The Universe, or at least Radio 4, Hates Me

At 5.30 the alarm goes off and I haul myself out of the deep pool of sleep in which I have been wallowing. I lie staring at the dark ceiling, stunned and then, before my eyes close again I get out of bed.

An hour later I leave the still-silent house. Helen will get the girls up and dressed and off to school before heading off to do a 12 hour shift in Glasgow which she will not get home from until after midnight.

I arrive at work at 7 and after two hours in which I get a lot done, I am smothered under a blanket of back-to-back meetings in which I feel I manage to do absolutely nothing. I try to leave work at 2.30 but my way is blocked by a queue of colleagues who want to ask me many, many questions. I try again at 2.40 and by dint of feigning ignorance of everything, I succeed.

I'm late to pick up the girls from school so I cycle like never before and arrive in the playground just as the bell rings. I am a ragged, speechless, sweating mess but I have, at least, brought chocolate hobnobs and not - shudders - oatcakes and apples. Sorrel permits me to live.

We wait for Lulu to get out at 3.20 and then I string their various bags onto my handlebars and we walk home.

When we get there they want to watch TV. I want them to do their homework. There is a brief battle of wills that I - unusually - win. I help them both with their work and then, whilst they watch telly, I cook the evening meal.

We eat together at the kitchen table and have a nice chat about their days: what lessons they had; who they played with and what games were played; who said what and to whom and why it was knicker-wettingly funny at the time.

As it's Wednesday they both have swimming lessons so they get changed out of school uniform and put swimming costumes on under their clothes. I pack knickers and towels and goggles and armbands and ear plugs and snacks into two bags and we head back to school.

I sit in the stifling environment of the high-school swimming pool for an hour and a half; showering both girls as their lessons end and then overseeing them getting dressed. Both of them have plenty of friends in their swimming classes so this bit of the evening is a bit mental. If, after a days work, you feed me a nice meal and then take me for a swim in a very warm pool, I will become drowsy and compliant. If you do the same to my children they act as though they have been mainlining sugar and yellow food colouring for the best part of the preceding 48 hours. I ponder the wisdom of the law that forbids shooting them with a tranquilliser gun.

Back at home I gently coax them down from their post-swimming high with some toast and get them ready for bed. I read them stories all curled up together on mine and Helen's bed. It's the best bit of the whole day for me.

Once they are in bed I go downstairs and clear away the tea things. The dishwasher is full of clean dishes when I come to fill it. This discovery never fails to give me a profound feeling of ennui. There should be a special word for it. I sigh heavily and empty it before refilling it again with the dirty plates.

There is a load of dry washing on the rack so I take that down and fold it and then put out the wet load that I set off this morning before leaving the house at 6.30. I put the swimming stuff in the now empty machine and set it off.

Next I make the girl's (and my) packed lunches for tomorrow. And then I clean their shoes.

Finally, I can stop. It is 10.30. I pour myself a beer before bed and switch the radio on.

I press the button and hear this: "...men don't pull their weight domestically..."

I switch it off again.

Fuck you, universe. And fuck you, Radio 4.

A Bad Start

Sorrel, who's only 5, has not been well. She's had a hacking cough and a cold for most of the half term holiday. Yesterday however she climbed Arthur's Seat.

For those of you unfamiliar with Edinburgh, we are blessed with a mountain in the centre of town. Not the one the castle sits on. A much bigger one. Arthur's Seat is an 820 ft high extinct volcano and something of a right of passage for the young citizens of Edinburgh. Either you've walked up it or you haven't.

Well, yesterday, she did.

This morning is a different matter. This morning she is tired. This morning is the first day back at school after a week off. This morning she will have her revenge.

Helen is working an overnight shift tonight (starts at 10pm...finishes at 10am) so she needs to lie in. It's up to me, then, to get the girls up and dressed. Sorrel has trotted through and climbed into our bed in the middle of the night. She does not want to get up.

"Uh!" she grunts at me. "UH!"

Lulu in contrast is sitting up in her own bed reading.

"Can I just finish my chapter, Daddy? I'll get dressed and come downstairs after."

Well OK... I go back to Sorrel. "Come on Sweetie. Leave Mummy to sleep for a bit."

She glares at me. "Where are my SLIPPERS???"

"I expect they're downstairs."

"GET THEM!!"

"..."

"NOW!!!"

"Um. No. Not if you're going to speak to me like that. Now why don't you come and get dressed?"

"No! I want to go downstairs first!!!"

"Well, come downstairs and you can get your slippers when you're down there"

"UH!!!"

We go downstairs. She curls up in an armchair in the corner of the kitchen.

"I'll go and get you some clothes," I say gently.

"NO!!! I WANT BREAKFAST FIRST!!!"

I sigh. "OK. What would you like?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!! STOP ASKING!!!!"

I explain that we have 45 minutes in which she has to get dressed, have breakfast and have her hair and teeth brushed. At this point Lulu arrives in the kitchen, dressed and smiling. She asks for some toast.

"Would you like some toast, Soz?" I ask as I pop a slice in the toaster.

She sighs the sigh of a labourer who has been heaving a vast sack of despair up a ladder only to find there is nowhere to put it when he reaches the top.

" I hate toast," she informs the world in general.

"How about some bread and jam?" I suggest, astonished at the deep well of patience I am currently tapping.

"OOOOHHHHH!" she groans as if longing for the day that I would grow old and die, finally brining an end to this incessant round of ludicrous questions. "Is there ANY strawberry?" she growls in the tone of one who knows the person she is speaking to is an utter cretin who can't keep strawberry jam in the house to save his idiotic, miserable life.  And on learning that there is, "OK. Bread and jam then. But NO BUTTER!!!"

A moment later I place a slice of bread and strawberry jam on the table. She drags herself out of the armchair and over to the table. She hauls herself onto the chair. She stares, incredulous, at the plate in front of her.

"Where's my TOAST!!!???"

The rest of the morning is not much better. She cries when I suggest she wears her new boots ("They're too bummfully") and then cries for them when I appear with her shoes. ( "Oh no! NOT my shoes!") She complains, loudly, that the clothes I have fetched from upstairs have not been warmed on the radiator. She screams, punching my leg repeatedly, as I very gently brush her hair.

She weeps bitter tears of frustration when she realises that this morning, as every morning, we'll be walking to school. ("What's the point of having a car if we never use the car?!?!?!).

It's frosty outside so I insist on gloves being worn ("Gloves??? NOT gloves!!!! Waaaaaaaaaahhh!!!")

....

When Helen picks her up later she cries and moans all the way home but insists on going the long way round because she knows it's shorter. Even though she needs a wee. And it isn't.

By the time I arrive home at six she's wrapped herself in a blanket and gone to sleep without eating any tea.

To the doctor's tomorrow, I think....

Temper, Temper

In what is possibly his most famous poem, Philip Larkin wrote...

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.

I've thought about these words often since becoming a father. I think my job is to not let this happen but then real life intervenes and my best intentions are steamrollered by the heat of the moment.

Before you read on, please be assured that this is not some startling revelation that will have you dialling Childline. Just a somewhat banal snapshot of family life that I'm sure most of you will recognise.

Last night was Halloween. As we do every year, one of us takes the girls out guising whilst the other waits in for the doorbell to ring so as to be regaled with awful songs and even worse jokes. (Just an aside for any non-Scots. We don't do trick-or-treat. We have a much older tradition where the kids all dress up and go round the neighbourhood knocking on doors and doing "turns" in exchange for sweets or nuts or fruit or, sometimes, cash! If you don't want to be visited, you don't put a jack o' lantern out.) The girls came back with bulging sacks of loot. Most of it made of sugar. There were cakes, hundreds of sweets and a couple of huge, nasty-looking iced biscuits. One of our friends had given them each a home made toffee apple.

These toffee apples were the cause of a family-wide disagreement this evening in which an idle comment made by Helen had been taken and lovingly nurtured by Lulu. She had cared for the comment, watered it, fed it and kept it warm until it had finally grown into a magnificent sweeping
Promise.

The Promise was along the lines of agreeing that she could eat her toffee apple after school. Of course when it had been uttered the utterer was not remembering that Lulu was going to friend's house for tea and would only be coming home just before bed time.

Whilst I drove her home, I had the Promise explained to me. Frankly I can't be arsed with toffee apples so I am unaware that they take about ten hours to eat. And anyway Helen had promised so of course I agreed that she could have it.

