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Kids: A Walk in the Park

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It was a nice day on Sunday so I walked the boys to the park. My eldest cycled, the youngest walked, and I use ‘walk’ in its loosest possible sense. The scenic route that winds from our house to the park would take an average adult, walking at a brisk pace, about twenty minutes. It takes my children about as long as it took the three little girls in Rabbit Proof Fence to walk from the top of Australia to the bottom. My kids – even on bikes – dawdle like tourists. They sniff and search like dogs. Not a blade of grass or a fallen crisp packet is left un-investigated. Not a single opportunity to bicker or fight is squandered.

My eldest, Jack, 6 (almost), kept cycling off round corners as I hollered after him like a damsel in a horror film, as my youngest pestered me every few minutes to be lifted onto my back or shoulders, on the grounds that his legs were about to fall off. In the end he was more backpack than boy; a land-mine-lacerated soldier in NAM being rushed to the EVAC point. When we eventually made it to the park, we had just over an hour left to enjoy its delights before we would have to gather up the sherpas for the long hike back home, and to dinner –  you know, that meal where it’s a fifty/fifty shot whether the kids will eat anything, or just drop it on the ground and lobby for cake.

Time (and the coronavirus) has both brought the boys much closer together, and made them fight more viciously and frequently than ever before, but for all their shared ground and similarities each new day seems to bring a fresh divergence between their respective wants and needs.

Jack wanted to cycle round the bike circuit at the park – paved and lined to look like a town in microcosm, with park benches and bored parents standing in as buildings. Christopher wanted to run riot in the play-park itself. Naturally, I had to accompany Chris, on the grounds that he’s three, and more likely to attempt a daring escape. Luckily – for both my legs and my aversion to child social services – the two areas are only separated from each other by a hip-high metal fence.

I positioned myself inside the play-park so I was loosely equidistant from the two boys, with a clear line of sight to both. Whenever I put my focus on one of them I had to quickly crane my neck and spin around like a giant, agitated meerkat, only allowing myself to relax once I’d locked on to their manic movements. I had to remember to occasionally wave or smile recognition at my kids once I spotted them, so the people in the park didn’t think I was a particularly brazen paedophile.

Jack quickly struck up a friendship with a slightly older kid who was in the bike-park on a skateboard. At first I had to scrutinise their body language from afar to make sure Jack wasn’t being bullied by a human Bart Simpson. But, no. They were thick as thieves, in that enviable, you-had-me-at-hello way in which kids bond with their peers. I could see that Jack had assumed a leadership role, and was taking charge of their play, in that enthusiastically demanding but wild-eyed and creative way of his. Minutes later, Jack ran up to the hip-high fence, and I walked backwards to meet him, keeping my eyes trained on Chris as he flew down the chute for the fifty-billionth time (with just as much glee as he had the first time).

‘What is it, buddy?’ I asked Jack.

‘Daddy, will you come and play with us? I need some ideas for games.’

I was touched by the request, which probably spoke to the size of my inner child, but I told him I could neither abandon his little brother to fate nor drag him out of his perma-plastic wonderland against his will. ‘Besides,’ I said, ‘You’ve got tonnes of great ideas. I’m sure you’ll think of plenty of things to do.’

Just as Jack ran back to his new best friend, Christopher called me over to the chute, next to which was a little ground-bolted circular table complete with circular-table-bolted stools. He invited me to sit down, then scooped up some bark from the ground. He dropped two equal-sized piles of it on the table, one for me, one for him. ‘Your dinner, daddy,’ he said.

I pretended to eat some.

‘You want some chips?’ he asked. I nodded. Another pile of bark.

‘Tomato ketchup?’ he asked. I nodded, but I was a bit worried about that one. Thankfully he just mimed it.

As we were ‘eating’, a wee girl of similar age to Christopher arrived at my side, watching the proceedings with an expectant look. I offered her my seat. ‘Go on, sweetheart, you two can have dinner together.’

I moved back towards the hip-high fence and watched them with a smile as they played out their teeny-tiny, obliviously-cute approximation of a first date (excuse my heteronormativeness and projections of sexual power structures there). Once they were finished with their ‘meal’, they went off into the park together; spontaneously, wordlessly, operating by a mixture of instinct and telepathy, one following the other, then the other following the one, doing a fleet-footed, whistle-stop tour of the play-park, ninety-nine per cent glee, one per cent attention span. I, of course, had to follow them at a distance; a grumbling chaperone.

Neither of my kids needed me. Sure, they needed me to be physically present, to protect them from the formless dangers that lurked on the periphery of their seemingly safe spaces; to get them home again. But for the first time they didn’t need me to prop up their play, go on the roundabout with them, or join them as they threw sand in the air like confetti. I was pleased for them, but I was also, you know, kind of devastated. I knew this was just a blip. It’s not as though they were about to go off on a gap year or start working at IBM or something. But still. Being a parent is absorbing loss by degree, each new chunk of knowledge they acquire or glimmer of independence they gain taking them further away from you. This felt like one of those moments, and standing inside of it I imagined I could see all the way through to that final moment, when the house is empty of children.

Jack came running towards me, shaking me from my angst. ‘Daaaddddeeeeee!’ he shouted. ‘I need a peeeeeeeeee!’

I helped vault him over two hip-high fences, and stood guard at the side of a tree while he peed, breaking off half-way through to dash back to the park, because Christopher had been abandoned by his new friend (after he’d just cooked her his signature bark dish, too) and was running free and wild down the length of the play-park. Walking back to Jack with Chris in my arms, I thought to myself: ‘Maybe today isn’t one of these moments.’ My kids need me.

And I need them

Horror at the Edinburgh Christmas Market

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In the dead-zone between Christmas and New Year I took a trip to Edinburgh’s Christmas Market, which proved to be both absolutely great and utterly terrible at the same time. I went with my two kids, 5 and 3, and my friend and his two kids, 6 and 4. We’ll call my friend ‘Iain’, mainly because that’s his name. Our kids have names, too. I promise we haven’t just assigned them numbers.

Regular readers will know that my two are called Jack and Christopher. Iain’s kids are called Girl Child and Boy Child.

The train ride into the city was surprisingly stress-free considering that we were two hapless fathers herding four excitable, potentially unruly children into a claustrophobic environment crammed with disapproving strangers for thirty long minutes. For some reason that bit was fine. It was the arriving that reeked of failure, and that was entirely down to the tardiness of our initial departure.

We’d arrived at our home station with mere seconds to spare, so weren’t able to buy tickets prior to boarding. The six of us had had to sprint towards the train like something out of Home Alone, and then dash through the rapidly closing doors like something out of Indiana Jones. There were no ticket collectors/dispensers on-board the train, so we had to queue to buy them at Edinburgh before we could pass through the barriers.

We were slow to realise why everyone else disembarking the train was moving so quickly up the platform – the queue-savvy sons-of-bitches – and so found ourselves at the very back of the ticket-line.

Iain detests the traditional ticketing system. He prefers to deal with automata, which is why he spent the whole duration of our time in the queue frantically trying to buy digital tickets through an app on his phone. He failed. We reached the front before he mastered it. If it had been the Crystal Maze, he would’ve been left behind in the Train Zone as we went on to collect bits of shiny paper in the Crystal Dome.

I don’t know exactly why Iain hates tickets so much. It’s something to do with feeling beholden; of having to bow down for inspection to a haughty stranger. I think he just doesn’t like talking to people, something to which I can definitely relate.

We ascended into Edinburgh proper, fighting our way through a teeming crowd of thousands.

Edinburgh’s Christmas market stretches across two levels of Princess Street Gardens, with a giant, blindingly-bright Big Wheel dominating the event and the city skyline. This year it was crushingly busy and bustling, a clog of people being pushed up, down and along thin arteries flanked by coffee houses, portable pubs and assorted trinket-hawkers. The air – cold and sharp – smelled of irritation and fried onions; alive to boot with the sounds of a thousand ‘excuse me’s’ intermingling with the same six or seven Christmas songs everyone had been listening to on a loop for a solid month already. I haven’t visited the Xmas market since I was about 23, but I don’t ever remember it being this hectic, this brazenly commercialised, this soulless. The kids didn’t give a shit, though. The city was loud and colourful, there were chocolate-covered churros, and there was a mini-rollercoaster. What more could they want?

Iain was overjoyed to learn that we had to pre-purchase a big wad of tickets before the kids could go on any of the fairground rides. He again tried to enlist me in his one-man war against ticket inspections, but I just couldn’t share his anger. Normally I’m something of an anger connoisseur. I get angry over a great many inconsequential and pointless things, and I felt sad that I couldn’t add this one to the collection.

The big, bespectacled lady at the ticket desk asked Iain if he lived in an EH postcode area (i.e. within Edinburgh or its immediate environs). He said no. Because he doesn’t.

‘That’s a shame,’ she said, ‘You would’ve got a 10 per cent discount if you did.’

Iain didn’t miss a beat. ‘I don’t, but he does,’ he said, pointing a thumb back at me.

This was Iain’s chance to stick it to the man, and he was enlisting my help. His old friend wouldn’t let him down. Whom else could he count on in his hour of need?

‘No I don’t,’ I said.

Iain looked at me with disappoint in his eyes, while the ticket lady, in turn, looked at Iain with disappointment in hers. She looked visibly wounded, like her tenuous grip on hope had been wrested from her hands and cast to the gutter by Iain’s treachery. I just sort of laughed, and unashamedly bought my full-price tickets.

