot - eventually and in messy clumps. But then why should it be any different? I didn’t spend time with groups of women before, so why should things have changed now?

We said we really must meet up again, sooner next time. I swung my daughter onto my shoulders and headed in the direction of the car park. I don’t suppose we will. She doesn’t need me for any reason and I can’t say I’d get much out of it either. “Look daddy, I’m reaching out but I can’t touch the sky” said my daughter and I knew what she meant.

Happy Days

It occurred to my wife and me over the weekend, what a cheerful girl our daughter is. You might think that’s not too much of a surprise. That children are essentially happy until the realities of adult life are foreshadowed by the furious onrush of hormones at puberty. And you might be right. But for us it’s mainly of note because we’re not always – how should I put it - the most happy go lucky of people. And because her birth was accompanied by some hairy times of the post-natal type that they don’t (dare) tell you about in NCT classes. In the midst of the childbirth melee she was all calmness and emerged with little need of tears. And afterwards, through all the difficulties, a faint mewing and a wobbly bottom lip were her main methods of complaint.

“She’s so happy today” my wife remarked as our daughter sat in her little chair amusing herself bending pipecleaners, juggling pom-poms and lustily singing an assortment of nursery rhymes. “She’s always like that” I replied, realizing, suddenly, that she is. She’s always singing some tune or other and keeping herself amused with a game of some sort. And her speciality is leaping out of bed with a smile on her face and an observation about the world which seems inappropriately amusing for that time of the morning. And that’s when she’s not giggling in machine-gun tones as I tickle her on the sofa or lift her upside down. I often start laughing along with her for no good reason. It’s like the effect sun on London brick has on me, or a premium bond cheque, or a cocktail on the beach, or more like all three rolled into one.

In fact it is almost the case that the more miserable I am feeling the more happy and uplifting my daughter is. It’s an extraordinary thing. To me, anyway.

Altogether Now

It looks like another of my fantasies is on the way to being fulfilled. I came across a UK dads’ group - HomeDad UK - while I was researching stay at home dad topics the other day. (I’m getting quite passionate about all this : “Rights for dads!” “What do we want? Equality! Equality! Equality!”). I joined up and tapped a tentative post into the electronic buzz. “Hi, we all go to the Model Village and are regulars at Bunny World “ the answer came back. In fact there’s even an upcoming day out at the Model Village in the diary. I only wish I’d found this two years ago, but I guess I was distracted by changing nappies. (It’s God’s way of emptying your mind – have you ever noticed how this period coincides with having no useful thoughts of your own?) It’s a great idea - there are a million sites like this in the USA – but this is the first I’ve found in this country. The founders, Nick Cavender and Simon Windisch, started it up in 2000 and it has over 500 members and a huge amount of information and support.

By popular request, here are a couple of weekend jokes from my daughter: “Why does the t-shirt go in the bath? Because it thinks it’s a shoe.” “Why does a necklace stick on the wall? Because it gets all gluey.”

Must Try Harder

It always happens, doesn’t it. Self-congratulation is to be avoided at all costs. I may have made it to nursery in good time after a 50 mile trip, but with one mile to travel I found myself well behind schedule yesterday. And as a result a magnet for the slowest drivers on the road: wobbling bike riders, never-ending bendy buses, stalled eighty year old learners.

Finally I arrived at the nursery, leapt out of the car and pressed the buzzer of shame. "Ah yes, good afternoon, your daughter is downstairs in the older children’s class." came the polite but unimpressed response.

In the middle of the classroom sat the teacher and a large group of young children, all of whom turned to stare at me as I entered. My daughter was sitting in the corner unhappily sucking her thumb, surrounded by her belongings: backpack, cuddly toy, drawing. "I made this for you daddy!" She said, brightening.

The teacher looked on disapprovingly. I expected her to say: "Well you’ve let your daughter down and you’ve let us down. But more importantly you’ve let YOURSELF down…"
Instead she just said "Best get her home." and looked at me pityingly.

I gathered up my daughter and her belongings and exited behind a barrage of thank yous, determined to arrive half an hour early on Monday. I can't escape the feeling that I have let down stay at home dads everywhere when that sort of thing happens. I really must try harder.

Daytrip

I went to the Oxford Literary Festival for the day. I grew up there and find it strange yet vaguely comforting. It’s all honey-coloured stone and leering gargoyles and it looks like the 21st century has elbowed its way in, only to find a forgotten tribe of 14th century architecture ganging up on it. Only in Oxford would I find that a curry house I knew has been converted into a bookshop, reversing a countrywide trend. Only there would I wander up a slender alleyway I had forgotten and discover a pub I had forgotten, which, on further inspection hasn’t changed a bit since I was last there in 1983.