When we get home Sorrel is dancing to music. She dances with all the grace of a table falling down a concrete stairwell. Lulu, however, decided that this looked like an excellent game and joined in. Although she embellished the game by insisting that she don her leotard and dancing shoes. Whereupon Sorrel burst into tears and insisted that she too should be thus accoutred.

I, meanwhile, am running a bath and declaring that, once it's full they must come and get into it.

The toffee apple is forgotten. Dancing is go!

The problem, however is that dancing takes time to do. Eating a toffee apple also takes time to do. There really isn't that much time. The supplementary problem is that, having had one nice thing (tea at a friend's house) Lulu has managed to wangle two more treats. A tertiary problem is also floating around: namely that Helen is working overnight and has to leave at 8.30. Deadline.

We have to get them into the bath and then to bed.

What happens next in terms of the order of events and the precise way in which things unravel is unclear. There is some business that features me the key thrust of which is the sudden and irritable withdrawal of the toffee apple and the end of the dancing. Both of the children take my lead, skip any sort of incremental build up and become hysterical. We respond in kind with raised voices. I am issuing stentorian threats that sound like an angry, panicky foghorn that is about to flush bags of sweets down the toilet. Words like "last chance" and "unacceptable behaviour" and "disgraceful display" pepper the air.

The girls are beyond upset. They are keening like a pair of wet-faced banshees. Helen, to her credit, reins herself in first. I retreat downstairs where I quickly feel the hot flush of guilt at how badly I have handled things.

Here's the thing. I have a temper and my temper is profoundly bound up with the depression that I have suffered with for most of my life. I would like - as far as I am able - to spare my daughters from being the sort of person I am, in this respect at least. But Larkin is right. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we show the worst of ourselves and demonstrate behaviour to our children that is not the behaviour we would wish to see from them. That we do it because we have failed to teach them, in this instance, that plans change and that we as adults are sometimes fallible is so ironic as to be almost funny...were it not so bloody sad.

Ultimately we are not just rearing our kids. We are also struggling to rear ourselves. And I know what I'd like to be when I grow up: calmer.

(Things were not left like this. We all calmed down and big cuddles were had before stories were read and we tucked them up in bed. I've just looked in on them and their smooth, untroubled faces as they sleep leave me hopeful that I may not have entirely ruined their childhoods. Yet.)

20 Rules: The Important Stuff I Want My Kids To Know.

On Sunday, when Helen was at work, Lulu, Sorrel, and I were hanging about the house. I was reading in a desultory manner and they were playing one of those elaborate games that kids play that seem to consist more of them explaining the scenario and rules to each other than actual play. Often these games break down when a dispute arises over who's going to be which imaginary character or whether there's a baby in the game or not.

On this occasion, however, they just segued into being silly. Sorrel has a nice line in surreal humour and a gift for the ridiculous bon mot. Lulu's humour is more character based. She does accents and impressions. On this occasion she was Prince Charles trying to sell some plaice to Sorrel's imaginary friend Scravvels (who's a ladybird). You had to be there. We all ended up - well I did - with tears streaming down our faces from laughing so much.

When we'd calmed down there was a brief rare moment of stillness when we were all sat together on the sofa.

"Listen," I said, "I want you to remember this. And I want you to remember what I'm about to say because it's important."

They looked at me with big serious eyes. One pair palest of pale blue, the other golden-green.

"Never forget how to be silly," I said, "It's a rule I want you to try and stick to."

I don't know if they'll remember or, indeed, if they took me seriously at all. But it set me thinking about the rules for living that I'd like them to abide by.

I've been mulling them over but they weren't hard to to write down. So, here they are, in no particular order, 20 rules for living. The sum total of my accumulated wisdom.

1. Be kind

2. Violence is to be abhorred. If you are forced to use it by circumstances beyond your control make sure you win.

3. Boys are NOT more important or better than girls in anything. The boys who don't know this are not worth bothering with.

4. Never forget how to be silly. It doesn't do to take yourself too seriously.

5. You're lovely. Make sure you believe it and understand why. It's a lot easier to like others if you like yourself.

6. Try to remember for later what it was like to be you, now.

7. Always carry a handkerchief and a penknife.

8. Try to see yourself from the point of view of others. If you find you act like an arse make adjustments.

9. Don't be cynical. It's lazy.

10. Like everyone but be careful who you trust.

11. Don't bother hating people. Why expend the energy on them?

12. Don't lie. There's less to remember if you stick to the truth.

13. Don't waste time moaning about stuff you can't affect. Do something about the stuff you can change. There's more of the latter than you think.

14. Forgive. But don't necessarily forget.

15. Be brave. Be loyal. Be fair.

16. Never stop learning.

17. Never stop playing.

18. Treat everyone with respect. Earn it back.

19. Most things are more important than money. Nothing is more important than love.

20. Don't be disappointed by people. You're an arsehole too sometimes.

Bathtimes of Despair

All the books and articles you read about parenthood tell you that you should treasure every moment because it will pass so quickly. Or they describe with glum pleasure the horrors of sleep deprivation and having no social life. Neither of these views is realistic of course. Most people find it to be a generally agreeable experience with interludes of hilarious delight or utter despair.

Me, I'm prone to despair. I have a depressive streak running through me like the writing in a stick of rock. If you snapped me in half - something, on occasions, I might beg you to do - it would read, "kill me quick." I try, however, be a good, funny, attentive and kind Dad but on occasions my alter ego - a character I like to refer to as Flashpoint Charlie emerges, raging. Bedtime is one of the occasions that he appears.

Tired children, at the end of a long day, just need to be fed, bathed and poured into bed. 

Easy. 

Well actually, no. For inexplicable reasons the feeding and bathing seems to revive them to a state so far past awake that you couldn't see awake if you looked at where it used to be through the Hubble space telescope. A state akin to passing a low electric current through a box of bees. It is when they are in this state - when, conversely, I am very tired and grumpy - that they like to hide. 

Let's get something straight: they're shit at hiding. Mostly they hide under the bed covers...or the bed itself and then giggle loudly and uncontrollably. As I write this it all sounds rather sweet and endearing. But it's not. all I want to do is to have calm children who will consent to have their teeth brushed and then settle down to have some stories read to them. What I get is a squirming, uncooperative mess of girl limbs that is incapable of doing what it's told. 

The blue touchpaper is lit for me by hearing them whisper, "Hide!" conspiratorially to each other. Sometimes they try to hide when they are in the bath. Mind you I once overheard them playing hide and seek together whilst in the bath so, for them, anything is possible. 

This is often the point at which Flashpoint Charlie emerges incoherent with exasperation. His hallmark parenting technique is a sort of passive/aggressive rage that teaches the kids nothing except that it's OK to shout and that their Dad's a prat. 

However, on most occasions I try to keep Charlie in check. I do this by a following a series of rituals that I have evolved over several years. 

The first is making them jump. 

By a happy accident our house is constructed in such a way that the bathroom comes off a small landing just at the top of the stairs. This gives it a higher ceiling than all the other upstairs rooms so that the cold water tank can be accommodated. It also means that you can climb the stairs without being seen and then, if you lie down on your stomach on the landing you can wriggle into the bathroom undetected by the person or persons in the bath. This enables you to either spring up like a jack-in-the-box or pretend to have climbed up as though the bath were perched atop a high pinnacle...and to fall down again.

Once in the bathroom we can engage in a game of "Buttons, Butterflies or Bees" in which I adopt the persona of a homely Lancastrian woman who is uncommonly interested in their preferences from the short and bizarre series of choices she offers them. "So, loveys, which do you like best: hay, straw...or fish? Hands, feet...or spam?"

Finally, it's time to get out of the bath. They hate this and will do almost anything to prolong bathtime. Even when the water has gone cold. For months this was a major flashpoint that would end in tantrums and hysterics on their part and shouting on mine. 

Once, with an utterly appalling lack of judgment and at a point of deep despair I said to them, "If you don't get out of the bath right now.....I'll die!" It felt to me as though it would be a blessed relief - at least I'd get to lie down somewhere quiet. To her great credit Lulu retorted, in a tone that was terrifyingly reminiscent of her mother, " Don't be ridiculous. You're not going to die if we don't get out of the bath!" I was forced to concede that it was ridiculous and, thankfully, normal service was restored.

Shortly after that I hit on a discovery. If I could get them to stand up I could simply lift them out of the bath, wrap them in their towels and no fuss would be made. I tried a variety of means to trick them onto their feet until I found one that worked. It required a bit of training and some occasional elaboration but it still serves nearly 18 months after I invented it. 