‘What did you do that for?’ asked Iain, unable to conceal how miffed he was. I explained that I had a vision of the future, the immediate future, and it was one in which I looked like a complete twat

The woman’s next question, I explained, undoubtedly would’ve been: ‘Oh, so what’s your post code?’ and I would’ve been forced to stutter out something like, ‘ah, E…H… 1… em, 1… 1…. em, 1?’

And she would’ve said: ‘And what street is that?’

And I would’ve said: ‘Em, I think it’s Street… Avenue?…’

‘Are you sure that’s a real street, sir?’ she would’ve asked.

And I would’ve said: ‘Em…could be Crescent… Place?’

‘Crescent Place? Sounds fake to me, sir.’

‘I LIVE IN A FUCKING BIN, OKAY? BEHIND A TOILET.’

So it’s lucky I avoided that, really.

The kids first went on the mini roller-coaster. I think it always helps when you’re trying to promote an atmosphere of happiness and magic for wide-eyed, excited children to have your fairground rides staffed by dead-eyed teenagers who look like they wouldn’t even blink if the ride suddenly derailed, sending your children catapulting into the night sky at 180mph.

We spent an hour or so at the market, going on some more rides with the kids; treating them to the rickety, rocket-shaped death-trap that was the Helter Skelter; feeding them chocolate; trying to get them to stop running in circles like dogs on a beach. Eventually, time took its toll on their manic dispositions and we realised it was time to head home, via McDonalds, naturally, because we’re bad parents.

We thought about going on the big wheel, but thought better of it when we realised it would cost us about £25 each. That’s a lot of money for the kids to decide they were bored after half a revolution, or for the younger kids to violently shit themselves at 100ft.

We made our way to the McDonalds inside the food court in the busy shopping mall that borders Waverley train station for the last – and the worst – leg of our journey. Horror awaited us. Great streams and chunks of it.

I scouted for a table and chairs in the busy food-court with my two boys and Iain’s Girl Child while he went into McDonalds with his little Boy Child to order the food. We hadn’t been sitting for thirty seconds when little Christopher announced that he needed a pee, elongating the vowels so the word lasted almost as long as an actual peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

What the hell was I going to do? Iain was lost in a crowd of people inside McDonalds. I had a unisex group of kids in my care, only two of them mine, so it wasn’t practical to take all of them to the male toilet with me at once. The clock was ticking: Christopher wasn’t renowned for his ball-control. The wife from a couple sitting at the table next to us with their two kids overheard my dilemma and offered to keep an eye on two of the kids so I could whisk Chrissy off for a pissy. I thanked her, but politely declined. Tick tock. I had to make a snap decision. Off we went. All of us. Not ideal, but necessary.

I led the kids around the lower level of the mall as we hunted for the toilets, keeping them close to me and tight together like a comet’s tail lest they get swallowed up by the throng of people. We eventually found the toilets, but the queue leading up to the turnstiles that you had to pass through before you even got a shot at relieving yourself was about 18 people strong, and I didn’t have that kind of time.

I hurried and herded the kids back to the table, hoping Iain’s journey into the dark heart of McDonalds would be completed. It wasn’t. What was I going to do now? Chris kept shuffling, jiggling and loudly complaining. I spied the main doors that led out of the mall and joined with the stone steps outside. Ah-HA! All being well – if I could find a place out there for a surreptitious piss – I’d be back at the table in less than a minute.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to the couple from earlier. ‘Would you be kind enough to watch these two after all?’

‘Stay still, don’t talk, don’t move,’ I said to Jack and Girl Child.

I lifted Christopher up under his arms and rushed him towards the sliding doors like a bomb. Once outside we dashed dead ahead into an alcove where Chris unleashed a long, flowing piss you wouldn’t have credited to a creature of his size; back we dashed and waddled, just in time for a young goth at the table behind us – who’d been sitting with her head on a table receiving worried back rubs from her friends for the past ten minutes – to projectile vomit everywhere. I saw it cascading from her mouth and through her hands like potatoey Vimto, an image that stayed with me for the rest of the day (and haunts me even now). Iain arrived seconds later with our food, and we had to wolf it down with the sharp tang of vomit still lingering in the air.

As we began to eat, Iain’s Girl Child loudly announced that she needed the toilet. Off Iain went, back he came and then, yep, this time Jack needed a poo. Off I went, back I came, and then Iain’s Boy Child had to go. No sooner had they left than Chris announced that he was desperate for yet another peeeeeeeeeee. Why was this happening to me?

Here I had the same dilemma again, and the same split of kids. Emboldened by my earlier success, I bomb-waddled Chris out of the mall’s sliding doors (‘Stay there, kids, and don’t move, okay?’) and back to the same reservoir of piss from before, still wet and plentiful, so he could add more to it. I rushed back, Iain returned and then, guess what?

‘Daddy, I need a pooooooo!’

‘Fuck sake!’ I barked, unable to stop the swear word from leaping out my throat.

Iain grinned. ‘I’ll be honest, the only thing that’s making this more bearable for me is seeing how awful it is for you.’

I laughed. ‘I’m glad to be of service.’

We finally got out of there and boarded our return train, where yet another round of pee-pees sent me up and down the carriage like an angry kangaroo. Iain found this, and my exasperated reactions, a continuing source of amusement. I silently wished for a ticket collector to come along the carriage and re-kindle his rage.

It had been a good day.

…most of it anyway.

But we both agreed that for now, and possibly forever, Christmas could definitely, absolutely, incontrovertibly…

…piss off.

Ten More Things I’ve Learned as a Dad (2019)

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^^^ That’s not me, by the way. I’m a lot less handsome than that.

Anyway, without any further ado, welcome to the sequel to my 2017 blog ’12 Things I’ve Learned as a Dad’.

Supermarkets can be the site of your greatest successes, and your greatest defeats

Supermarkets can morph from ethereal paradises into branded hell-scapes in the blink of an eye. Lots of things can influence this: your children’s mood and tiredness; their sugar intake; the ascendancy of Jupiter in Mars; black magic; the Hong Kong technology markets; how much caffeine/codeine/cocaine/morphine you’ve had in the past 24-hours, and how many times that day you’ve found yourself fantasising about jumping into a Ferrari and then immediately driving off a cliff.

What contrasts. One visit, you could be wheeling your children up and down the aisles like something out of ‘Well-Behaved Victorian Family Monthly’. They’ll be helping you put things in the trolley while sticking close to it, flanking it like undertakers accompanying a hearse. They’ll be smiling beatifically at old ladies and saying things like, ‘Mother, I do hope you’ll permit me to help fold all the washing tonight.’ Text-book.

The next visit, your kids are like Gremlins who’ve been fed after midnight. You’ll be trailing a Godzilla’s tail of destruction behind you as they duel their way up and down the aisles like Sith Lords armed with French baguettes instead of light sabres. They’ll be running for the exit like Olympic sprinters (necessitating a dangerous, high-speed chase throughout the supermarket); they’ll be jumping out at old ladies from behind off-brand boxes of Bran Flakes; throwing down police stingers to immobilise people’s trolleys; wearing raw chickens as hats; substituting live grenades for kiwi fruits in the fruit aisle; staging riots and taking people hostages. NEVER take more than one kid to the supermarket on your own. EVER. Unless you’ve got a ready supply of analgesics or hallucinogens. Because you have a lot of weapons in your parenting arsenal, but out in public, there’s one thing you don’t have, which leads us very neatly into the next ‘Thing I’ve Learned’…

Your kids know you can’t use your ‘smash glass in case of emergency’ voice in public

My wife and I have never, and would never, strike our children, ostensibly because we’re not cunts, but that doesn’t mean that our house swells with the sounds of holy silence. Sometimes we have to shout. Sometimes we don’t have to shout, but we do it anyway, because we’re over-tired, because we’re human, because our sanity’s been worn down to a nub through having to ask the kids to put their socks on seventy-five-thousand times when we’re already half-an-hour late for something.

Shouting is always – well, usually – a last resort, though. You don’t want to use it so often that it either replaces smacking as a cruel and debilitating psychological punishment or loses its short-term effectiveness. Once that seal’s broken, though, it’s hard to put the red-faced genie back in the bottle. Especially since the genie might smash the bottle and attempt to stab you with the broken end.

But there’s a particular shout that all parents have: the ‘I Mean Business’ voice; the ‘Shit Just Got Real’ voice. It’s a shout that doesn’t last long, and need only be deployed once. It’s kind of like Jesse Custer’s Genesis power in Preacher. One boom, one screech, and the kids’ blood freezes in their veins, and they petrify like statues.

And you can’t use it in public. Your kids know this. Well, you COULD use it in public, but you’d look like a maniac, or the sort of person who beats and body-slams children. So you do the only other thing you can: grit your teeth into a smile and issue vague threats at your children in a high-pitched, passive-aggressive tone of voice, while occasionally turning to shoot an ‘aw shucks’ shrug at watching strangers, thinking to yourself: ‘I’m going to kill these little fuckers when we get home.’

Say it again, Sam

There are many aphorisms and clichés that sum up the experience of parenting, but there’s one that towers above all the others. No, it isn’t “F*** this, I’m going to max out my credit card and book a one-way trip to Mexico”. Good guess, though. It’s: “You can say that again!”