Talking of change, is the move to calibrating petrol in litres some kind of trick perpetrated by the people in charge of the country? I suspect that it is. Yes I know we are going metric, but if so, why is mpg used for fuel consumption when you buy your petrol in litres? Easy, mpg is a bigger number, price per litre lower. The price of unleaded petrol is now around £4.00 per gallon. I discovered that when I was working out that the cost of the journey in the Prius for the 100 mile roundtrip (2 gallons, or 9.1 litres of fuel = £7.90 - I’d bought cheap petrol at Waitrose). Plus wear and tear of course. Which got me thinking. My journey was carefully planned. I’d allowed no time for delays. What if broke down on my way back? Who would pick my daughter up? What if my wife were uncontactable? I’d probably be arrested as I stepped down from the cab of the AA lorry. “We’re usually quite understanding when a mother does that sir, but seeing as you’re a man it clearly demonstrates that you are incapable of childcare. So it’s straight down to the slammer with you.”

On my way through a typical cobbled and leafy Oxford street I saw a whisky shop (only in Oxford etc) and thought “Oh my father would like something from there”. I do this all the time. I’m always wanting to point things out to my daughter while I’m driving along and she’s asleep in the car or not even in it.

Anyway, the journey back went well and I arrived at nursery early. “You were quick” said my daughter as she tripped down the steps.

Pretty Ballerina

Well on the bright side (thank you for your messages of support and medical advice), the pub refurbishment is over. And it looks great. So now I have a nicer view when I hobble round the corner to buy my milk. Sadly I am no closer to actually going inside, although I want to be in there more than ever. It’s a constant torture and an unlikely but nevertheless very real reason for not living next door to a pub. The foot is much better too, although my daughter doesn’t appear to understand the arrangement whereby I am the one relaxing on the sofa demanding food and drink.

Anyway it’s probably time to mention another side-effect of blogging. What with all this blogging about childcare I have found myself doing less of the actual childcare itself. “Daddy can we play?” my daughter asked the other day. “Not now, I’m writing about what we did yesterday.” I found myself replying. “Why?” Why indeed. Thus chastened I immediately dropped onto all fours as instructed and pretended to be a cat eating a bowl of polystyrene chips. What had I been thinking?

I got my due reward later that evening. When my wife came home from work my daughter disappeared upstairs, returning shortly afterwards with her musical box. She opened it, placed it on the coffee table in front of us and as we all watched the pink plastic ballerina rotate regally, reflected in the backlit mirror, she sat between us, linked her arms in ours, pulled us close and said “This is nice isn’t it.” It was.

Crocked

I’m suffering from Blogger’s Foot. I was blogging on my laptop with, it would seem, intense concentration, resting my foot sideways as I wrote. After a while I got up to make a cup of tea, or get a chocolate toffee finger, or both, still thinking about some topic or other. I took a stride, but when I planted my right foot I suddenly realized it had gone numb. It gave way onto its side, accompanied by a sickening ripping sound. Hopping around on my left foot I waited for the pain. It didn’t come straight away of course, due to the numbing, but it arrived soon afterwards. There is some bruising, but actually it’s not as bad as I feared and I can limp around and do most things, including blogging.

I’m reckoning on my daughter keeping my spirits up during my convalescence. She has recently started telling jokes: “Where does the chicken go for an ice cream? Because it eats all the ice cream.” “Why does a rabbit go to dance? Because it gets to dance.” “Why does an elephant go? Because it is!”

Yes, I have great hopes for her on the comedy circuit too.

Roadtrip

I don’t know about you, but all this weather reminds me of a Hollywood disaster movie. Hailstones like golf balls, searing heat, angry cloud formations that creep up on you as soon as you nip out for a newspaper. Still, as long as I don’t end up like Kevin Costner on an upturned boat it’ll be ok.

We braved the weather and the cross London journey to visit my heavily pregnant sister. It was a salutary reminder that while inside the congestion zone a Prius might nip around looking vaguely sensible, as soon as you leave this enclave you look like you are driving around in an orthopaedic armchair or something on hire from Shopmobility to fetch the groceries. You might as well be displaying a bumper sticker that says “Can you tell me where Waitrose is?”. Still, we got there in the end, surviving a trip up a one way street in Brixton (suddenly BMWs were approaching me on both sides of the road. I was either contravening a road traffic regulation or I had stumbled into a covert Police operation.)
“What’s wrong daddy?” asked my daughter, picking up on a squeaked expletive. “Just, er, going up the wrong road” I hissed, doing a U-Turn (surprisingly good turning circle the Prius) and bumping my way over the pavement, pursued by a bunch of irate locals. We also survived the severe climate change, with the coats required in arctic West London proving too much in the South London heatwave. My daughter fell asleep in the high temperatures, I just overheated.