What I do is this. Whilst they are in the bath I usually sit on the toilet lid and chat to them. When I think they've been in for long enough, I spring to my feet and shout, " I AM SPARTACUS!" Whereupon they spring to their feet and shout, "NO! I'M SPARTACUS!" and I lift them out of the bath. 

Simple.

Of course what wasn't simple was explaining slavery and the slave revolt to a four year old and a six year old. But that's for another time.

I've got a bike you can ride it if you like...

Here's the news: two weeks ago Lulu learnt to ride a bike. It's a milestone in any child's life and ranks alongside first words, first steps and learning to read as one of the key achievements of childhood.

It's been a bit of a long haul to be honest. Both Helen and I use bikes to get about all the time. But Lulu, despite showing early promise, has been a reluctant cyclist.

She started well. We got her a balance bike when she was two. It was a wooden two-wheeled affair that looked like a it had been bike-jacked from a midget Victorian gentleman flower-seller. She loved her balance bike and would race off on it lifting both feet off the ground to coast on two wheels down startlingly steep hills.

When she was three we bought her a proper bike. The advice was, given her excellent use of the balance bike, to not bother with stabilisers because she'd not want or need them.

People who say things like this don't have children. Well, they don't have my children anyway. Lulu is susceptible to peer pressure and at the time time of the arrival of her lovely new pink bike she had a best friend who lived a few doors down who did have stabilisers. So she insisted on having them too.

Of course the friend did away with hers about 6 weeks later whilst Lulu found the weird jolting, rocking experience delivered by stabilisers utterly terrifying and became convinced that if she stopped using them she would FALL OFF. Which, clearly, would hurt.

The upshot was that from the age of three to the age of seven she could barely sit on a bike without weeping fearfully, mourning in advance all the skin that she would scrape off when I allowed the bike to VICIOUSLY THROW HER TO THE TARMAC.

We came to the stage where she would set up a lose/lose conversation that went along these lines:
She: (tearfully) Everyone in my class at school can ride a bike except me!
Me: (Really gently) Well why don't you learn? I'll help you.
She: (appalled and angry) NO! I HATE MY BIKE!! BIKES ARE STUPID!!
Silence.
She: everyone in my class can ride a bike except me....

At which point I would beat myself insensible with a track pump.

Finally Helen took it upon herself to teach her. In a display of patience that convinced me that she must have been self medicating with powerful tranquillisers she cajoled and coaxed our daughter back into the saddle. And eventually, a little at a time she managed to get Lulu to cycle a few yards by herself.

I joined in and we got her to cycle between the two of us steadily increasing the distance.

We made no fuss about it and didn't scold when the session might last only a few minutes.

Then, one day, I suggested that we took the bike to the park. She agreed but insisted that I had to wheel it all the way there. We arrived and she managed a few small trips between Helen and me as before.

"Why don't you try going a bit further," I said. "I'll run alongside you just in case."

So I started off holding onto the back of her seat for a few yards and then I let go. I ran alongside her. "You're doing it," I told her, "You're doing really well."

She rode for 10 seconds. 15 and then 20 seconds. And then after half a minute she put the brakes on, coasted gracefully to a halt, dismounted, let the bike fall to the floor.

"That was really weird," she declared firmly. "I am NOT doing THAT again."

She has not ridden since.

Party, Party, Party

It's the first birthday of this blog and I've astonished myself by still being here. A year ago today I felt compelled to write a warning to myself and others about the risks of holding your child's birthday party in your own home.

At the time I feared that my sentimental attachment to my children would lead me into repeating my foolhardy mistake. But no. My lovely wife is made of sterner stuff and this year we held Lulu's seventh birthday party at a trampoline centre.

It's an industrial party machine that most parents claimed never to have been to, but on arrival several suddenly recalled having parties there themselves 30 years ago. So these people are experts. Although the jukebox in the trampoline room was decidedly odd. I was trying to imagine the children's party at which it was appropriate to play the first Portishead album or indeed anything by Leftfield.

However, it was all fine. We under catered on purpose. Largely because I object to having tiny sandwiches for tea for most of the following week. We used paper plates so we could just clear up into bin bags and not have to wash up. We didn't plan any games, we just left them to bounce for an hour. Then we fed them and afterwards were driven out as the staff pointedly swept the floor around us. MUCH better than last year.

Lulu particularly impressed me by staying calm and not wigging out about having to wait until we got home to open her presents. She also made a point of speaking to everyone there and if anyone seemed to be getting left out of the games she went and got them and gently persuaded them to join in.

She was charming.

And when present-opening time finally did arrive it was Sorrel's turn to impress by showing interest in what had been received but not weeping at the injustice of receiving nothing herself - something she's done a lot of recently.

Helen was working on the following day and each of the girls had another party to go to. Naturally they were on opposite sides of the town and at slightly different but overlapping times.

So Lulu was collected by some friends whose daughter was going to the same party and we arranged that I would pick her up from them after the party Sorrel was attending

In the car on the way back from Lulu's friend's house the girls compare party bags. Lulu expresses disappointment that Sorrel has cake whilst she does not.

"That's OK Lulu," says her sister, "You can have it."

If that's not surprising enough then when they get home they agree to tip the contents of their respective bags onto the table and share everything out equally.

I'm stunned, but delighted by this display of mutual generosity.  Everything goes into the sweetie jar and we agree on what can be eaten now. A small packet of sweets each. They go off to play. When they leave the room I find in my pocket a further packet of sweets that Sorrel had won in pass-the-parcel. I place it on the kitchen counter.

About ten minutes later it has gone.

"Girls!" I call, "Where is the packet of sweets that was on the counter?"

They make the most hopeless display of innocence I've ever seen. Over-protesting their ignorance of the packet of Gold Bears (I hadn't named the sweets); failing to meet my eye; trying really hard not to smile; Sorrel forgetting to wipe away the one sweet that had inexplicably stuck to her face.

"I want those sweets back here by the time I count to ten", I say. "ONE...."

Lulu's shoulders slump. "We can't," she sighs, "We ate them." And then brightening, "It was Sorrel's idea!"

Sorrel bursts into tears, goes over to the bin, gets out the empty sweetie wrapper and brings it to me, her head hung in shame as her tears drip onto the floor.

I explain, in a very serious tone, how disappointed I am in them both and how unacceptable it is to take things without asking. It's also unnecessary: I almost certainly would have given them the sweets if they'd asked.

Sorrel is very contrite. But Lulu makes one last stab at deflecting the bad feelings overwhelming her.

"WELL, IT'S YOUR FAULT!" She yells in my face.

I pick her up and carry her into the sitting room and close the door - just as I remember my father doing to me if my behaviour ever crossed the line.

"You are seven," I tell her, "That's old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. And what you have done is clearly wrong. I don't care whose fault you think it is. You know you've done the wrong thing and I want you to apologise for it."

Her face crumples as she realises that I am not only right but also that I obviously still love her regardless. She flings her arms around me and buries her head in my shoulder and sobs her "Sorries" into my now soggy neck.

Parties: they're no fun until someone cries.

A Haircut To Remember

Parenthood provides many challenges and many surprises, not least of which is what your kids will - and will not  - put up with. I am taken aback therefore to find that Sorrel, having noisily refused to go to her dance class on Saturday morning is prepared to come to the barbers with me and to sit quietly whilst I get my hair cut.

I get my hair cut by a Turkish barber not far from the house. I've been going there since we moved to this part of town two and a half years ago. He knows me pretty well by now in the way that two men who spend half an hour saying nothing in each others company on the first Saturday of each month. 

The appearance of a well-known client accompanied by a blond angel child sparks an unusual degree of animation in my barber.

"Hello young lady! Are you having your hair cut today?"

Ever the flirt, Sorrel, shakes her head demurely and hops up on one of the benches with her book to wait.

As my hair is being cut I can see her looking at the pictures in the book she has brought with. Occasionally she glances up to see what I look like and to pass comment. The barber solicitously stops cutting whenever she speaks so I can hear her.

The sight of her sitting there reminds me of the time my father took me for a hair cut when I was about eight. I had long hair and he wasn't paying attention to what was happening. He was a GP in the age when they were paid rather less handsomely and still had to get up to visit well-known hypochondriacs in the middle of the night. Understandably he saw this trip as a rare opportunity to read the paper and smoke a contemplative pipe. Having received instructions to give me "a trim" I watched in horror as the barber gave me a fierce short back and sides. I was shy with grown-ups I didn't know too well and so I said nothing as my blond, curly hair tumbled to the floor. I gazed beseechingly at my Father's reflection but all I could see of him was a broadsheet with legs under a fragrant pall of smoke.