Because you can. You can say that again. You can say that again about 40,000 times at a bare minimum. And not just some things. All things. Every thing.

Being a parent makes you feel like a robot with its dial endlessly alternating between ‘emotionally dead’ and ‘rage’, and its speech circuits stuck on repeat. Or the composer of the world’s worst, most repetitive rave song – 2 Unlimited for the next generation: ‘Put, put. Put put put put. Put put put put. Put put PUT YOUR PANTS ON!’

Don’t fear a din

When it comes to kids, the loudness of the noise they make is actually in inverse proportion to the size of the calamity that noise signifies. I’ll explain. When I’m downstairs in the living room I can sometimes hear a noise coming from my kids’ room above me that sounds like Thor and Godzilla wrestling in the heart of a neutron bomb. I’ll immediately dash upstairs in a fit of fear and fury, but when I arrive at their doorway, I’ll find that not a single thing is out of place. The room is perfect, save for a toy box that has been turned at a forty-five degree angle towards the window. Both kids are happy and unscathed. They turn to look at me like I’m Chicken Licken after licking eleven tabs of acid. A worry-wart. A nutcase.

The time to worry, I’ve learned, is when it’s deathly quiet up there. Silence means that they’re up to something. Something awful. Young kids can barely concentrate on a single toy or a task for more than a few moments at a time (unless they’re being hypnotised by our good old pal, the TV). Just about the only thing that can focus their minds is evil. Pure, unwashed evil.

So if you find yourself momentarily apart from your kids enjoying a few rare moments of peace, and you can hear nothing from the room in which they’re playing, get the fuck up there without delay. Run. Sprint. Teleport if you can. You’re about to be greeted by a rich cavalcade of danger and debauchery, the likes of which even the ferryman on the banks of the River Styx has never seen: the cat wearing lipstick; an ungodly amount of tampons glued to the ceiling; a ten-foot blue peeing willy painted onto the wall accompanied by the word BOOB in blood-red nail varnish; a duffel bag filled with unmarked fifties; a human turd sprinkled with sequins; a cow marrying a goat in an unofficial ceremony in your bedroom; a dead shark (also sprinkled with sequins); and a working prison complex made entirely out of wooden blocks and cardboard boxes housing some of the worst serial killers this country has ever seen.

Silence is your enemy.

Kids are weirdos

My kids often use me as a climbing frame, usually with little warning or provocation. I only have to bend down to pick up a plate or squat down to tie my shoelaces and there’s a two-person stampede up my spine and across my head, the pair of them swinging off my neck like monkeys.

A few weeks ago, one of my eldest’s mighty gymnastic leaps onto my torso failed, and he accidentally kicked me in the balls. As I cautioned him about the delicacy of the flesh sacks it’s our burden to bear and the care that must be taken around them, my two-year old, who was standing next to us, suddenly shouted out: ‘LIKE THIS?’ before proceeding to whip his trousers down to his ankles and shuffle around the room screaming, ‘I’m an old man, I’m an old man!’ The eldest kid responded by laughing, and slapping his own face with both hands.

Yes, kids are weirdos. And, no, I don’t need a DNA test to prove their lineage.

Food, not so glorious food: kids are fussy

Kids have the same fickle, mercurial relationship with food as Roman emperors did with gladiators. A favourite can quickly get the thumbs down for absolutely no reason at all, and you could find the fires and fury of hell thrown in your face for daring to advocate it in the first place.

Kids are insane. A child could eat potatoes, and only potatoes, every day for six weeks while wearing a T-shirt that says ‘I LOVE POTATOES’; they could sleep with potatoes instead of teddy bears; compose sonnets, odes and epic poems to the potato; they could even lobby to have their name legally changed to Kid Who Things Potatoes are the Greatest, and you still might put a plate of potatoes down in front of them at dinner time to find those potatoes come soaring at your head accompanied by the scream of: ‘POTATOES? WHAT GAVE YOU THE IDEA THAT I LIKED TO EAT SWOLLEN GROUND-TUMOURS? GET THEM OUT OF MY BLOODY SIGHT!’

I’ve witnessed my 2-year-old violently changing his mind about his own choice of breakfast cereal literally within seconds. Cheerios he said. You’re sure, I asked? Yes, he said. Positive? I asked. Yep, he said. Absolutely water-tight on the cereal front there? I asked. Uh-huh, he replied. Cool, I said. Here’s some Cheerios.

And then there was some Cheerios all over the living room table. ‘I WANT CHOCOLATE HOOPS!’

It’s madness incarnate. I’ve always found it funny that a kid can go off eating a particular kind of meat, plant, vegetable, fruit or pulse, but never seems to lose the taste for crisps or chocolate. You’d never hear them exclaiming: ‘A MILKY WAY?! JESUS CHRIST, DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING MILKY WAY KIND OF A KID TO YOU? WHERE DO THEY GET THESE PEOPLE?’

Sleep is not a foregone conclusion

The pattern to keep in mind when thinking about your own children’s sleeping patterns is the kind of pattern made by a spider that’s trying to make a web while off its tits on a cocktail of sulph and crack. The end result is less a web and more a Dr’s signature scribbled on the back of a spinning washing machine during an earthquake. By all means try to discern shape and meaning in that pattern, but be prepared for that sulphed-up spider to leap from one of the 957 points of its web and sink its fangs into each of your eyes.

Right. Hang on just a second. [disengages ludicrous analogy mode]

Maybe you’re one of those people whose child sleeps all the way through the night without rouse or rancour from the very first day of its life, and if you’re one of those people then I hate you and wish you an agonising death, ideally involving mentally-deranged ostriches with PTSD. My advice to you is to stop reading this amusing article immediately and proceed directly to ‘Big Malky’s Ostrich Death Arena’ just off the M8 at Cumbernauld. See how long you can bury your head in the sand before your arse is kicked off by seventeen angry flightless birds.

For the rest of you mere mortals, you need to know that lack of sleep – or a torturous and broken drip-feed of sleep – isn’t something that’s necessarily confined to the first year or so of your child’s life.

You could be a caffeine-infused wreck – more eyelid than human – for anything up to five years. It’s worse if you have two or more children. You could very well have one child who sleeps through the night, but any gain in hours spent blissfully unconscious garnered from that cherubic child could be wiped out by the other, or others. My kids are 5 and (almost) 3 now. We co-slept with both of them when they were babies, which was beautiful and magical and reassuring, but the co-sleeping, once started, never ends. Even though both boys go to sleep in their own beds in their own room, I still wake up every morning with seven-eighths of my body dangling from the edge of the bed, and a child’s foot up my nose. And our 3-year-old still wakes up at least once through the night, usually to have a good cry to himself.

We know the feeling.

If you’ve got a partner, hug them tight

None of us parent in a vacuum. We bring our own tiredness, moods, worries, hurries and anxieties to the job. Great. So do our kids.

Their little brains are still growing and changing, overloading their minds and bodies with impulses, emotions and information-flows they aren’t yet equipped to process. They feel things, but they don’t often understand why they feel them, or know how to deal with those feelings. This broth of feelings, this contest of emotions, is a recipe for mental breakdown, depending upon what ingredients are in the mix at any one moment.

That broth can bubble over at any moment. You can wake up in the morning, skip down the stairs and greet your children with a sunny smile, have that undiluted love beamed right back at you, wrap your arms around them and squeeze them tight, and bound over to the breakfast table ready to start the day with a clear head and an open heart, but within three minutes you could be balled up on the floor smashing it with your fists and wailing like a bereaved Middle Eastern mother, as fire and rubble and regret erupt all around you.

There’ll be one kid in the corner covered in milk and wallpaper paste screaming ‘NOOOOOOOO’, while the other one’s on the table sacrificing a goat while aggressively chanting ‘IMHOTEP! IMHOTEP’ over and over. ‘Why?’ you sob, as a swirling inter-dimensional portal opens up next to you and demons crawl out and start eating the house. ‘Why??….’

Ten minutes later you’ll all be under a blanket on the couch cuddling and eating crisps, watching Paw Patrol, and the demons will be complaining because they’ve seen that one eighty-five times before.

I’ve often came home from work at lunchtime to find my wife staring through a wall, with the ashen, dead-eyed countenance of a woman who’s just witnessed a multiple murder – or else is planning one.

Frayed and frazzled nerves, especially when shared and subjected to the same child-shaped stresses, make arguments more likely by a factor of ninety-one… THOUSAND MILLION. While stress-fights are difficult to avoid, I’ve learned that it’s best to try. Just hug them. That’s the best thing to do. Hug them and have them hug you back. Hold each other. Close your eyes tight and hope for the best.

If you’re raising kids alone, then hug yourself. In fact, give yourself a medal, you brave, mental bastards.

An unhealthy obsession with serial killers comes in handy

I’ve long been fascinated by serial killers and violent criminals. I’ve read scores upon scores of books about them, watched countless interviews with convicted wrong-uns on YouTube, and devoured a whack of drama series and documentaries on the subject. I was a fan of sick, murderous bastards long before Netflix made it fashionable. As a consequence I feel I’m armed with enough specialist knowledge to spot the early warning signs of having a psychopath on my hands.

When he was three, Ted Bundy surrounded a sleeping female relative with sharp knives, all pointed towards her body. It was a most unsubtle augur of the young man’s future hobbies. The worst my wife and I have woken up to is a cough in the eye, or a shat bed, so we’ve already aced the Bundy Test.