We arrived in a tizz and a sweat, and I turfed my daughter out of the car, barely awake. “What’s wrong, are you a bit grumpy?” I asked as she looked at me with obvious disgust.

This is by way of an apology. I grab her from the school gates, strap her in the car, drive jerkily for hours across the capital in stuffy conditions, rudely awake her and expect her to be in a good mood? Sometimes parents expect nothing short of miracles from their children. I think she’s just about forgiven me now.

Love

Over pizza yesterday my daughter announced "I love you daddy; I love you mummy..." And then, as we sat there beaming "...and I love handbags."

She's three and a half. My wife has the normal amount of handbags for a woman (one on the go, a portion of the wardrobe dedicated to rejects). I have the usual amount for a man (zero). How has this happened?

Room with a view

My favourite part of the weekend papers is the ‘Writer’s rooms’ feature in the Guardian on Saturday. You actually get to see inside the house of one of your literary heroes. It’s priceless information. No matter if they all talk about their ergonomic office chair, or their tilting desk, or how they transfer work from page to PC and then back again 50 times. It’s the room itself that’s the thing

From the window in my room I look out on a petrified forest of rooftops, chimeys and defunct television aerials. Generally I have to keep the blind jammed down so I can see my laptop screen. But sometimes on grey days I look across the still urban vista, fix on a point in the distance and float away. It is recommended practice that a writing desk be positioned at right angles to any window to prevent just that kind of diversion. But I find it reassuring looking at all the chimney pots and back windows that nobody else ever sees.

There are books all around me. A dartboard with a dart still embedded in a double-missing position. A lot of papers. A printer. Laptop. Various family photographs. On the shelf next to me is one of my wife when she was half the age she is now (we met a long time ago). Beside that lies my late father’s razor, an old-fashioned brass model covered in verdigris. (It was always old fashioned and covered in verdigris as far as I can remember). It’s the sort that has a twisty bottom which turns to open the jaws, so that a new blade can be inserted. (These come in little plastic boxes.) I pause and take it off the shelf to look at it, as I often do. It reminds me of a small bathroom in a small Victorian terraced house. Of damp towels. Pears soap. I can see the razor lying on the shelf under the mirror, a film of Palmolive shaving cream adhering to it. And here it is now. Where is my father to use it? I constantly expect him to come by and claim it. And demand to know what I thought I was doing when I took it. When he lay in his coffin I kissed him as I had seen people do on television. He was cold and clammy and it wasn’t the experience I had hoped for. He looked peaceful, as they tell you people do. But it wasn’t peace. He just wasn’t there. Like someone who’s asleep and having a nightmare. That’s not peaceful, really, is it? I remember as I put my lips to his cheek I felt the faint brush of stubble. He needed his razor then.

I wonder what my daughter will remember of our time together. Then I gaze at a distant chimney pot and float away.

Playdate #2

My daughter declared herself fit for nursery the next morning, an assertion born out by the thermometer. And it turned out that her playdate had the class cold as well. So I strapped the spare child seat into the back of the car and headed in to collect both of them at lunchtime.

I wasn’t looking forward to it. I hadn’t been looking forward to it for a while in fact. For someone with one child, the idea of two to look after holds a great deal of uncertainty. And one of them genetically unrelated and therefore presumably immune to the usual cajolings. I arrived at school and feeling like a kidnapper collected both of them. “Where’s my mummy?” asked the playdate. I felt this wasn’t a good start, but he was easily placated and spouting reassurances I whisked them both off for lunch at home.

It was all very sweet. They are like a little married couple. My daughter tells him what to do and he (mostly) obeys. She showed him round the house and he sprayed toys around like a New York fire hydrant. I’ve almost forgotten the wonder I felt when my daughter first started having conversations with other children. But I still enjoy eavesdropping on these poignant little exchanges. She wanted to pretend they were at school and he wanted to take all his clothes off, but, hey, as long as they weren’t crying...

Lunchtime came along. In desperation to provide him with vegetables he would like (I believe that to be one of the toughest challenges involved in childcare) I had cooked up a great assortment. The tactic somewhat backfired though, as he made me pick out all those he didn’t like. It’s hard making other children eat. You can bully your own child into it but it doesn’t feel right with someone else’s somehow. Anyway, after the usual "If you...", "Just one, then..." dealmaking we departed for the park. The ball was a stroke of genius (to the extent that taking a boy to the park and providing a football can be genius) - he set off after it immediately like a golden retriever. We went to the playground. He fell off a slide, cried. I bought biscuits. And then - after looking at my watch only a very few times – it was soon time to deliver him home again. As we all said goodbye his beaming face told me he it had all been ok. Or was it that he was overjoyed to be home again.