Today, however, I'm having my coarse grey hair cut in a similar fashion but this time through choice. And as it falls down the front of the black hairdressers bib I'm wearing I reflect on how much more grey there is every month. Catching Sorrel smiling at me in the mirror another, more recent memory pops up.

Sorrel has always been a dreadful sleeper and I can count on one hand the number of nights in the last four years that she has not disturbed us. Since she came out of her cot however the disturbance is not so great as she usually stumbles through and sneaks into our bed in the small hours.

So I am a little surprised one night about eighteen months ago to be woken by quiet weeping. I go though to her and find that she's been sick. This is a kid with long curly hair who likes to sleep on her back....

It is a scene of utter horror. Her hair is full of vomit. I lift her out of bed and carry her into the bathroom. Under the strong lights the true state of affairs becomes clear. We had eaten pineapple for tea and the sick is sticky and fibrous. She's thrown up but not immediately woken and has rolled on it so that it is thoroughly matted in.

The only option I can see is to use the shower attachment to rinse it out. By this time she's more awake and is becoming understandably distressed by her predicament. She hates the shower too so the crying becomes louder. I get her our of her pyjamas and start showering her. It's just not effective and now she's screaming.

Helen wakes and comes through. I explain the situation. We don't really have a choice: I have to cut the vomit out of her hair.

I have to take a moment here to describe Sorrel's hair. Lulu, her Mum, her Granny and her Aunt and her Cousin all have identical rich, thick, chocolate brown hair shot through with strands of copper and honey. Sorrel on the other hand has silky-fine blond hair with beautiful relaxed curls at the ends. We've never cut it so it's still technically her baby hair. It's also down to the middle of her back. She has golden eyes, little cubby cheeks and a rosebud of a mouth. She is unspeakably cute. But the hair? The hair is gorgeous.

So Helen sits on the toilet lid in her dressing gown helpfully weeping as I take the scissors and administer a severe bob to the equally tearful child.

When it's done she looks alarmingly different. But at least she's calmer. Helen however is visibly grief-stricken but she's holding it together for the child. I give Sorrel a final wipe down and Helen takes her off to sleep with us in our bed. I start to clear up the mess of hair and sick on the bathroom floor but as I do I hear Helen calling softly from next door. I pop my hear round the door and she says, "Do you think you could find a lock of her hair for me to keep?"

It's a small request but given the attempted rinsing it's hard to tell which strands are tainted and which escaped being chucked up on.

So there I am at three in the morning on all fours in the bathroom, picking up locks of my daughter's baby hair alternately sniffing and retching and then occasionally nodding in approval as I find one that doesn't honk of partially digested pineapple.

The things you do for love....

Fairy strife

Last August, just before Lulu went into P2, Helen took her to John Lewis to buy new school shoes. The pair they chose were Clarks and very sensible: black Mary-Janes with a wee black bow on the front. It had escaped everyone's notice until school started that these shoes featured a secret compartment just big enough to smuggle a sufficient quantity of hash into the school to see you through the day whilst turning a small profit over the dinner break.

Fortunately the hash compartment in each shoe was already occupied by a tiny pixie. A toy one obviously. Whilst that prevented the smuggling of narcotics it did allow for a dangerous and upsetting exchange of tiny toys to go on. This swapping craze lasted a few weeks and was finally quashed when enough tears had been shed to convince every parent that it wasn't just harmless fun.

The upshot of the swapping fad was that the tiny pixies disappeared very quickly (as did some things that were very precious to Sorrel). So, yesterday I was extremely surprised and Lulu was delighted when one of the pixies turned up in the pocket of an old jacket.

It was a nothing moment in a busy event-filled Saturday. Or so I thought. This morning however this little toy became pivotal in the worst fight I have ever seen between the girls. At the crux of the disagreement sat a misunderstanding. At some point on Saturday Sorrel had asked if she could "have" the little figure. Lulu assumed she meant have as in "to look at". Sorrel thought she had been given the thing in perpetuity.

The fight had no narrative structure but it went on for the best part of an hour. Naturally there were tears but they were the least of it. There was also considerable screaming a quantity of snot plus hitting and hair-pulling. No amount of intervention from either of us helped.

I confiscated the pixie. Partly in the hope that out-of-sight is out-of-mind and partly hoping that they would round on me as a common enemy and forget their fight. No chance. The way they saw it the pixie was now being held by the court pending a decision and so they continued the passionate debate, appealing to me from time to time as though I were Solomon.

Eventually, Lulu gave up. She is older than her sister but also naturally more pragmatic whereas Sorrel possesses the misguided self-belief of Napoleon marching on Moscow. Her will is strong and her determination implacable. I remember my older sisters fighting like this but they were teenagers at the time. The younger of them once broke her sister's finger.

The girls are only six and four. At some point over the next ten years I intend to move into the shed.

Postscript: Later, Lulu and I were sitting quietly together and I said, "I can't believe the two of you had such a big fight over a teeny plastic pixie."

She looked at me in disgust and said, witheringly, "It's not a pixie, Daddy. It's a fairy. Don't you know anything?" whereupon she flounced off.

So that explains everything.

Boys Night Out

It is a sad truth of modern fatherhood that, once your first child arrives, your partner's social circle expands massively. Yours, however, contracts down to the one or two close friends who are prepared to spend a very occasional evening watching over you as you sleep draped over a table in the pub, a soft drink loosely gripped in your slack hand.

A few years down the line, though, if you play your cards right, you'll discover like-minded dads amongst the parents of your children's friends and you can all go to the pub together and curl up in one corner like a litter of puppies and sleep until closing time.

I enjoyed one such evening last night when a bunch of dads from Lulu's primary school met up for a drink. It was my intention to have a couple of pints but the couple turned swiftly into six or so and my better judgement only really kicked in when the others moved onto shorts.

The pub closed at 1am and we rolled up the hill together. I got in and began my post-pub ritual of drinking at least three pints of squash and eating half a loaf of toast in an attempt to offset the effects of the booze in the morning.

As I start in on my third slice of toast I hear a wail from upstairs and, assuming it to be Sorrel (who suffers from poor sleep and night terrors) I trudge wearily up the stairs. But it's not Sorrel. She's fast asleep in the bottom bunk whilst her sister is sat bolt upright on the top a look of absolute terror on her face, her body wracked by deep sobs.

"I had a nightmare," she declares. "And it was really scary." She bursts into tears.

I lift her down and hold her tightly. Maybe I can get her back to sleep if I can calm her down.

"What was it, sweetie?" I ask. In the past telling her dream has helped to clear it from her mind.

"There was a whale shark with yellow checkerboard eyes and black pins for teeth. He wanted to eat me and he was swimming through the floorboards," she reveals between sobs.

Jesus.

There's no way she's going back into her own bed I decide so, as I'm still eating toast, I take her down stairs and make her a mug of warm milk. Soon it's 2am and we're sat chatting and giggling. It's then that I remember that Helen is starting a run of overnight shifts the following night and she'll need to lie in as late as possible in order to get some sleep in the bank. I'm going to be getting up with the girls in about four hours time.

I carry her back upstairs and slide her into my bed with her mother. And then I go and check on her sister. Sorrel too is sitting bolt upright in bed. But she's not crying. She's looking at me impishly and smiling. She knows it's the middle of the night and here I am not just awake but dressed. It's so exciting.

"I had a nightmare?" she offers.

"No you didn't," I tell her.

"Can I sleep in your bed?" she asks. I can't allow this. She's perfectly capable of ripping Helen out of her deep sleep to ask something like, "Why are legs?" or "What colour is toast?"

"No lovely. You can't. You'll wake up mummy and it's important that she gets enough sleep tonight."

I try to think quickly but I'm still pretty pissed. "Do you want me to come in with you?" I hear myself say.

I should say at this point that, like many parents we often play musical beds in the middle of the night. So if both girls come into our bed I usually decamp to the bottom bunk. This would be fine except the bunks are 6 foot long and I'm 6'5" so every time I roll over I bang my head or painfully jam my feet between the bars at the other end of the bed. But sharing with a restless four year old? This is a stunningly poor idea.

And I'm right. Four hours later I finally give up the uneven struggle and get up. I've been poked, jabbed, kicked, shouted at, and made to get up and go and fetch a drink. At one point I was awakened by a searing pain as she skillfully back-heeled my gonads in an unsophisticated attempt at a DIY castration.

Amazingly I feel ok. Clearly in an attic somewhere there's a hideous Dorian Grey style portrait of me.