We’ve always had pets, too, and in a house with trainee serial killers, the pets are the first to go. Our current cats, then, are rather like pit canaries. Mercifully, both boys are very loving and gentle with our furry lodgers, beyond the very occasional bit of monster-roaring in their direction, so that’s another test passed. Phew. And we haven’t yet found the disembodied head of a hitch-hiker in our fridge, so that’s also reassuring.

Keeping an eye on those matches, though.

Despite all the headaches, heartaches and lack of sleep, having kids is still the best thing in the entire world

It really is. And I think that speaks for itself. My kids are absolutely bloody fantastic, and they make me smile and cry with happiness, and beam with love and pride, more times a week than I could count. It makes all the murderous rage worth it.

Twelve things I’ve learned being a Dad to two under four (PART 3)

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Thank you for returning to read the rest of my far from comprehensive, barely instructional list of twelve things I’ve learned so far as a parent. May it strike a chord, or make you feel smug and superior, you hubris-filled wanker. Either way, I hope you enjoy it. You can read PART 1 here and PART 2 here.

9.) Dinner time ‘aint what it used to be.

Dinner time used to be a time for… well, eating dinner? I think that’s what I used to do at the dinner table, anyway; I might even have regarded it as a sacred space; a place for joyous reflection, vigorous discussion or occasionally just silent bliss. A bit like the toilet, but slightly more sanitary. I’m wiser now. I know that mealtimes shared with young children at the dinner table have the same grim uncertainty as urban warfare; the mess, the thuds, the shouts; the hunks of chicken strewn over the floor like innards; the Dexter-style ketchup splatter.

The more kids you have, the worse it is; the more it becomes like some almost impossible late-80s video game. You have to work fast to plug the correct mouth with the correct piece of food at exactly the right moment, or else it’s screamdemonium. To achieve this near-impossible feat you have to ignore your fallible human brain-body-interface, and turn yourself into either some sort of psychopathic, epileptic octopus; a Hindu God on fast-forward; or a demonic incarnation of one of those big shaky tube things that flails around outside American car dealerships.

It’s Hell. As you slither and dart around the dinner table, plugging half-escaped screams with chicken nuggets, and begging older children to eat something, God damn it, ANYTHING AT ALL, your own dinner will grow cold as the grave; cold enough to attract polar bears to the table, who’ll burrow their weary bulks into the uneaten snow-dune that your mashed potatoes have become. You’ll spend long minutes shouting terrifying proclamations at your children through a megaphone: “Stop trying to knock your little brother unconscious with hunks of lamb! Eat that bloody sausage, don’t just push it around your plate! Eat a pea at least? One measly pea?! You won’t eat a pea?? Do you hate me? You must really hate me if you won’t eat a pea. Maybe I’ll just choke myself to death on those peas, would you like that?? Don’t care about that, do you? Well maybe you’ll care about the fact that your stomach is so hungry it’s gained sentience, and is in the process of trying to escape through your mouth so it can eat your face off. SCREAM MORE QUIETLY, WILL YOU, YOU’RE WAKING UP THE BLOODY POLAR BEARS!!!”

10.) Discipline is like its own science

When we were assembling our parental toolkit we decided not to include vicious punishment beatings; after a fierce debate, we also ruled out the construction of a medieval dungeon in the cupboard under the stairs. This left us with rather limited options for our stratagem to civilise our eldest son.

We couldn’t use reason, because reason doesn’t work on toddlers and very young children, the absolute fucking psychopaths that they are. Seriously, you’d have better luck teaching a pigeon to do maths.

We couldn’t ignore his behaviour or use undiluted bribery to subvert it, because unless you’re born into a disgustingly rich family dynasty whose destiny it is to rule the world through golf and evil, it’s probably best not to turn your kid into a fat, scheming, morally-vacant sex maniac.

So we used stickers. Not to cover his mouth or eyes or anything: no, to build a reward system that would encourage positive behaviour and discourage negative behaviour. I say ‘we’. I wasn’t allowed an opinion on the new discipline system, on the grounds that I hadn’t accrued enough good behaviour stickers. She’ll train me to put the toilet seat down, and open packets of cold meat without tearing them into eighty different pieces yet.

Jack has to hit five stickers to get a reward, which could be anything from a mini-adventure to a small toy he plucks raffle-like from a cardboard bucket we keep hanging from the wall. He gains stickers for doing things like being polite and well-mannered for long periods of time, listening well, being kind to other kids and to his little brother, and helping out with chores. He loses them for things like smashing his baby brother in the face with a toy helicopter.

I had a few reservations with the system initially. I worried that we were teaching him to jump through hoops to get trinkets, rather than encouraging him to be good for goodness’ sake. I quickly moved past that when I remembered my realisation from a few paragraphs ago that all kids are psychos, and if you aren’t going to hit them, then you’re sure as shit going to have to bribe them. I guess it’s a good idea to erect a moral framework around your kids as early as possible, one that will hopefully make deeper sense to them once they get older and start thinking beyond rituals and commands: stabilisers for the soul, if you like.

My other fear was that the justice underpinning the system would be dispensed arbitrarily, based more upon what mood we happened to be in at any given moment than on solid ethical principles. For instance: ‘I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY PROLONGED VOWEL SOUNDS TODAY! YOU LOSE A STICKER!’ or ‘WILL YOU SHUT UP? I’M TRYING TO WRITE THIS BLOG ABOUT WHAT AN AWESOME DAD I AM. THAT’LL COST YOU TWO STICKERS, MY FRIEND.’ 

But, we found a groove, ironed out the kinks, and discovered rather quickly that the sticker system works well, both as a deterrent for naughtiness and as a skill-and-confidence builder. There’s a dark, ceremonial joy to be harvested from de-stickering a child. I find myself adopting the tone, voice and poise of the horror character Pinhead on those rare occasions when I have to take one away. “Ah, human goodness, so delicate and ephemeral, so easily lost or moulded. Did you feel pride when you earned this sticker, boy? Pride is a sin of which I’m happy to divest you even as yet blacker sin pours from you like a faucet. There are no stickers in Hell. Only pain.”

By this point in the speech, he’s usually smashed his little brother in the face with a helicopter again.

11.) Being a stay-at-home parent is not easy – especially if you’ve got more than one child.

Stay-at-home parents shouldn’t be devalued or denigrated. I’m jealous that my partner gets to spend every day with our kids, but at the same time I’m absolutely fucking relieved that I don’t have to, because giving your mind, body and soul to your kids 24/7 is exhausting. Beautiful, enriching, incomparable, yes. But absolutely draining. I love and respect my partner immeasurably for what she does.

The only people who think that looking after babies and kids at home during the day is a piece of piss, and not as challenging or important as a ‘proper job’, are a) people who have had their amygdala surgically removed and replaced by a bag of morphine; b) the dead; c) super-advanced Japanese butler robots; d) the sort of loud-mouthed, blathering troglodyte who still says the word ‘Phwoar’ out loud when he sees a set of breasts, and who spends his days doling out sage nuggets of wisdom like, ‘Birds love it when you whistle at them from up high, makes their fucking day it does’ and ‘Course, I don’t know what the world’s coming to when those poofs in the courts won’t even let you call them darkies anymore,’ and e) blinkered, bitter or judgemental working mothers who subscribe to the ‘I’m not doing that so it must be wrong’ mentality.

Unfortunately c) doesn’t exist.

Unfortunately d) and e) do.

12.) Being a Dad is amazing.

I originally planned to go down the cop-out route for thing number 12. I was going to  entitle it, ‘Having kids means not having the time to write the twelfth entry on a list of twelve things’, but upon reflection I think I’m going to take my tongue out of my cheek, temporarily remove my scatological-hat (I was going to shorten that to ‘scat-hat’ in the interests of snappiness, but I didn’t want people to get the wrong idea and picture me in the closing minutes of some ungodly German porn flick taking off a hat that only minutes before had been squatted over by two dead-eyed, loose-stooled lunkers, and then proceeding to wipe a waterfall of effluent from my stinging eyes.So rest assured there won’t be any scatology anywhere in this entry, none at all: and if there is, I’ll eat my hat) and show some honest-to-goodness heartfelt humanity.

Being a Dad has handed me happiness and focus in a way that I wouldn’t have imagined possible. Every sentimental and groan-worthy cliche about parenthood is true. Though each member of my nuclear family may occasionally irritate every atom and fiber of my being, they – individually and collectively – are everything to me. And without them I’d be nothing.

Nothing else matters.

Admit it: you prefer one child over the other

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birthy1When my son Jack was born, I was filled with an almost cosmic feeling. I took to the keyboard and rattled off an effusive essay that encapsulated my feelings of fatherly pride and love, factoring in a rejection of God and religion along the way. I saw myself in Jack. He was me, I was him. I understood something of the universe, and my place within it. I poured all of my hopes and dreams into the tiny vessel of his wailing, reddened body. He was my world. He was the world. He was everything.

We were a family.

The problem I now find myself facing, following the birth of my second son, Christopher, is how can I write such a thing twice? How can I feel all of that twice? Look at it this way, through the prism of another variety of human love: if you write a book of poetry for your first wife, what the hell do you give your second wife? Two books of poetry? A Ferrari? A dismembered ear? And given how passionately you articulated your undying love the first time around, how can you convince your second wife that your present feelings are to be believed without cheapening the memory of the just-as-genuine feelings you experienced with your first wife?