'Flu

Yesterday I did what I always do when I’m in poor spirits. I went to browse in the local charity bookshop. (Peaceful; nice décor; bargains galore.) And then onto Woolworth’s for some Quality Street pick-and-mix. It seemed to do the trick and I wandered home in appreciably higher spirits, chewing a chocolate toffee finger. It was another of those indeterminate days when the weather still wasn’t sure of itself. If anything, the winter chill was ahead on points against the spring sunshine and I was a little uncomfortable in my thin corduroy jacket. But the weak sunlight was pleasant on the eye and enjoying the look of it bouncing around Portobello market I very nearly tripped over a man crouching on the pavement doing something with telephone wires.

It seems at the moment as if the whole area is in the grip of one huge refurbishment. There’s the pub and the closed main road of course. Then there are the basement conversions conveying clods of foul-smelling earth into skips, and the numerous localized utility jobs in progress. I negotiated the excavations and crossed the closed road to my house. When it was closed last year for the first time and before it was dug up, residents traversed to and fro smiling and chatting about the exciting development. There were children on bikes, impromptu games of football. It was a street-party; a mini urban circus. This time they’ve already dug it up and there has been no chance of a repeat. Ah, the good old days.

When I collected my daughter from nursery I knew all was not well as soon as she appeared at the gate. Eyes downcast, she showed no interest in the fact that we were going home on the tube, which she usually loves. I felt her forehead and while not burning it was certainly hot. “I’m tired daddy” she said, quietly, and miserably. I packed her into a taxi and we headed home. Puffy-eyed and downcast she sat watching CBeebies while I fed her Calpol. Through the pain the vital question occurred to her - was she still going to have her playdate tomorrow?

Springtime

“Is it spring yet?” my daughter asks urgently from the back of the car. It’s the second time she has asked this question on this one journey already. Multiply that by the number of minutes in the day and you can imagine how often the query comes up. “Erm ... nearly.” is my stock response. “Why?” she asks. “Because it’s getting warmer.” “Why?” It’s a pantomime. She has had a fascination for the seasons since I started trying to explain the weather some time ago. Initially spring came about a day after winter, which in turn followed autumn by about two minutes. Now her appreciation is becoming more subtle and she seems to be on her way to grasping the concept. Not as quickly as I am losing my sanity though.

But is it spring yet? Some say nowadays that it starts on March 1st, and it certainly feels like it has. But I am sticking to the old-fashioned March 20th, the date of the vernal equinox. I want it to be spring for her sake, but I don’t want to mislead her. I hardly dare dream of the joyful day when spring finally arrives. Mind you, then she’ll start asking about summer.

Bad Vibrations

The scaffolding outside the pub has come down. That meant plenty of tattooed yelping and clanging and more peering through our windows. “Look they’re coming into our house” said my daughter of the forest of poles outside, as we attempted to exit. It did look that way, but when I got back from the school run it had all gone. And with it some of the noise - the daytime banging had turned into 24 hour banging – which has now diminished somewhat to an insistent grinding.

Taking over from the pub refurb is the road resurfacing. It’s a long story. (Still, I’ve got a blog for that.) The houses in our road don’t have foundations and what with the double-decker buses grinding their way up and down all the time, they were gradually being shaken apart. With the likely result a pile of some of the country’s more expensive rubble, the council acted. The re-surfacing was done at great length and expense and disruption, but it seems a crucial layer was left out or the materials were faulty and the cracks are starting to widen once more. So they’ve all come back for a second go.

Maybe it’s just the incessant tearing apart and putting together going on around me, but I have been feeling a bit dispirited recently. Of course for every Bunny World up there is a down. Days when you just can’t take the screeching children, the desperate inanity of it all. Days when life becomes a mobius strip of chicken goujons and Numberjacks and playgrounds and games involving crawling around on the floor. I felt in need of a boost so I searched the internet for succour. I logged hungrily onto stay at home dads’ websites and read about their experiences. It made me feel worse. I’m not a subscriber to the theory that reading about others’ misfortunes is any aid to happiness. In my experience it tends to have the reverse effect. Perhaps I just need a good talking to from Supernanny.

Spidergirl

As if to make up for her absence over the weekend my daughter reverted to her old dependency yesterday. She hung onto my back pockets (a bungee sort of experience in my stretch jeans), wrapped her arms around my leg and called upon me to carry out the usual amount of menial tasks, which I completed with more than the usual enjoyment. “It’s a pleasure to serve you” was on the tip of my tongue. However it wasn’t all fun and games.