Downstairs the girls help me make scones for breakfast and then - thank God - go off and play beautifully together (an increasingly rare occurrence) whilst I stare vacantly at the tablecloth. When Helen gets up four hours later she stumbles into the kitchen, groans and says, "I've had too much sleep. I'm knackered."

Operation

About a year after she was born Lulu started to get a series of nasty ear infections involving evil-smelling goop the consistency of melted fudge flowing from her left ear. This went on until the spring before she started school. Neither of us could bear the thought of her new classmates deciding she "smelt funny". So we became rather more assertive with our GP and a whole series of tests and visits resulted culminating in a CT scan which revealed she had a cholesteatoma.

A cholesteatoma is a deposit of cholesterol and dead cells in the ear which, if left unchecked, can destroy the hearing and ultimately grow into the cranial cavity and cause brain damage. Or worse.

Obviously it would have to be removed. There are two choices. The first option, as I understand it, involves scooping the whole affair out with a sharpened spoon. This leaves a big cavity behind which has to be cleaned out very regularly for the rest of the patient's life. You're encouraged to shelve your swimming career too. The second option is riskier and involves a series of three or four more delicate operations about a year apart. The risk is that damage could be caused to the facial nerve during one of these causing facial palsy. The upside is that once you're done you can swim and surf and never take your ear to the hospital again.

On the basis that we trust doctors and that we'd like our daughters to have as wide a range of options open go them as possible, we went for the second choice.

Having had a grommet fitted a few months earlier, Lulu was very relaxed about the operation. Her chief anxiety was whether one of us would be able to stay in the hospital with her and, once we'd established that we could, whom she was going to chose. Her primary concern seemed to be that the one she didn't chose would be upset. I took her to one side.

"Look, the important thing is that you feel safe and happy. Take whichever one of us will help you feel that way in hospital. If you chose Mummy I really won't be upset."

She welled up. "But I'll really miss you if you're not there," she wailed.

"If I was six and going into hospital I'd want my Mum there," I said. "Most kids would."

"Oh Daddy," she sighed, "When Mummy and Sorrel aren't here you're my favourite."

On the day, she and Helen have to be there at eight so they leave in a cab at 7.15. I'm struggling to hold it together - all the risks playing through my head. My perfect little girl is sat right here right now and shortly she's going to be taken away and may come back to me changed for ever. Sorrel is howling for less abstract reasons: Mummy will be away for a day and a night and she's being left with "stupid, ugly Daddy". I'm a mess but just manage not to let it show. Lulu looks back to me just as the door closes her little face crumpled and close to tears. Only Helen has a grip of herself. It's clear the Lulu has made the right choice.

Some hours later and Sorrel has watched every DVD in the house. I've completed chores so dull that I've been putting them off for years. Helen and I have been exchanging 'calm' texts the wall-climbing sub-text of which is clear. The op is supposed to take two hours and she's been in three then four then FIVE hours.

Poor Helen is sat by Lulu's empty bed steadily knitting a scarf for Lulu's beloved Bunny that will make him look like Tom Baker era Dr Who. I'm at home doing wall-of-death circuits like a chinchilla on amphetamines.

Eventually the surgeon emerges. The cholesteatoma has grown five-fold since the scan. It's eaten up all the bones of hearing and they've had to be removed. He's replaced them with plastic prostheses but we won't know how much hearing - if any - she'll have until all the packing in her ear is removed at the end of the month. Rather than doing the delicate paring away he was planning on, followed up
by similar ops in the years to come he's had to perform the semi-radical mastoidectomy with the spoon. So no more swimming for the dolphin-girl. We'll be seeing a lot of him over the next ten years he tells Helen.

I visit her later that night. She's in the post op ward with three very unhappy babies and an awkward looking teenager who would clearly rather be anywhere else. She has a bandage round her head and looks all puffy with a black eye on the way. But more than that... she's tiny. My tall, leggy girl who can't keep still is motionless: curled up, bandaged and tired, around her old grey Bunny - smart in his new scarf - as though he is the only thing keeping her afloat. She opens her eyes and gazes solemnly at me for a beat longer than is comfortable. "Dadda," she says and closes her pale blue eyes again.

If there was anything in me left to break it breaks now. I'm helpless to do anything for her but just be here. So I take her hand and do just that.

The Worst Journey In The World

I'm currently reading Apsley Cherry-Garrard's account of Scott's doomed Antarctic expedition of 1909. The slow unfolding of the tragedy and the beautiful writing make it a compelling read.

What Scott never had to do though was to clean up a vomit-sodden child on the hard shoulder of the A1(M) using his pants as a sponge.

This is a tale of hubris. You would do well to heed its lesson (unless of course you actually want to spend time picking partially digested raisins out of your knickers on the kerb of one of the busiest roads in Europe.)

We decided that it would be nice to spend the time between Christmas and New Year taking a trip down south to see my parents. Our thought process went like this:

(You may adopt an annoying smug, self-satisfied tone whilst reading this bit) The girls travel really well. Long car journeys are fine for them. They're sooo good. Never any trouble at all. Driving for seven hours will be fine.

My sister texted from York suggesting we stop off on the way down. Oh no, we said, that's too far out of our way.

We got up at 6.00 and piled into the car. We'd been to the library and got fully tooled up with story CDs. This wouldn't be a chore. This would be an active pleasure.

We make good time. Had a bit of breakfast in the car and after about three hours we stop at Durham services to have a coffee and a snack. The girls share a panettone and drank fruit juice.

We hit the road again and, apart from the questions prompted by the complex social issues raised by the third repetition of a Jacqueline Wilson CD, the journey was unfolding in the painless manner we had predicted.

And then we hit that interminable section to the north of York where they have been doing roadworks over the same 20 mile stretch for what seems like the best part of a decade. You have to drive at 50 and there's no hard shoulder. And no escape.

Suddenly, behind me Sorrel lets out a loud belch. There's a beat of silence and then a liquid gush followed by another. The car fills with cries of alarm and the sweet odour of apple juice, panettone and stomach acid. She is drenched in sick. It's filling her car seat and spilling over into the foot well.

I realise with some surprise that I'm driving along next to actual hard shoulder. I pull over as far as I can without rolling us down the embankment. We get out and gingerly remove her from the car. It's about 6 degrees and blowing a gale. She's crying and shivering and it slowly dawns on us that we have nothing with which to clean her up.

I open the boot and grab the first thing that comes to hand: two pairs of my pants. Helen hastily strips the poor child and wipes her down as the traffic rumbles past in a steady stream. We put her nightly on her and wrap her in Helen's cardigan.

The car seat is a mess. I take the other pair of pants and wipe it up. We take it out of the car and strip the cover off it while I use sparkling water and underwear to valet the sick off the car upholstery. I pull the seat belt to one side and my hand comes away covered in warm slime. Oh God. Through the retching I coo reassuringly to the children. I sound like a werewolf trying to swallow its own tongue. I start to wish I were one of Jacqueline Wilson's feckless absentee fathers.

Eventually we are able to bundle up all the vomity stuff and stick it in the boot. We line the naked car seat with my dressing gown and pull back onto the motorway.

Five minutes pass as Helen and I gaze into the middle distance the horror of what we have just witnessed playing in our heads like the upriver sequence of "Apocalypse Now". There is silence then Sorrel says, "I'm hungry...."

Sinister Developments

We took the girls camping to Brittany this summer. Despite driving through England on the two hottest days of the year in a car with broken air conditioning we had a wonderful time.

I live in mortal fear of people telling me about their holidays. Equally I dread being made to describe mine so let me share one moment that felt like it defined the whole thing.

We were lucky enough to have camped next to a couple with a daughter whose age fell exactly between L's and S's. A friendship soon developed. As you'll know by now there is a degree of eccentricity in my girl's world view but this little girl was a special and endearing sort of bonkers.

L was enchanted but S seemed to regard it as something of a challenge.

One day we were standing outside the tent talking to her parents whilst the three girls played inside together.

After a while L and her new friend came out of the tent to report that S had called the other girl, "poo poo." Clearly I was expected to act.

"S," I said, weakly, "That's a really nasty thing to say to anyone, say sorry please."

She did not look up. In fact she concentrated very hard on the toy she was playing with and, with an intent look on her face said, very slowly, "I have lots of plans."


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Tattoo Soup

The swimming pool is one of our favourite places. Both girls love to swim even though neither is particularly good at it.

Possibly it's best feature of the pool though is that it is an excellent place to go to reaffirm a positive body image. Oh. And to raise imponderable questions about body art.