It goes without saying that I felt a great rush of relief and happiness when Christopher emerged alive and intact from his maternal cocoon; an explosion of love and affection and an urge to safeguard and protect that was only amplified when I held his fluttering, mewling, helpless little body against my skin for the first time. But I also have this guilty, soul-curdling feeling that, this time around, I didn’t feel as much, or as strongly.

Some of it’s the novelty factor (but imagine that I’ve used a word other than ‘novelty’, which usually conjures up images of an electronic singing fish you’re given for Christmas, laugh at once and then throw in the bin). What I mean is, the whole event and its after-shocks the first time around were unmapped, mysterious and terrifying. Now we know what we’re doing, and we know what to expect. For instance, during the first two weeks of Jack’s existence there wasn’t a single moment where both my partner and I were asleep at the same time. We took it in shifts to sit awake with him, all through the day, all through the night, in a bid to ward off surprise attacks from all manner of unwelcome scenarios. A watched kettle never boils, we reasoned: a watched child never dies.

It’s a gruelling time, as all first-time parents know. Each and every sound Jack made acted upon our nervous systems like a fire alarm. Dangers lurked around every corner, and between each of his miniscule breaths. That fear, which can never fully be exorcised, has now been dampened, and with it, I’m sure, some of the spikes of over-powering relief and devotion that follow in fear’s wake. Christopher can now enjoy a set of new, improved and fully desensitised parents. He could scream like a banshee as a giant mutant hawk splintered in through the living room window, and our response would most likely be some species of Parisian shrug.

I guess some of my more subdued feelings can be attributed to my partner’s style of mothering. She breast-feeds and co-sleeps, meaning that my part in proceedings is necessarily limited. Yes, it’s important that I form a bond with Christopher; it’s important that he knows who I am and comes to recognise me as one of the core people sworn to love and protect him, but nothing is more vital – in these early stages at least – than his bond with his mother. If he’s hungry, she feeds him. If he’s frightened, she soothes him. If he soils himself, she… well, okay, I should probably be doing that, too.

birthy3My partner and I decided that the best use of my time during my absence from work would be to concentrate my attentions on Jack; help out the team by occupying its most vocal and demanding member. Take him places and busy him to soften the blow of his mother’s attention being refocused on his little brother. There’s an element of strategy at play, but it’s certainly not an imposition. Jack, at his present stage of development, is endlessly fascinating: his capacity for joy, jokes and affection grows visibly each day; likewise his intelligence, vocabulary and curiosity, the outer-limits of which are increasing exponentially, like a universe expanding. I love being around him, seeing what he does, seeing how he thinks, watching him laugh, coo, cry and dash about, all the while helping to give his critical and emotional faculties a leg-up. He’s fully-formed and ready made, and I can see the difference I make to his life in real-time.

Of course we’ve also been careful to ensure that Jack spends as much time as possible with his mother, both within the wider family and one-on-one; to remind him that although his little brother requires the lion’s share of his mother’s time, he’s not any less important, loved or valued. It’s important for my partner, too, who dearly misses the closeness of the bond she once shared with Jack. In some sense, the baton’s been passed to me. I’ve been privileged these past few weeks to share the bulk of my time with him, and for a long time now I’ve been the one who’s there with him at bed-and-bath times; the one he crawls next to in bed when he toddles through from his bedroom in the dead of night, wrapping his arms around my neck, burrowing into my chest as his body resigns peacefully to sleep.

birthy2You’re not allowed to prefer one child over the other. But how can you avoid it? At least initially. How can I feel equal affection for a living toddler and a cluster of cells in my partner’s womb? (Should I feel love for my nutsack, being as it is a site of potential future Jamie and Jemima Juniors?) Or even a living toddler and a screaming, half-blind purple baby who does nothing but gurn, yelp and poo? Imagine you had two mates: one you could sit and watch Ghostbusters with, and then take on an imaginary ghost hunt around your house; and one who just sat there saying nothing and shitting himself all day? Be honest with yourself.

Who you gonna call?

It’s a taboo thought. You’re not supposed to express a preference for one child over the other, under any circumstances. Before I was a parent, I’d hear people talk about sibling rivalries and jealousies, and the parental imbalances that fuelled them, and I’d say, ‘That’s horrendous. A parent should love their kids equally, no matter how many they have, or how different they are. I think it goes without saying.’ And now, as I get older, and especially since becoming a parent, I’ve found myself thinking… hmmmmmm. I’m looking at other people’s families, at their brothers and sisters, and aunties and uncles, and mums and dads, and I’m thinking, ‘Actually, I can see why they might prefer the other one…’

What worries me most is what will happen in a year or two when Jack is much more self-reliant, and his little brother is hitting the same bench-marks that he’s hitting now; when Jack begins his long, slow journey to becoming a responsible and free-thinking boy, shedding his adorableness along the way as the air rings out with a chorus of ‘nos’, ‘whys’ and ‘why nots’, all accompanied by the percussive beat of stamping, tantrum-tapping feet? Will I find myself secretly, perhaps even subconsciously, preferring Christopher? How do I stop myself from feeling this stuff, and if I can’t stop myself from feeling it, then how do I counter the effects of these feelings – how they manifest in my behaviour – to ensure that I screw my kids up as little as humanly possible? Because some element of screwing them up is inevitable. Over to Philip Larkin, who can offer us some concise, brutal and eloquent words on the subject:

This Be The Verse

   By Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.
                            ~
But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.
                            ~
Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.
                            ~

familyAll of this has got me to thinking about my grandparents, who came from broods ten and twelve strong. If we accept the proposition that the continuation of our genes is the only real point of existence – biologically-speaking of course – then it figures that the bigger the family, the more perfect the expression of this point. But how are we to square this in-built desire to sire with our modern Western notion of parenthood? A notion that holds at its core the idea that we should be able and willing to devote not just time but ‘quality time’ to our children; to be able to guide them and closely oversee their development as loved and loving, free-thinking individuals? After all, smaller class sizes are better, right? Or, in the context of the family unit, will having multiple siblings actually help promote intelligence and language skills? Anyway, never mind the question ‘How can you love twelve children equally?’: how can you even remember their bloody names?

I genuinely believe that much of Osama bin Laden’s thirst for chaos, death and domination was a direct result of having to share his parents’ presence and affections with literally scores of siblings. Forget ‘middle-child syndrome’. What the hell would you have to do to get noticed in that family? I wonder if young Osama began his mission for attention in the traditional manner, perhaps by riding his bike up the street shouting, ‘Look, papa, look at me, no hands!’ (Although that’s probably a phrase you’d be more likely to hear from a Saudi kid after they’ve stolen a bike) Look, Papa, look, I’ve got an ear-ring! I’ve got a tattoo! I’m living in a cave, a real-ass cave, Dad, look, look at me, look at my beard, it’s so long, and my minions, I’ve got minions, Dad, thousands of minions!!! Do any of my other brothers have minions, hmmmm? Hmmmm? I’m even on TV. Dad!! Dad!!!?? Dad!!!!!? Won’t you look at me? Can’t you see what… Oh, fuck it. [launches terrorist attack on the US mainland]. NOW YOU’LL NOTICE ME, DAD!

Osama’s Dad: [sighs] Why couldn’t you have just been a painter and decorator like your brother, Barry bin Laden?

birthy4

It seems that I’m so loathe to engage with my feelings on this subject that I’ve taken us down a highway of distraction to 9/11 itself. Sorry about that. Here’s both an update and a coda, though. While I’ve been writing this article, Christopher has been changing and growing. Yes, he still lists his favourite hobbies as pooing and drinking milk, but the more he’s in my life, and the more times I hold him in my arms and see my reflection in the milky black of his tiny feral eyes, the greater the power he exerts over my heart. I was cradling him in my arms a few days ago, and caught sight of us both in the mirror. I know he’s tiny, and helplessly delicate, but something about that moment, about seeing it and feeling it, caused a sharp surge, like a shock of electricity, to zap down my spine. My little boy.

Yesterday, as I lay Christopher down to change his nappy, he looked up at me, little limbs flailing like a penguin who’s really bad at dancing, and his face contorted into a smile. I know he’s too young for real smiles, and this was just a wind-sponsored facsimile. Try telling that to my heart. He made a wee cooing noise too. We’re a bit far from ‘Daddy’ at this stage of his linguistic development, but never-the-less: I heard Daddy anyway.

I think we’re going to be okay.

[But, just to be clear, Jack’s still in the lead so far!]

[PS: Hi, Christopher-of-the-future. Thanks for reading this. This is the reason you’re a heroin addict today. Love you!]

READ MORE ARTICLES ABOUT PARENTING BELOW

Co-sleeping kids: banished from the bed

Being at the birth

Happy Father’s Day… to me?

On the horror of taking your child to hospital

A Celebration of Public Breastfeeding

Existential Nightmare at the Soft-play Warehouse

Parent and child parking spaces: the dos and don’ts of not being a dick

Flies, Lies and Crime-fighting Dogs

The (not-so) hidden horror of your children’s fairy tales

Reflections on school days, bullying and the bad bus

When people take pictures of your kids

How to fucking win at being a Dad

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dadd

Prepare yourself, Dads. I’m about to tell you how you can get the most out of fatherhood, be an excellent role-model to your child and wring as much money as possible out of the experience. Pay attention.