She’s taken to irrational outbursts of petulance. Ostentatious crossing of the arms and huffing into a corner: “I won’t do that”. If she gets no joy the list soon escalates into “No, I won’t listen to you”; ”No I won’t do what you tell me”; “No I won’t live here any more” etc etc. She was at it in the playground yesterday. Frustrated by her inability to scale the spiderweb rope arrangement she stormed into a corner, huffing and wobbling her shoulders up and down.

It was the sort of situation tailormade for Supernanny. She would have created some naughty corner or anger step and sent the cowering child there while the parent lay weeping uncontrollably from a mixture of embarrassment, rage and general parent overload. Personally, I find the best thing to do in these situations is to ignore her. Supernanny would probably have fixed me with her gimlet gaze and done that tutting she does, while adjusting her skin tight shirt and secretarial glasses. “Fill up these plastic boxes with her toys and for goodness sake buy a wallchart.”

Eventually my daughter came back for another go, succeeded in scaling the ropes and declared “I’m very proud of myself.” I was proud too. It’s good to have her back.

Growing Up

My daughter saw her cousins this weekend. She has two: sisters - one a couple of years older and one a few years older. She sees them from time to time and when she does, we don’t see her. Suddenly, we, her parents, who still do everything for her: who dress her, because she won’t yet dress herself, and take her to the toilet, because she feels more comfortable there in our company and on whose shoulders she lays her fraying chestnut curls when she is tired; suddenly we are no longer the most important people in her life.

It is a window into a future time, when she has gone (or we have gone) and she no longer idly strokes our faces or bounces on our laps or gorges herself on a bedtime story with thumb in mouth and head hard against us.

The window shuts with the end of the weekend. But a faint chill remains. I’m ready, although it’s a skill that is not yet needed.

Bunny Girl

There was really no contest for our Friday afternoon out this week. It had to be Bunny World. Or Mummy World, as I discovered it is in early March. I’ve never seen so many mums in the same place at once. We walked into the play barn and as I reeled back from the hot gust of oestrogen the entire place went silent and hundreds of mums turned in my direction. (I may be exaggerating.) There were mums there from 16 to 60. Mums with babies, mums with twins, mums with triplets. (I saw my first 3-abreast pushchair there: a knot of mums had formed around it like a group of men around a sportscar.) Fortunately my daughter seemed to feel the same way
“There are too many peeeeple daddy” she complained. So we fled through the nearest exit and went to find bunnies.

The bunny experience took a little longer then usual on this occasion, since my daughter had grazed her knee earlier in the day and was affecting a limp. So she limped from bunny to bunny offering them bunny food (it was nothing, really; in the league of grazes strictly Championship level), and twizzling their long ears (yes I had washed, Savloned and plastered it thoroughly).

Afterwards we visited the gift shop (a bunny mask, in case you are interested – and at 50p quite a bargain.) Then we ate triple chocolate shortbread in the cafe. Finally we returned to the play barn, now a lot less busy.

As we loitered, a friendly four year old came and introduced herself to us and invited my daughter to slide down the Astra Slide with her.
Taking full advantage of my unthreatening beardlessness I started chatting to her mum, who was standing nearby holding her one year old. All very pleasant.

Now, one of the clearest lessons my role is teaching me is not to share my childcare theories with mums. It’s tempting: my views are in no way controversial and God knows I’m sure mums spend half their time swapping ideas on the subject. I just don’t think they really want some beardy guy, no matter who he is or what he does, telling them how he thinks the world of children works. For me it’s just chat, for them I suspect it’s like listening to their husband coming home in the evening and telling them exactly where he feels they are getting it all wrong.

Many, many slides later, when both girls have finally had enough, they run off towards the gift shop.
“Come on, let’s get some sweets” says friendly girl.
“No, that’s not a good idea” my daughter replies in a schoolmistressy tone.
"Very impressive" friendly girl’s mum exclaims, looking impressed.
“Well, you know – I just refuse point blank to buy her sweets” I half joke. (In fact my daughter prefers chocolate.)
Friendly girl’s mum’s face drops. She suddenly looks crestfallen and utterly miserable.
“Well, you know, sometimes you just have to give in, don’t you?” she responds, pleadingly.
“Yes, absolutely, of course, definitely, completely” I gush.
After an uncomfortable pause and sensing it is time to go we head off smartly for the car park. As we near the Prius I look over my shoulder and see friendly girl dragging a harried-looking mum towards the extensive sweet display.
I ruffle my daughter’s hair ruefully and strap her in her car seat.

You know how to wiggle don't you?