I have no problem with tattoos. I wouldn't chose to get one but that has more to do with an aversion to even slight discomfort, let alone pain. But also I have a changing set of interests and the things (and people) I was passionate about in my 20s are not the things and people I'm passionate about now. I wore leg warmers and had floppy hair back then. I don't now because I would feel ridiculous. It's the same, for me, with tattoos.

It's hard to imagine that my feelings towards my children would ever change though. And yet the tradition of having your offspring's name tattooed onto your skin confuses me.

What used to baffle me was this: it's always men who have them and, mostly, they get the name of their first born son inked across their back. So I thought that it was their own name and couldn't understand why they would want to do that. Evidently it is not as an aide memoir as it's it written where they can't see it. Then I settled on the theory that it must be so that they can be identified in the event of a stabbing, say, or some other violent incident. Finally, I saw a guy with a girl's name splayed over his shoulders and realised that it was the names of their kids! Hurrah! And very sweet. But then I started to noticed some unfortunate problems.

Firstly, you have the dilemma of the first-born. Imagine this: you're a tattoo kind of chap. Your partner has just delivered your first child and OMG! It's a boy! A little copy of you! A chip off the old block! My God you're proud! So proud in fact that you remove yourself to the tattoo parlour at the first opportunity to get the little chap's name emblazoned across your back like a pair of nomenclatural wings. Splendid.

But then she gets pregnant again. Great news. Number two arrives and several weeks pass before someone - her, your mate, your Dad - asks when you'll be off to the tattooist again. Uh oh: you have a problem. Little Jagger's name takes up half your upper torso. Where the hell do you fit in newly-arrived Bianca? Or is it Jerri?

You can't use your chest because that's, like, prime position. It's better than the slot you allocated to number one and primogeniture is ingrained into the British like tea-drinking and complaining. You have to go with the small of the back don't you? It's the only space left. The problem is - and you don't know this yet because you're only 25 - is that you're going to get really hairy down there like your Dad and poor little Bianca's name will start to look like a neglected park only without, one would hope, the dog fouling, whilst Jagger's name will merely be adorned with a few silvery whisps. Almost like tinsel. And what message will that give to your little girl, eh?

You have even greater problems if you've given a really creative name to your kid. My personal favourite example of this is the man I saw with the word "chase" written in massive gothic letters across his shoulder blades.

There's research to be done too. It's not good enough when you have access to the internet to assume that your tattooist knows what he's doing in terms of spelling, Chinese or Japanese characters or....Roman numerals. These are popular amongst Jagger's Dad's mates. Sadly the one who's boy has just turned 13 ought to have checked before he had the name etched above the date MDCCCXCVIIIo. Or 1898 to us ordinary folk.

L's take on this sums it up for me. On witnessing a VERY tattooed man at the pool one day she whispered to me, horrified, "Daddy, I think that man must have been sleeping with a felt tip in the bed. With the lid off."

Do Not Read Until August 2025

Dear Girls

Now that S has turned 18 and my legal ability to influence anything you do has lapsed there are some things you need to know.

I lied. I lied about loads of things but here are the most heinous. I'm truly sorry about this. I tried to raise you with integrity and respect but sadly I failed quite early on because, well frankly because it was funny. Ho hum.

So here goes.

1. I am not a really small giant who got thrown out of Giantland for being embarrassingly small. I'm just quite a big human.

2. I do not have magical powers that throw an anti-monster force field around the house. That was just to make you feel less afraid. The business of screwing up my face like I was concentrating and then the elaborate arm-waving culminating in the finger clicks was just for show. Monsters could have got in AT ANY TIME. It was a bit cavalier I'm afraid but at least you believed you were safe.

3. Bees DO make honey. But wasps do NOT make mustard.

4. The Lollipop Lady does not live in the bushes next to her crossing. She has rather a nice big house just off Ferry Road.

5. Remember that vile yellow anti-biotic that the doctor used to prescribe? The one that was meant to taste of banana but actually tasted like a ferret had thrown up in the bottle and it had been allowed to ferment in a slurry pit? That stuff didn't make you invisible. I could see you the whole time.

6. You can eat jelly babies any way you like. The whole thing about it being best to eat the head first so you don't have to listen to the screaming? That's not true. Jelly babies like being eaten. It tickles them.

7. I do not explode if you don't hug me. I'm just a little crestfallen.

8. The tooth fairy never wrote to you. That was me every time. The tooth fairy has much nicer handwriting but is a very poor correspondent.

9. If you chew with your mouth open you won't lose your hair. Just all your friends.

10. And finally Rudolph never ate the carrot you carefully peeled and left out for him. That was Mummy. Nothing filled her with more pleasure than spitting crumbs of half-chewed carrot over the hearth on Chrismas Eve for the sake of authenticity.

So there you are: the tissue of lies I spun around your childhoods. Please forgive me the dishonesty. As you both know, lying is wrong and if you tell too many lies your legs fall off.

All my love

Dad xxx

Pop Will Eat Himself: The Origins

In an ideal world I would have been bitten by a radioactive babywipe as a teenager - suddenly finding myself imbued with awesome, superhuman arse-cleaning Dad abilities. Sadly thats not how I became a Dad for the first time. No. It happened like this.

H informed me, with her usual delicacy, that as I was 40 and clearly not getting any younger, it was time we started a family. This made me happy because it meant that we could do a lot of sex and, as we all know, men are driven by a desire for three things: proper sausages, a really good shiraz and some sex.

I shan't bore you with the sex. There was some juddering, and possibly panting and afterwards, when I asked her if she wanted to talk about her feelings she told me that she was really, really ANGRY and if we wanted to get pregnant we needed to do it properly.

Anyway, we managed to conceived and 9 months later we found ourselves in a cycle that went like this:

1. Labour starts.

2. H calls the hospital and they tell us to come in

3. We get into the car and drive to the hospital

4. Labour stops in the car

5. We arrive at the hospital and, because H is no longer in labour, they send us home

6. Repeat until fatigued

Finally, to prove a point we decided to stay at the hospital and walk round and endlessly round until labour started in the actual place we needed it to.

Allow me a short digression to discuss the National Childbirth Trust. The NCT is a terror network committed to bringing about the downfall of all hospital birth and healthcare professionals. They bring together white-knuckled newbies for a brief period of training in which they laugh at the fathers-to-be for not knowing which end of the cot to put your baby for nap; and scare the new mums shitless about how formula milk will result in the new baby being unable to form meaningful friendships in later life. Their main weapon, apart from the guns and high explosives, is the birth plan. The idea being that as you writhe around on the floor experiencing the sort of agony that feels as though it will tear you apart your birth partner (who is merely a bit bloated from having scarfed all the trail mix) can wave the plan in the air and say, "she doesn't want any drugs!"

So we made a birthplan. Our plan was that we would start off in a birthing pool with no pain relief whatsoever (with the exception of gas and air) and then we would see what happened. But ideally we wanted the whole thing to happen drug-free, in the pool. However, we, unlike many others and unbeknownst to our NCT handler, had a secret plan that went like this: if at any point it starts to get difficult to bear then H will have all the drugs that medical science has yet invented and also any that are on trial please too.

I'm assuming that , if you are reading this then you've either been through labour or you've been with someone whilst they've been going through it. If not then let me tell you, the latter is easier. Labour is sore. A birthing pool - a huge deep, warm-water filled paddling pool of the sort you would NEVER allow your children anywhere near lest they drown - is supposed to help alleviate some of the discomfort. Maybe it does but H had been in labour on and off for three days and was not at her perkiest and it was not long before she requested a toot of gas and air. I had been advised to try some myself for it's benign narcotic properties.

I gave her a quick blast and instantly realised that this was not going to be the route we would take. H did not misspend her youth in the traditional ways and consequently has had very little experience with inhaled drugs. She had a monster whitey. She was beyond tired, in pain, up to her neck in a warm bath and, now, stoned. She was on all fours in the pool and kept dozing off between contractions. As her head drooped towards the surface I had to place my hand on her forehead and raise it up only for it to begin it's slow descent again. Once I let her dip her nose in the water just to see if it would wake her up. It didn't.

Every so often the midwife would come in to check her. H would attempt to perk herself up and give coherent replies to the questions asked but she was not remotely with it. After one visit H looked up and blearily asked, "Was that Morgan Spurlock from 'Supersize Me'?"

"No," I replied gently, "It was the midwife."

A few seconds passed. H started to laugh. "D'you remember when I thought the midwife was Morgan Spurlock from 'Supersize Me'? That was funny."