1)

You want to take your baby to interesting places. You want their developing brain to be exposed to as many stimulating sights, sounds and smells as possible. The trouble is, places like that are mega expensive. The zoo, the safari park, Deep Sea World, science centres. Jesus. Wave your wages goodbye. Worse still, your kid is never going to remember you taking them there, which means you’ll only have to take them again in a few years’ time. A double juicing.

Luckily, I’m here to help. Don’t worry. You won’t have to print counterfeit money, stage a break in at the dead of night, or pretend to be a family of safety inspectors. The solution is simpler than that. Just make the first trips to these places sufficiently memorable that you won’t ever have to take your kid back there again. You really need to go for it though. No half-measures. Trauma is the order of the day. Those memories need to stick, and stick hard. For instance, you could walk around the safari park wielding an axe while dressed as a blood-soaked clown, occasionally shrieking animal noises into the pram. Or holler bomb threats in the science centre as you kick over exhibits and topple giant models of ears. Or better yet, smuggle speakers into Deep Sea World and blast out the sounds of machine-gun fire and glass shattering as you stroll through the Underwater Safari. The accompanying screams of terror should ensure that your baby will never EVER forget their first hippo/giant ear/shark/police station. Job done. Plus, if you get sent to prison for any of this you won’t have to pay towards the child’s upkeep while you’re away. Brilliant.

2)

Speak to your child in English but with a French accent. Ceaselessly. Never let up. By the time your child is two they’ll be – unsurprisingly – speaking English with a French accent. The reasons for doing this are twofold. One, it’s funny as fuck. Two, if your baby grows into a deeply ugly or stupid child, you can always tell people they were adopted.

3)

If your partner asks you to change a nappy, do it without hesitation. However, instead of using a boring old nappy, try selotaping wet bits of cardboard you’ve ripped from an old Weetabix box to your child’s arse. I wonder if you’ll ever be invited to change nappies again. You’re welcome, my friend. (PS: You might end up being sectioned, but mental people aren’t expected to contribute to childcare, so if that happens then get your feet up, surround yourself with your favourite blunt items and bloody enjoy yourself, you deserve it)

4)

Encourage your partner to breastfeed, but not because it will save you fucking around with plastic bottles and having to get up through the night for eighteen months or so, or because it’s good for your child’s health or some namby-pampy, new-age shit like that. Do it because occasionally your child will detach itself from the boob and let milk dribble from their mouth like Ash the android from Alien after his fight with Ripley. Trust me, it looks really cool. You can then take pictures of it and send them to Sigourney Weaver, along with hundreds of begging letters. It’s win/win. She gives you money or arranges for you to be in Alien 5, you’re on easy street. She instructs her lawyer to obtain a restraining order (“Get away from her, you BITCH”, Kind Regards, Sigourney Weaver’s legal team), then you sell your story to The Sun. Cha-ching.

5)

Act early to disavow your child of supernatural lies and nonsense, while at the same time ensuring a whopping future pay-day. Here’s what you do. Before your child is old enough to speak, erect a gravestone in the back garden that reads: ‘SANTA CLAUS.’ Take your child to visit it every day, and remind them that Santa died of a massive heart attack in 1978. Add to the fun by hanging a crucified tooth fairy to your living room wall. Wherever there is myth or childhood flim flam, expose it in the most brutal way you possibly can: a snuff video of the Easter Bunny’s last agonising moments on earth, perhaps, or a book that proves Jesus was a time-travelling paedophile from New Jersey in the year 2786. Crush those dreams. Crush them hard. It may seem cruel, but it will benefit your child in the long-run. Here comes the great bit: once they’re at school, get them to send letters to the parents of their little friends threatening to publicly expose their bullshit in the playground unless a regular tribute is paid into your bank account. “GIFF MY DADDEE TEN POUNS A WEEK OR I TELL TOMAS THAT THEIR NO SANTA, OK?” Watch the cash roll in, which you can then spend on Weetabix boxes and selotape.

Happy Father’s Day to Me?

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father2I was discussing Father’s Day a few weeks ago and my brain completely failed to make the connection between me, the occasion and the smiling little entity who shares fifty per cent of my DNA. Even after ten months, it still hasn’t properly sunk in. Obviously I feel being a father every day, in a thousand different ways, but I still occasionally have to stop and pause as the thought taps me on the inside of the skull: ‘Hey, mate. You’re a Dad. You’re his Dad.’

Existing parents tend to talk up the stressful elements of parenthood: the shitty nappies, the lack of sleep, the subordination of social life to the needs of the child. And, yes, these elements form a large part of the process, but surely nobody enters into the parenthood pact believing otherwise (unless they’ve got a fleet of nannies or happen to be the sort of old-school father who congratulates the mother of his child and then says, ‘Cool, good luck with it all, gimme a shout when he’s ten.’). Parents won’t usually tell you how absolutely amazing it is to have a baby, and if they do you’ll be left thinking either that they’re dull blowhards who’ve lost all perspective on life and should be eliminated forthwith or else you’ll only appreciate their words in an unemotional, abstract way, like you would if someone told you how great it was to be the world fencing champion. I hate to fall back on the favoured cliché of parents everywhere, but I’m going to: unless you’re a parent, you can’t possibly understand how it feels.

Christ, I hated people who said that to me before I was a parent, especially those who thought they could use it as a Top Trumps card to win any argument.

“I think you’re wrong, actually, it’s faster taking the B-road to the back end of the town, and then turning left at the quarry and following the bypass all the way to the promenade.”

“Well, maybe you’ll think differently once you’ve got kids of your own.”

Beware all new parents hoping to use that specious reasoning to defeat their childless friends: parents of multiple children can use it on you just as easily, making you feel like you’re in Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen sketch. “One child? Luxury!” If you really want to win every argument on earth, best get pumping, Genghis Khan style.

Being a Dad is wonderful. One little smile from my son can melt my curmudgeonly heart. I could watch him sleeping on my chest – the rise and fall of his own little chest, the puffing of his cheeks – for hours on end. His laughter is the most intoxicating drug ever devised or discovered. Watching him grow and change and learn over the past ten months has been the most gratifying, enriching experience of my life. I can’t wait to meet the person he’s going to become. (I’ll revisit this web-page once he’s turned sixteen and I want to knock his jaw out)  

Being a Dad is also terrifying. Every day welcomes a new cycle of nightmarish scenarios into my thoughts, perils I have to protect him from, everything from skint knees to terrorist insurrections. Seemingly benign everyday objects that were previously absorbed into the background of my perceptions have now been given starring roles as villains in the most terrifying real-life movie ever produced. Things like Blu-tac and cushions are now potential sources of death and injury, making each day feel a little like the first five minutes of an episode of Casualty. I can’t stand on a balcony without imagining him tumbling to his death. I can’t take a trip in the car without shivering at the thought of an eight-car pile-up. Everything is terrifying. “Oh great, a bouncy castle! Or, as I like to call it, THE INFLATABLE THEATRE OF DEATH! You’re giving him a plastic spoon, ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY, HE’LL USE IT TO RIP OUT HIS OWN EYES!!!”

father1

I understand completely why people want to show off their kids: why there are so many people on Facebook with their children’s smiling faces set as their profile pictures; why there are so many parents who feel compelled to chronicle their kids’ every fart, burp and blurble on-line. That love, that pride, that fierce and overwhelming dragon of emotions, is born in you the moment your child arrives naked and screaming into the world. A child is a boundless miracle, a perfect and perfected distillation of mother and father; the link between the ancient past and the infinite reaches of our human future made flesh. In the hospital, looking down at the helpless, innocent creature swaddled in your arms, you can’t help but imagine that all of the answers to the great mysteries of existence – of your life, of all life – lie somewhere in those tiny eyes.

For the first few weeks of my son’s life I had to restrain the impulse to lift him up into strangers’ faces and yell: ‘LOOK AT MY SON AND STAND PROSTRATE IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS FUCKING PERFECTION, YOU NOTHING!’ I’d walk past a line of other people’s babies and mentally judge them, one by one: “Shite, shite, shite, shite, shite.” I wanted to pay for his immaculate face to be put on a billboard in every country of the world, and force every radio station to suspend their worthless chatter and music in favour of an unbroken soundtrack of him sleeping and breathing. On a planet where millions of species are birthing infants by the metric tonne every fraction of a second, my child is the only one who matters.

I’m not a religious person, or a believer in God, but I now think I understand something of the impulses behind religion. My partner and I have brought our son into the world to die. That’s a certainty. Perhaps that guilt is what propels thoughts of the afterlife. I’m a good person. I wouldn’t knowingly bring down a death sentence upon my son, the person I love most in the world. There must be something else. Some after-earth paradise to which he holds the admission ticket. And if this is really all that there is, then what is the point of this endless cycle of birth and death, where the only aim is to stay alive long enough to perpetuate your genes?

This is the hand we’ve been dealt, creatures on a rock spinning in space, defined and enriched by our mortality. Better to experience existence and its many joys even with the promise of extinction than never to have the chance to exist at all. If we’ve only got one world and one life, then I want my son to have a happier, better, richer life than I did, in a vastly upgraded world (Microsoft World 15), and I will move heaven and earth to make that happen. That’s the point of existence for me, and if it’s the only point, then it’s a bloody good one. If God exists at all, in whatever form, then he doesn’t make you: you make God. Because God isn’t in your children. He is your children.

angry-god

Yeah, that was blasphemous, and corny as hell, but in my defence, I’d just like to say fuck you, fuck you all in the face.