After my shave and what with the sunshine and everything I’m in a good mood as I gambol upstairs with my daughter to her classroom. Then, as I walk through the door, I see playdate mum. She’s nice and all, but I felt in need of a couple more days before seeing her again.
“Hi.” I say.
“Well, hello!” She beams. “Thank you for the thank you card!”
“Thank you for the thank you!” I parrot, horribly.
She laughs gaily. It may be that she just doesn’t notice or care about my solecisms. Or perhaps it’s the lack of beard.
We fuss around our children for a while and then troop downstairs together.
Outside in the limpid pre-Spring sunshine we circle around each other on the pavement in readiness for our appropriate departure trajectories. Then suddenly I say it. “We really should arrange a return playdate.”
“Great”, she beams.
“But you’re having a baby soon” I say, “So, er, obviously…”
“No, that’s fine, I’m not going to let the baby affect the children”.
I squeak with laughter. She sees me laughing and laughs too, but I'm not sure we're laughing at the same thing.
“Right well, er …”
“How about next week?” she suggests.
NO! I expected it to be a constantly postponed, always–a-few-weeks-off type arrangement. Not this.
“Of course. I’ve got nothing on.”(I haven’t … ever.)
“Sounds great. How about Friday?”
“Friday. Great.”
So that’s it. All arranged.

In the car on the way home I wonder what I’m going to do. There’s no room in our house for running along corridors. No boys’ toys. No Wiggles videos. In fact unless you like running up and down stairs it’s not a whole heap of fun. Then suddenly, while swerving around yet another road-crosser unaware of the silent menace of the Prius, it occurs to me what to do. I can give them both lunch. He likes football. I’ll buy a football and take them to the park and have a kick around and then onto the playground and then back for biscuits and hope that he doesn’t notice the lack of Wiggles. Easy. I don’t know what I was worrying about.

Close Shave

Obviously this whole blogging malarkey is an interactive opinion exchange sort of thing, and some of the feedback I’ve already had has been very useful. Yesterday’s advice on playdates in particular was extremely enlightening.

So the beard has gone. I’d been considering it for a while. I mean you don’t really want to be the guy with a beard do you? A short-lived fashion statement is one thing. John Virgo or Dave Lee Travis is something completely different. The other day I was in the bathroom standing in front of the mirror. Was I washing my face? I may have been putting on some moisturizer. Or perhaps I was just looking at something. Anyway, my daughter strolled in, as kids do. She looked at me for a moment, her expression denoting some interest, and asked eventually “Are you making yourself beautiful daddy?” I looked at the jumble of hair and the unruly beard in which flecks of grey had started to set up base camp. I felt somehow I was letting her down. So it’s gone and in its place is a light covering of stubble. I may go smooth, but it’s a big step all at once. Needless to say, when I presented my daughter with the new me she merely asked if there were any biscuits going.

Playdate

The building seems to be starting earlier every day. Today we’re woken by what sounds like machine-gunfire next door, punctuated by shrieking. I wonder if they’re using the work as a cover to reduce the pub’s staffing levels.

Life has taken an exciting turn: today we’ve been invited over for a ‘playdate’ by one of my daughter’s classmates. (Why playdate? I hadn’t heard of the word until a few months ago. Who felt it necessary to invent a description of two children playing together that included the word date? I mean it’s not as if I don’t already have enough difficulties camouflaging myself in a female world. I have to keep reminding myself not to call it a date by mistake. I can see it now. Police called. Husbands rung. Ignominy. Graffiti on my door.) The boy’s mum is the sort of eminently capable, cool and calm type that many mothers at nursery seem to be. Certainly not the flary-haired, beard-nested Worzel Gummidge that I am.

At lunchtime we walk from school together to their house, all holding hands (well the kids are holding hands and we’re either side holding our child’s hand - anything else would be weird, obviously) and eventually we get to their place overlooking one of London’s more exclusive garden squares. All very nice.
“A drink?” I’m asked. “Tea, coffee…?” “Err…” I usually find the longer you err, the more exciting the list gets. But in this case it stops after coffee. “...Tea please” I answer, finally, a gin & tonic suddenly appearing in my mind's eye. The mum is nine months pregnant with her third child and the hormones are really sluicing around - it takes her three attempts to make me a cuppa, what with putting coffee in first by mistake and then forgetting what I wanted and then asking about milk twice. I can’t help laughing (but sympathetically).