"Really funny," I told her, "And only ten seconds ago."

The birthing pool was not helping. Apart from the growing risk of drowning, H was beginning to really crave a lie down. We got her out. No mean feat considering she was massively pregnant, off her face and really slippery. It was suggested that, as she was so very tired; was not yet sufficiently dilated; and was in the sort of pain that the entonox wouldn't touch, we should consider a epidural. This would remove the pain which would allow her to rest and possibly sleep which in turn would relax her and allow labour to progress more normally.

Despite being fully paid up, balaclava wearing members of the Leith cell of the NCT we thought this sounded like a Really Good Plan and so we were wheeled into a delivery room and an anaesthetist arrived.

He arranged H, sitting up on a bed so he could get the gigantic needle into her spine. I was asked to stand in front of her and hold her hands. Now I tend to dispense very little advice to other parents-to-be but I'm going to do so now. Gentlemen: if you ever find yourself in this situation do NOT under any circumstances stand legs akimbo with your partner's legs dangling between yours. That man is not an anaesthetist: he is a puppet master and your beloved is a giant meat marionette whom he will force to dance to his own wicked tunes.

I was holding her hands and trying to not look at the massively long needle he was waving around behind her back. I was just worrying that it might go straight through her and skewer me too when H's right leg shot up between mine and hoofed me right in the testicles. "Sorry!" called the anaesthetist, cheerfully whilst making energetic stirring motions with the needle behind H's back. I was in unspeakable agonies but this is not something that you can complain about when your wife is in labour. No one will give you any sympathy. As I ruminated on this ironic state of affairs, H's leg shot up again and, with unerring accuracy caught me a full volley in the plums.

"Ha ha! Got you again? Sorry about that," called the man with the joystick in my wife's spine, "I think I've got it now."

And indeed he had. He turned a tiny plastic tap and industrial quantities of drugs were administered directly into her central nervous system. H looked suddenly relaxed. She lay on her side and went immediately to sleep. I sat and held her hand for a minute until my eyes, too, closed.

A few hours later the midwife woke us up. H was fully dilated and it was time. Never let anyone tell you that the day their children were born was the happiest day of their lives. Firstly, it doesn't leave much for the poor kid to do in later life in the making-you-happy department and secondly I don't associate bleeding and screaming and throwing up into a cardboard cowboy hat with being the happiest I've ever seen my wife.

As a man witnessing your beloved giving birth you feel utterly useless. I was expecting to feel this way, we'd discussed it to the point that I'd suggested I sing whale song to H at critical moments. At the time this had seemed like a hilarious idea. Not so much anymore. I had also suggested that at the moment the baby's head crowned I should cry out, "What about me? What about MY needs." I wasn't really up for that either.

Everything happened too fast for any of that. They attempted to help the baby out by use of a Ventouse Cap - basically a medical toilet plunger. The suction cup is fitted to the top of the baby's head and the Obstetrician pulls as hard as she can. What is supposed to happen is that the baby comes out. What isn't supposed to happen is that there is a loud comedy pop, the Ventouse cap shoots across the room and the Obstetrician falls on her arse. They tried forceps next - all a bit panicky now, you don't want to leave a kid hanging about in the birth canal for too long, they might try to breathe. In order to gain ingress they needed to make a cut. Yes. That's right. There. I'm willing to bet that all of those men who secretly think women make a bit of a fuss about birth would rapidly change their minds if offered a quick slit administered to their perineum.

We were in the final stages now. All NCT ideals shoved roughly out of the way like a thin man in a chip shop after closing time. H was in classic hospital birth position: on her back, propped up, feet in stirrups. Midwife along side saying, "Well done, good girl, you're doing fine, aaaaaannnnddddd PUSH."

I was stood on the other side, one aching arm supporting her back the other being crushed to a bloodless pulp of skin and splintered bone by her mighty grip. On every push she leaned forward and gave it her all. For my part I tried to help by pulling her up into a sitting position as she pushed. This provided me with an excellent but intermittent view of the emerging baby and the part of my wife from which it was emerging. Let me share this one detail with you (and look away now if you are at all squeamish): remember I mentioned cutting? Well there are not supposed to be any places on the human body where neat right angles occur but I was seeing one with every push that was made. There was no point at which I felt like I might faint but this small detail truly shocked me.

Many women become unfeasibly sweary during birth. H avoided this. Her greatest profanity at this time was, "Jeez Louise." I am inexplicably proud of her for this.

And then suddenly a small wrinkled, curled up person is there except that it's not a person; it's a monochrome photograph of a person projected somehow onto the surface of a squishy purple balloon. This lasts a split second, the ballon bursts and the image falls onto the object inside it and it becomes a baby. It is lifted, face-down away from me, trailing it's cord and then it disappears into a huddle of nurses and doctors. As it rises over their heads I see it's rear end. I spot a plump vulva and think, "Testicles! It's a boy." I turn back to H and say, "It's a boy!"

"No it's not," a business like voice declares, "She's a wee girl."

There is no point trying to explain. I am too tired and this is not about me. The little girl is passed to H and she lies on her chest amidst tubes from the drips all pink with blood that has been pushed back up them by the pressure of H's labours.

Both of us held our new daughter. I had a perfect, bloody imprint of her on my tee shirt. Soon the midwife gently took her from me and cleaned and dressed her. I had clothes with me for her. New clothes carefully bought and packed but it didn't occur to either of us to mention them. She was passed back to H and the midwife motioned to me, "come with me, I've something to show you." we left the delivery suite and walked into the waiting room. I looked out onto the hospital car park. It was 7 in the morning on the 1st March 2005 and the whole world was white. Whilst my daughter was struggling into the world it had snowed.

Later, as I drove slowly home, the traffic tearing past me on the M8, too dazed and tired to really do anything but engage auto-pilot I wondered at the terrible smell in the car. I must have left a half eaten pork pie in there for the last three days or something. Whatever it was it was rank. It was only after I got home and pulled my tee shirt over my head that I realised that the bloody image of my new child had not mixed well with my three day old body odour in the overheated environment of the hospital. I stank.

The Democratic Process.

The recent Scottish Parliamentary elections have figured large in our house. In part because the result was fascinating but mostly because H, as a journalist, was working on it with exceptional focus.

Clearly the girls have been having conversations about this at school and nursery as well as absorbing virtually the only subject of adult conversation for the last month. So it was interesting to hear what they had to say on the subject.

We were walking home from a ceilidh late on Friday night. S was on my shoulders and was interested to see the streetlights coming on.

"Tell me when we see a lamppost, Daddy."

"Why"

"Because that's voting."

"What's voting?"

"The sign on the lamppost. THAT'S voting."

Looking down the rather smart street we were walking along I could see that all the party logos had been taken down. The only signs on these lampposts were informing us of the fines we would incur were we to allow our non-existent dog to poo on the pavement.

"Do you mean these signs, sweetie?"

"Yes," she said emphatically, "Voting is picking up dog poo in a bag and putting it in the bin."

We were silent a moment whilst we absorbed this pearl. Then L sighed heavily and said in a weary tone, "No it isn't. Voting is when everyone writes down who they want to be in the government on a really big piece of paper and then they post it to the school. The school count up the bits of paper and and whoever gets the most bits gets to be the government."

I was momentarily unsure which version summed up the process best.

When they weren't here...

School holidays are a new thing to us. We are accustomed to having unfettered access to year round childcare in the shape of the excellent nursery both our girls attended. School however seems to run on the principle that it's still 1945 and that Mummy is at home all day polishing the baby and knitting dinner. In the fictitious world of education managers, benign grandparents live around the corner doing nothing that cannot be immediately interrupted for the purposes of tending to their darling grandkids. Sadly, this is not how it is anymore. Houses, which used to cost 3 and 6 now cost more than petrol and so both parents have to go to work. People move around and don't live in the place they grew up in so grandparents and uncles and aunties are spread across the globe in a most unhelpful fashion. This means that modern parents are all accomplished logisticians, able to conjoure endless scenarios involving Breakfast clubs, playdates, close friends, after school clubs and all manner of other desperate measures (once, when I ran a bookshop we found a two children left in the kids section for an entire day whilst their parent went off to work.)

Our Easter holiday has been thrown into disarray by H having to work full time meaning that she is out of the house for about 13 hours a day 4 days a week. Granny has sprung to our aid by coming down for a couple of days but the quid pro quo has been that H had to take the kids up to visit her and Grandad for a weekend. As H's weekend starts on Friday, but mine does not she took the girls up north by herself leaving me with the run of the house for three whole days.