Thankfully, I became a Dad at just the right time. For most of my life I’ve been a bumbling, feckless, rudderless arsehole, perpetually dragging myself full-circle through the wake of my latest calamity: an emotional suicide-bomber; a clueless, selfish mess of a man. I was content to drift between places, people and ambitions in the vain hope that the jigsaw of my existence would one day solve itself. But I changed, evolved. I overcame my arrested development. My brain was at last able to outpace my adrenal gland. I finally realised who I wanted to be, what I needed to do and where I wanted to go. It helps that I met the perfect person at the perfect time. I wish I could take back all of the many mistakes I’ve made, and undo all of the hurt I’ve caused, but then if everything in my life hadn’t happened exactly as it did then my son – my beautiful, precious little boy – would never have been born. In a macrocosmic sense, the same goes for the wars and genocides that have been characteristic of our species since we first teetered on two legs. I’m thankful for them, and wouldn’t travel back in time to kill Hitler or save a billion people if it meant losing my son in the future. So, I guess what I’m saying is, to use urban gang parlance, fuck all y’all, and PS: cheers for dying, guys.

These days, I’m settled, driven and focused (still a grumpy fucker, and prone to the odd brain-fart, but otherwise a new man) in a way I never would’ve thought was possible ten years ago, and ready to keep being the thing I never thought I’d be, never ever ever: a good Dad. Of course, I only get to be a good dad because my partner is such an amazing mother, the most nurturing, kind, patient, loving, self-sacrificing person I’ve ever met. I’m perpetually humbled by the way in which she makes the life-enhancing but often gruelling responsibility of bringing up our son 24/7 look so easy, when – despite what clueless sexists will tell you – I know it’s the hardest, and most important, job in the world.

Plus, she got me lounge pants for Fathers’ Day. That alone wins her the gold medal. Now I just need a flat cap.

The Tell-Tale Fridge

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 By Jamie M Andrew

I’m trying to watch the television and I can’t concentrate because of the racket coming from the kitchen; the guy just won’t shut up. It’s too cold, it’s too dark, it’s this, it’s that, blah blah blah. And it’s really annoying me, because it’s a good programme. It’s really interesting, but I’m not taking it in because this inconsiderate bastard is giving it all that. I put up with it for so long – because patience is a virtue as my dad used to say – but you have to draw the line somewhere, don’t you? It’s all good and well being patient with people, but if they lack the common courtesy to respect your right for a little bit of peace and quiet now and again then what use does your patience serve? That’s why you don’t let people take a loan of you, as my dad also used to say. He’s right – on both counts. Right now, this chattering swine in the kitchen is taking a loan of me, and I don’t like it.

I get up from my comfortable armchair and storm through to the kitchen. He’s still at it. I open the fridge door and give him my most reproachful look, and he seems to shut up for a moment, because he can see that I mean business.

‘It’s cold,’ he says, looking rather sorrowful.

‘I’m trying to concentrate,’ I tell him. We’ve been here before, as well he knows.

‘But it’s cold. And dark. And I can’t feel my legs.’

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ I ask him, pulling my mouth into a snarl.

‘Can’t I come out? Just for a little while?’

‘I’m watching television.’

‘I could watch it, too. Honest, I’ll be quiet.’

There’s no reasoning with him when he’s like this, so I slam the fridge door shut and march back to my armchair. Not three seconds pass before he’s at it again.

‘Wanker!’ he shouts. ‘Fucking wanker!’

And that’s it. I can’t take him anymore. A man has the right to expect respect in his own house, doesn’t he? Well, I give him what for this time. I don’t miss him and hit the wall, as my dad used to say. I hit him against the wall; I open the fridge, grab a clump of his freezing brown hair in my hand, yank him out and throw him with all of my might. He acts as if it’s my fault.

‘What did you do that for?’ he whines, and I can tell he’s choking back tears.

‘You know fine well,’ I tell him. I’ve no sympathy. He brings it all on himself.

‘How many times have I had to tell you and still you act up?’

He doesn’t know what to say to that one, because he knows I’m right.

‘Can I stay out here now?’ he pleads.

Maybe he forgets his little outburst, but I certainly haven’t. I take some masking tape out of the drawer under the sink and stretch a tough length of it across his blue lips. He doesn’t like that one bit. I carry him back over to the open fridge like a hairy lettuce and slide him back in next to the margarine. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson, but, no, he’s still at it. I can’t understand what he’s mumbling about, but his muffled rantings are irritating nonetheless.

Still, there’s no harm in giving somebody a second chance, as my dad said the once. But that’s it. I know if I hear him one more time I’m going to kick him out of the window like a football. I tell him that’s what I’ll do, and he seems to believe that I’m serious, because he shuts up for a few minutes.

I’m just watching this bit where a lion’s sinking its teeth into the rump of an antelope when, surprise, surprise, what do I hear? Somehow he’s managed to chew through the tape, and his mouth is motoring away again, spouting out the filthiest language yet, well… I did warn him, didn’t I? I did tell him that I was going to punt him out the window, and you can’t make promises you don’t follow through on, as my dear old dad would often say. How will people learn that you’re serious if you go back on your word all the time? No, you’ve got to be consistent. Firm, fair and consistent. And definitely firm. That’s the most important.

So, that’s it. The gloves are off, but you know… I don’t feel like a baddie, far from it, no, because I’ve given him every chance to repent – more chances than he deserves – and it’s still vulgarity and ingratitude I’m getting.

“Come on, can’t we talk about this?” he snivels as I’m walking over to the window with him clasped in my hand. I’m deaf to him, you see, because it’s too late for words. The time for talk has passed, so now its action that’s got to speak. He’s really crying now, but who’s he got to blame? I unlatch the window, push it open wide, position myself, toss him into the air, and take a strong, steady aim at his skull with my swinging foot. He makes a kind of a cracking thlump sound as he begins his trajectory upwards then earthwards. It’s three storeys down.

‘FUUUUCCKKK YOOOOOoooooooooooooooooo,’ he says.

All I want is to watch the rest of my programme, is that too much to ask? I think it must be, because I hear a quick chorus of cracks, a little yelp, a thud, and then that little bastard is shouting – shouting! – from outside, causing a scene and embarrassing me in-front of the neighbours. I really think that I’m going to trap him in a vice and squeeze him until his glassy little eyes pop out from their sockets, because I saw it in a movie once and it looked like it really hurt, and I think that’s kind of what he kind of deserves now that he’s making me the laughing stock of the whole street.

‘I head-butted somebody!’ he’s shouting. ‘They’re unconscious on the grass! Look what you made me do! Look what you did! Look what you did! You’ve killed her! YOU’VE KILLED HER!’

This really is the last straw. The very last straw, the last straw in the box, you know, the one that broke the camel’s back, as my dad used to say? How dare he shout things like that in broad daylight, outside, with so many people around? Who does he think he is?

I go over to the window and look out, and he’s right, because there’s a woman lying next to him on the grass, out cold, the contents of her shopping bags spilled out like guts. I can’t believe he’s done this to me. Can’t believe he would aim himself directly at that woman and knock her out like that. It’s so typical of him to get me into trouble like this and, as usual, it’s me that’s going to have to sort this mess out. Well, it’s like dad used to say, isn’t it: that you can’t count on anybody but yourself in this world.

He used to say that movies and TV made us think that the world’s a good place, but in real life the Lone Ranger would have shot Tonto just for being a dirty Indian, or Tonto would have scalped him and cut him into bits and ate him just for the sake of it. That’s why Dad kicked the TV now and again, or threw it out of the window.

Still, maybe some company won’t be too bad – just for a little while. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a whole friend to talk to, to share things with, to watch my television with. Just for a little while. We could have cups of tea together, and a cake, and maybe talk about the weather, and football, and what our favourite programmes on the television are. It’d be nice to have a friend for a while.

I grab a black bin-liner for him, and my rag and chloroform for my new friend. I know you’re thinking that I sound bad for doing that, but I’m not bad, because I’m only trying to make sure that she feels better, see? She might be scared when I get to her, so I’ve got to make sure she sees I’m trying to help, you see? I don’t want her crying out and making a scene, because that’s not what friends do, is it? Get friends into trouble – especially when they’re only trying to help. Ungrateful bitch.

So I run down the stairs and I scoop him up first, dropping him into the black bag like a shit down the toilet, making sure I hold it at ground level so he hurts himself as he hits the bottom.

‘Ow,’ he says, amongst other things, but I’m really not listening to him anymore; he may as well be speaking Dutch or German for all I know or care, because his existence is no longer of any concern to me – as if it ever was.

No, so I lift the woman up and take her weight across my shoulders and I sort of drag her into the block and clump her up the stairs, and she only scrapes her legs a few times in the process. Never matter, she’ll be fine. I put her straight into my special chair for visitors and sit her up straight, but her head keeps sagging down towards her chest, and her arms keep flopping. I don’t want her falling on the floor while my programme’s still on, and disturbing my peace, so I fetch the masking tape from the kitchen and stick her arms to the rests, actually lifting up the chair to roll the tape underneath it, so it sticks all the way over her arms, and all the way under the chair in a tight, secure loop. I do the same across her clavicle and run the tape around the back of the chair, nice and tight and safe. I see a bit of blood matting the left side of her head, so I draw a bit of tape over that too so she doesn’t stain my furniture and I have to scrub it.