I never really know what to say in these situations. I feel like I have to reassure every mum I meet that I am actually doing it for love, I do know the basics of childcare and no, it’s not a ruse to go round to women’s houses when their husbands are out. I really need a certificate I can show them or something. Then the nanny comes in and it transpires that she’s pregnant too. They’re both grinning. Do they know something I don’t? I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable. I can handle my daughter, I can even handle her and my wife. But two pregnant women. At the same time.
I’m holding it together until the mum announces she needs her 40 minute pregnancy nap. I wonder how to respond “Would you like some help?” WRONG! “Have you got cable TV?” Mmm, perhaps. In the event it becomes obvious that she’d really rather I left, so I leave the kids chasing each other along the many corridors and dive home to do a bit of work.

When I get back they’re sitting happily watching the Wiggles, scoffing gingerbread. It’s been a lovely playdate, apparently. It was certainly good for me. But I feel guilty, and expect the kiddie police to be arriving any minute in a frenetic squeal of ABS, before leaping out and giving me a caution for lazy childcare. “End doo yoo mind telling us hixactly wot yoo ev been dooin for the larst hower… sir?”

We make our exit in a blitz of gratitude and head for home. My step is light on the pavement, until the terrible truth dawns. We’re going to have to have a return playdate.

Back to Reality

The pub next door is being refurbished. You know the sort. Gastropub. (I used to say that without wincing). Open kitchen in stainless steel, leaping flames, sizzling meat on beds of veg being ferried to and fro. Always packed with young people with bags and big coats and without children.

Anyway, noone told us, but suddenly there was scaffolding outside and planks positioned cleverly over our front door so that emerging in the morning gave rise to a sort of Laurel and Hardy moment. “Hey Stanley, careful with that scaffolding pole… Doooohh!” So there we are with builders peering into our front window (why do they need to be there, the pub is next door after all) looking surprised to see me sitting on the sofa playing aeroplanes with my daughter. I could of course go round and ask them not to plank us inside our own home and get angry about them staring in through our window like baboons. And I can. Because I’m a bloke they might actually listen. (Or maybe look concerned for a moment and then laugh once I’ve vanished round the corner). But I’m not angry like I used to be. Plus they know where we live. Plus I’ll be able to do it in person soon when the constant banging away at our hallway ends in one of them bursting through the wall like Rutger Hauer in that scene in Blade Runner where he sticks his head through the plaster upstairs in the wet old hotel where doves are getting ready to flap poetically into the bright night sky. (It’s a famous cinematic continuity error, but I guess it’s difficult to film doves flying into a dark night sky.)

It sounds like someone’s got a pneumatic drill and they’re ramming it straight into the other side of the wall. I mean what do they think is going to happen? Isn’t it obvious that it’ll come out the other side? It’s like a nightclub for demented builders around here - dull thudding mostly, then manic bursts of staccato banging. Don’t they know I’ve got a bloody blog to write?

Fantasy World #2

Since one of my fantasies has now been fulfilled, let me tell you about another. (By the way, it was every bit as good as I had dreamed – I drearily log on and suddenly the comments digit has miraculously morphed into an 8. Or did the moderator box reveal itself first, with its treasure of 8 unread messages? I can’t remember. It’s all an Oscar Night-type blur. If there had been a hidden camera - like on one of those shows where for the purposes of popular humiliation they surprise an unknowing, blank-faced victim, slumped open-legged on his sofa - my face would have been a picture.)

Anyway, back to the fantasy. I get up in the morning and while I’m sleepily transferring chocolate covered cereal into a cracked plastic bowl, the phone rings. It’s Bob. “Hi Bob”, I say, unsurprised to hear his voice on the phone at this time of the morning. “Hi Stay at home dad” he replies. “What say we get the kids off to school and then round to mine to watch the cricket?” (It’s quite a timely fantasy, this one.) “Great.” I say, “Then we can meet Tom down at the Cow and Bottle for lunch and a couple of beers.” “Perfect”, says Tom “And we can all collect the kids together, get them home and settle in for a session.” We agree that it sounds an excellent plan and ring off.

It could happen. No? No, probably not. Back to chipping off encrusted Coco-pops then…

Fantasy World

Recently I’ve been having these recurring fantasies. They involve people actually reading my blog. I know it’s ridiculous. You’ve got better things to do. Other things to read. Your own lives to document. But, still the fantasies come unbidden. In one I log on and instead of the usual 0 comments, the digit has changed to 1. I feverishly click the button and the comment reads “Beautifully written and crafted, this really hits the spot. I congratulate you on your courage and inner strength.” In other fantasies I feverishly click, but then discover all manner of abuse, blackening my character so darkly that I have to call a lawyer.

It all raises that central philosophical blogging question: why are we doing it? Is it for ourselves or for other people? Does it make it any more or less valuable if there is noone out there reading it? Don’t worry, I don’t expect an answer.