Naturally there was a list of things I had to do. Plus a list of things I wanted to to do. Fortunately, depending on your point of view, most of my friends were also away so there was nothing to distract me.

So, on Friday, I leave work and go home to an empty house. No tired girls crying when I ask them to turn off the telly and come to the table. No having to insist on cutlery being used or that they finish what's on their plate. No bathtime with it's attendant fights and attempted drownings. No bedtime stories with one wanting one thing and the other wanting something else. No wheedling and sulking over "just one more story, pleeeeeeeeeeeease!"

Just a quiet house. A bit of tidying to do. A cupboard full of food and a telly waiting to be watched. I even bought beer.

I did the tidying. I cleaned up a bit. It was very quiet. I put the radio on and cleaned the oven. I put on some washing. I took the dry washing off the rack. I cooked myself some tea. I finished my meal and washed up the plates. There was absolutely no noise. It was weird, spooky even. Certainly not natural.

The next day I got up planning to go and get my hair cut. I had breakfast and cleaned up again, then I tidied the sitting room and hoovered under all the furniture. I'd never done that before. I thought about leaving the house but it just seemed a bit too hard. Almost.....scary. I tidied the girl's room and put the washing away. The silence was like a hissing in my ears, like someone had left a radio on, tuned between stations, and hidden it somewhere in the house. This is ridiculous, I thought, just GO OUT. I swallowed hard, got my bike and left.

Once outside everything was normal again. I went down to the barbers and got my hair cut like a non-mental person and came back. The house was utterly, frighteningly still. I made some toast and crunched it noisily. I did some more washing, slamming the washing machine door as loudly as I could. I put some more clothes away and tidied up some more but couldn't shake off the oppressive, velvet stillness. Even the plastic racket that you have to create in tidying up the toys couldn't lift it.

Saturday passed and Sunday came but for all my tidying and dithering about I still hadn't got all the things done that I had intended. I worked on through the awful silence like a man possessed and finally, finally I heard the car. I dashed to the front door and there they were: my girls. L threw herself at me and gave me a huge hug and S started talking like she was commentating on the closing stages of a very exciting horse race, giving me a full and detailed description of everything they'd done since they last saw me. We walked into the house chatting and laughing with S declaring, "And do you know what Daddy? I have invisible veins!"

The Leith Police Dismisseth Us

One of the things you don't expect when cycling with your three year old daughter in the bike seat behind you is that a police man will attempt to squash you with a van.

However, once the squashing attempt has failed - and particularly if the policeman has been considerate enough to attempt the squashing outside a police station - why then the juxtaposition of the scene of the attempted squashing and the proximity of the police station must surely result in the squashee marching smartly in the aforementioned police station to report the squasher.

Having survived to watch the van drive off, it's pilot unaware of the near-squashing he'd just administered, I'd had enough time to take the number plate so I gave it to the duty officer who dutifully trotted off to get the sergeant.

First they couldn't find the right sergeant There are two forces operating out of Leith they told me knowledgeably as I nodded my eager interest. Each one has a sergeant and the one talking to me was not the right one.

Then they had to establish which van it was.

"But I gave you the licence plate !" I said.

"Yeah, but there are two vans," they retorted.

"Not, I hope, with the same licence plate! I mean, I know you're the police and everything but still..."

"Yes," they said patiently, "but we have to make sure it's the right van."

"It's the van that has that licence plate bolted to the back," I said, perhaps a little too sharply.

They rewarded this comment with a level stare and then continued their hunt for the van and the sergeant.

At this point I'd like to set the scene for you - better late than never. All you ever see of the inside of Leith Police Station (unless you have done a crime) is a tiny room with a hard bench and a huge sheet of security glass separating the "customers" from the actual polices. In this tiny room were two big radiators. Despite the fact that it was about 15 degrees outside these radiators were on. I was wearing waterproofs and a bike helmet and was holding onto the bike. S was on the bike seat. Both her and the seat were enveloped in a lurid yellow waterproof cape with a not-very-nice picture of a teddy on the front. We became hot.

40 minutes passed. Lots of people can to the window to do pointless things whilst sneaking a sly look at S and me in full cycling gear busily sweltering in the small room with two radiators. I expect they thought we were going to get bored and go away. They were 50% correct.

I don't know if you've been into a police station recently. They are full of neatly pinned up but dire posters. By which I mean they are both dire in terms of content and from a design point of view. If you are three and bored and they are all you have to look at then they are very interesting. And when things are interesting then questions need to be asked. Questions that require answers.

"Daddy, what's that purple one?" S pointed to a poster with a cartoon of a man cycling in midair whilst another man in a stripy shirt and a mask steals his bike from underneath him. "DON'T LET THEM STEAL YOUR BIKE FROM UNDERNEATH YOU!" it says.

Another showed a picture of a little girl picking up a syringe. The point of this one was to appeal to drug dealers and users not to drop used needles in parks. "DRUG ADDICTS AND DEALERS!" It said, "DON'T DROP YOUR NEEDLES IN THE PARK!!!!"If I was a dealer I would have made sure to pay a visit to the police station so that I could be edified by this striking publication. "What is that one for? What is that girl holding? Why has she picked it up?" I tried to explain about not picking up things you find on the ground.

"What is she holding in her hand?"

"A jaggy thing"

"Why is she holding the jaggy thing? Where's her Mummy?"

"I expect her Mummy is standing in front of her and we can't see her in the picture."

"Is her Mummy taking the picture?"

"................yes"

Yet another poster advertised a service for alcoholics. It featured a glum, monochrome scene of a bunch of feckless, badly dressed people sitting on wildly-patterned sofas getting drunk. The message was obviously meant to warn you of the awful soft furnishings you will end up with if you allow your drinking to spiral out of control. I regarded the assembled drunks with something approaching envy.

"Are those people drinking lemonade? Why are they drinking lemonade? Is it a party? Why are they sad at the party?"

Then the no smoking sign attracted her attention. I told her that a red circle with a line through it means that you mustn't do the thing on the picture in the middle of the circle. In another part of the room was a tripartite sign indicating that not only mustn't you smoke, but you mustn't eat or drink either. "Don't smoke, don't have a cup of tea, don't have knives and forks," opines S. Then "Daddy, what's that purple one?" and so we circled back to the beginning, repeating in random order for the duration of our wait.

Finally, when they ran out of people to send down to stare at us and they realise that I have staying power brought about by having had to patiently answer asinine questions for the last six years, the right sergeant was located and the van was attributed to the plate.

The sergeant was very nice to both of us and proceeded to ask me all the questions with which even the most minor incident is burdened: where was I born? What is my ethnicity? What is my job title? None of which has any bearing on the incident. I was calm and polite. S flirted. He did his job. Did I want to press charges? No. What did I want to happen? Just tell the driver that he's an idiot and the mirror is not for checking his hair.

Apparently I'll get a letter telling me what's transpired. Delivered by bike I hope.

A Proud Moment

One of the curses of having children is that the process by which you come to remind yourself of one, other or both of your parents is accelerated. It's all to do with context. Kids constantly innovate, finding new and inventive ways to misbehave. Strewing clothes, toys, my stuff, food, books and things I don't even recognise is the current thing in our house. I follow them around, picking up after them and uttering the phrase, "it's the biggest shelf in the house to you two isn't it?" A phrase that used to irritate me beyond measure when I was little. No. It's not a big shelf. IT'S THE FLOOR!!!! I would have thought my Mother would have been able to see that. But apparently not. And now, forty years later neither can I.

The flip side to this is when your kids do something that reminds you of you. Mostly this is good. Sometimes it's excruciating. As a man with two daughters I don't expect it very much but actually I am often surprised. This morning was a perfect example.

L had been told by the school to dress as though she was in Australia. I was somewhat alarmed to hear this as she had been vociferously insisting to me that only Aboriginies lived there and they only wear paint. However she took herself off and dressed not in emulsion but in some perfectly decent summer clothes. So far so good.

S had been told - it being April 1st - that everyone at nursery would be wearing something silly. "I know!" she cried and ran upstairs to return moments later with pants on her head.

She was absolutely committed to this outfit. So much so that she wore the pants throughout breakfast, all the way to nursery; had a bit of a moment of doubt just before she got there; overcame her demons, put the pants back on and was still wearing them when she was collected three hours later.

I was proud. So very, very proud.

As a foot note: L's reaction to all of this was to to laugh so hard that "all my bones have swapped places." She went on to assert that, "if my bones laugh much more they'll change places with my muscles." I know what she meant.