Now I can sit down and really enjoy my programme, see? I mean, I’ve only been looking forward to it all day, because it’s circled in the TV guide with a black marker and everything, just so I wouldn’t miss it, and I must only have seen about five minutes of it between him giving it chat, chat, chat and now this stupid bitch spoiling my plans by getting herself hurt like this, I mean, is it too much to expect, has the world gone mad? You know, I don’t ask much, not much at all, and a man’s home is his castle as dad used to say, and he’s right again, because if I ever made a sound while he was watching his news programmes then it’d be fifty lashes of the belt and a night in the cellar, so I don’t know what that bastard was complaining about earlier, because it’s not as if I did that to him, and it’s not as if I didn’t want to at the end of the day. It’s just that I cut him a break, see, and tried to be nice to him?

So I’m just getting comfortable again when I hear the bitch on the chair mumbling, and then I feel bad for thinking she’s a bitch when I haven’t really given her a chance so I try to think nice thoughts about being in fast cars or eating ice cream or feeding the ducks. I look round at her and catch her opening her eyes, and then I realise that I’ve forgotten to put the tape around them; but then it’s not really very nice to have a friend round to your house to watch telly with you if they can’t actually see the telly, is it? Ha ha! I’m giving her a little smile, but nothing too over the top, because I don’t want to excite her and miss even more of the documentary, do I? I want her to know that I’m happy having her here, so long as she respects the rules of the house and doesn’t take liberties with our friendship. I’ve already had enough of that today, by the barrel load, and I don’t think I could take anymore.

She’s pissing the chair, isn’t she? I can smell it, and not only that but she’s wriggling and rocking from side to side and making the chair clang off the floor, scuffing up the wood flooring and making a right old racket, what with my neighbours downstairs and everything. You’d think she’d respect that if nothing else, but no, clearly she doesn’t. What a noise she’s making! She’s screaming now, too.

‘Don’t you want to see this?’ I ask over her shrieks, pointing at the television, trying to keep calm, but she’s really irritating me the more of a scene she makes, and I know I’m not going to be able to hold onto my temper for much longer.

The first time it happens, it’s their fault; the second time it happens, it’s your fault. That’s what my Dad always told me about people and how they take advantage of you, and something just seems to click in me because I can see this whole situation turning out just like it did with that snivelling, ungrateful ratbag in the fridge. Now, I’m clever, see, so I’ve got to put a stop to this now before I end up looking like a fool. It’s not like she’s going to calm down, and if she manages to tear up any of that masking tape she’ll rip the fabric off of my good chair and I’ll have to upholster it – that’s if she doesn’t get me an ASBO with all the disturbance that’s going on under my roof. My neighbours aren’t the most understanding and I wish they would get gassed to death in their sleep sometimes because I can’t see what good they do to anyone but themselves.

I walk past the bitch into the kitchen and on the way give her a slap across the back of the head to teach her a lesson, but the chair’s rattling like a penny that’s stopped spinning and is about to fall flat onto the floor, and she’s still screaming herself hoarse. Maybe I should have taped her mouth, too, but stupid me I thought I’d give her a chance? Forget that, in future.

I pick up my favourite knife from next to the microwave, clean some steak juice from it with the dishcloth, and then just as I’m walking back into the living room to quieten her down so I can watch the…

‘TELEVISION MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN KEEPING OUT OF JAIL, YOU SICK, DUMB FUCK, IS IT? YOU ALWAYS WERE A FUCKING DISGRACE SINCE THE DAY YOU WERE BORN!’

I’ve left him down there, haven’t I? I’ve left him there because this stupid, ungrateful bitch in the chair distracted me and all I was trying to do was help her, and, yet again, all I’ve got is disrespect and ingratitude and…well, let me tell you, dad wouldn’t have stood for something like that, no way, because he would have thrown her down the stairs like mum and really taught her a lesson she’d never…

‘FORGET ABOUT ME, WOULD YOU, YOU CUNT? I’M DOWN HERE ON MY OWN AND YOU FORGOT TO PICK ME BACK UP, YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT, CAN’T YOU DO ANYTHING RIGHT?!’

I can’t believe he’s saying this to me after everything I’ve done for him, so I run over to the window and prepare myself to give him what for, but he just won’t be quiet, he just won’t shut his mouth for one second and I can’t believe that I’ve been so…

‘STUPID! YOU DRAG YOUR KNUCKLES DOWN HERE AND GET ME, OR SO HELP ME GOD YOU’LL FEEL THE BACK OF MY HEAD, I’M FUCKING WARNING YOU, YOU USELESS LITTLE PRICK!’

I’m crying now, because everything’s just been building and building and building up, and I can’t believe that all I was going to do was watch some telly and maybe read my comic book later on, and everybody’s being nasty to me and calling me names and shouting at me and telling me that I can’t do anything right, and making me look like an idiot in my own street, in my own house, in my own living room, and I just can’t take it any more, can I?

And then there’s a groan and a scream from behind me, and a noise like a Velcro strap ripping up off a shoe, and I turn to see the woman with her hair all wet with sweat, and her eyes all wide and angry, and she’s running at me with bits of tape flowing from her body like black snakes, running towards me like she’s going to hurt me. I just manage to swing my knife round to defend myself, because Dad always said strike first and ask questions later if somebody’s trying to hurt you, and that’s all I’m doing, because this woman, this BITCH, is trying to hurt me, and I don’t know why, because I invited her into my house and everything and maybe I didn’t make her a cup of tea, but there’s no need to go all crazy and run at me, so I take the knife and stab it into her side and its slides into her like she’s a sack of ripe melons and she screams again and there’s dark red blood and a kind of thick, warm smell in the air, and she’s hitting my face with the palm of her hand and slapping some masking tape into my eye, and I get to the point where I think…

‘THAT’S IT,’ he’s shouting, and my head is spinning so much I don’t know what to think about anything, because all I can hear are her shrieks and moans and his shouting from outside, and my own breaths and yelps as she struggles and fights me till I’m almost deaf and blind from rage, but not quite because I can see the knife in my hand and her blood, and I can feel the knife slurping out of her plump flesh and the muscles like putty under her warm skin as I drive it back in, and she strikes and strikes and strikes and strikes at me, and I’m dizzy and ill and angry and hot and hurt and hurting and ready to kill, and…

‘GETTING BEATEN UP BY A WOMAN, YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT, THAT’S IT, STAB HER, HA HA! YOU’VE GOT A KNIFE AND SHE’S STILL KICKING THE LIVING FUCKING SHIT OUT OF YOU, BOY!’

There’s a metal taste in my mouth and my head feels like it’s got a bowling ball inside of it spinning and banging and crashing and cracking and she just won’t give up, or stop it, and I’m crying cause she’s hurting me, really hurting me, and the more she hits the more I stab and I’d stop if she’d stop but she won’t stop, because they never stop once they start hurting you Dad said, so that’s why I keep thrusting and stabbing and crying and screaming and trying to make her stop, but she won’t, she just won’t, she just keeps coming at me with bloody hands and those scary eyes and now she’s grabbing me and pushing me and I feel my legs starting to buckle and my shoulders touching the edge of the balcony and I can’t get a good enough swing to get her again and I’m scared and angry and blood is running from my nose, MY NOSE, and falling on my shirt, and she’s trying to stick her fingers into my eyes, and the railing’s cold and she’s pushing and all I can see as she pushes into me with her body and my legs swing out from under me is the satellite dish on the roof and the moss growing on the tiles and then an upside-down view of the cars in the street as my stomach does a jump and I’m…

‘FALLING? THEY ALWAYS SAID YOU WERE UNBALANCED, AND HERE’S THE FUCKING PROOF!’

I feel like I’m in a tumble dryer but there’s no sound, like somebody’s pressed mute on the television, and the seconds are stretching like minutes so it feels like I’m spinning in space like an astronaut, tumbling over and over again, so smooth like a ballet move; but not, because I know I’m going to hit the ground. I see blood, and then the woman screaming silently, then green, then blood, then green, then blood, then green, then blood, then…

Nothing. I feel nothing as I hit the ground. Nothing. I know that it’s happened because I’m not spinning anymore, but I can’t feel anything. Nothing, like it’s not really happening, but I know it is because I can’t move very much and I can’t breathe.

My circle of sight is shrinking like the fading standby light on my television when I go to bed, but I can see him there, right next to me, lying on the grass not far from where I left him, slipped out of the bag, and he’s staring, looking, laughing, the lines around his mouth alive in a final, wicked smile, because he wanted this, he wanted me dead, he wanted this all along and all I ever wanted was for him to love me like they do on television, like they do on those happy, funny shows from the fifties when a mummy and a daddy all sit together on the sofa and eat their dinner and don’t push each other down stairs or beat each other with lengths of belt, and he’s happy that I’m fading, that I’m groaning, and dying, because it’s all there in his evil, laughing, fucking eyes. So I look down and see the knife sticking into my heart and the blood seeping through my shirt and down onto the grass, and I grab the hilt but I haven’t the strength to yank it out – not that it matters now – but I’d like to kill him a hundred times more before I go.

‘A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING,’ my Dad says to me, ‘AND EVERYTHING IN ITS FUCKING PLACE.’ 

THE END