Model Behaviour

In the end the Model Village won. I have to admit I was instrumental in the decision. All that tiresome post-petting handwashing at Bunny World (yes, really) and the big draughty barn and the hyper-gift-shop with its legions of pink fluffy toys. Anyway, I picked my daughter up at lunchtime after nursery school, whizzed home (inasmuch as you can whizz in Kensington traffic, which, particularly in the morning rush hour, is reminiscent of the final stage of the Tour de France, or that Sylvester Stallone film where they mow people down for points), and then whizzed back, after realizing we had left her bag at the school gate. I say we, but in my daughter’s eyes it was of course my fault, and an unforgivable lapse at that. It wasn’t so much forgetting a bag as abandoning Dora the Explorer (river!; lake!; MAGIC CASTLE!!), whose pink face gurns from its flap. Anyway, after rescuing Dora, and a light lunch of ham and olive sandwiches, we set out for Beaconsfield and the Model Village.

If there’s anything more pleasant than whirring silently along an empty road (there’s a button on the Prius’s dashboard bearing the ghostly outline of an italic car, which, when depressed, means it does its utmost to travel only on electricity, and which the owner’s manual advises, with typical Japanese benevolence, is ideally to be used in built up areas late at night to avoid annoying the neighbours), warmed by shyly emerging spring sunshine, fragments of nursery rhymes floating forward from the back seat, then I haven’t come across it.

As usual, the Lilliputian splendour that is the Model Village doesn’t disappoint. It is our first visit of the year and while my daughter races round and round following the model railway I complete a leisurely circuit, engrossed in the attention to detail and workmanship. Other groups move around the village at a similar speed. Generally mums on their own with children, or mums in groups with children. Or mums and grandparents with children (“Pleeease don’t give Johnny chocolate grandpa…”). There is never another dad with his children. I’m used to it after nearly two years, but I still wonder where they all are. They exist, I know. There are possibly millions of stay at home dads, judging by all the blogs. But I never meet any. So my childcare is just her and me. No friends to drop by on. No coffee mornings. No girly lunches. Still, I’m mostly happy that way. And my daughter seems to be too.

As we sit munching Wagonwheels together at the end of our tour, I ask her “What’s your favourite thing at the Model Village?” She looks quizzical for a few moments. “Eating”, she replies, straight-faced.

Heavy Metal

I’ve had complaints already. Well, one. From my wife. I emailed her to tell her I had a blog and awaited a few vaguely positive comments plus some (constructive?) criticism, as usual. Some minutes later the answer came back “Sorry I’ve never really understood blogs. You’re a massive Metal Head with two kids?”.

The answer, I found, lay in a full stop. I am wwwstayathomedad. The Metal Head is www.stayathomedad. I can see that might cause problems in future. But after that unpromising start I got to thinking about Metal Head. “Well it's Monday and the first day of my first ever Blog.” He starts off breezily. But he posts only once, in June 2003. What happened to his beautiful children? His wife? His smiley son? Was there some horrible accident? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

In a desperate effort to avoid the same fate, I rush to make another entry. I thought a few strengths and weaknesses might be useful to illustrate my life in childcare. What am I good at? Making up bedtime stories that make my daughter cackle and scamper around the bedroom like an excited dog. (They involve an excited dog.) Coming up with afternoon expeditions we can both stomach (the Model Village or Bunny World this Friday?) I’m also quite good at combining unlikely kitchen ingredients to produce a meal apparently quite edible for a three year old. (Tuna and sweetcorn spaghetti anyone?)

My faults could of course fill three blogs. Poor shopping habits, leading to the need to combine unlikely kitchen ingredients (see above). Lack of sympathy for grazes, scratches, bumps etc (“Well you’re alright aren’t you?”) A seemingly limitless capacity for CBeebies, to the extent that sometimes I find myself watching it when I am meant to be watching Sky Sports. Difficulty mixing with mums. Frequent lapses in commitment to the concept of childcare. I could go on. And I will, tomorrow.

My Dark Materials

A while ago I wrote an article about myself for a national newspaper. I was in the first flush of pride after giving up my job in the City to look after my then eighteen month old daughter, while my wife returned to work. The article was well-received: friends and family congratulated me on my journalistic achievement, a literary agent was keen on a book deal, and somewhere I believe children are even reading about my experiences in a school text book.

Sadly though, interest waned, the book fell through and I'm not sure I rival Philip Pullman in many schoolchildren's affections. So, eighteen months later, with no audience for my ramblings - here's my story. If you're interested in how a stay at home dad, at-home father, house husband - there are a lot of names for it considering how many men seem to do it - operates in a mum's world, read on. And if you're a publisher, film producer or newspaper editor, I'm still available...