Читать книгу Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me - Tim Dowling - Страница 7

Whenever I hear the term ‘co-parenting’, I think back to those long-ago early mornings when my wife and I would try to lever each other off the edge of the bed, in the tacit understanding that the first person to hit the floor would be obliged to go and tend a crying infant. You couldn’t call it teamwork, exactly, but since we were both equally determined not to be the one to get up, it was broadly fair. Later I came to realize that the only real help one parent can give another is an offer to take the child – or the children – a considerable distance away for an agreed period of time.

‘Have fun,’ my wife would say, shutting the door on us. ‘Don’t come back early.’

I should really use a separate word to signify the kind of parenting I do when my wife isn’t around to share in the joy of it. For lack of a better term, let’s call it ‘fathering’. These intervals tend to differ in tone and style from co-parenting, and often end with me listing things we needn’t tell Mum about. I don’t mean for it to undermine the parenting best practice we’ve agreed upon as a couple, but I won’t pretend that fathering isn’t characterized by a certain drift from established methods. I just do whatever works, even after it stops working.

On a typical Saturday I find myself at a loose end in London with my three children and my friend Mark, who is visiting from America. My wife, meanwhile, is working in her bookshop all day. We have already dropped by for a visit, and we have already been asked to leave. I’ve made no further plans.

Our options are subsequently curtailed by rain. The children are hungry. Hungry children can be cranky and short-tempered, but in my experience they are also listless and biddable, and this is how I like it. If you keep promising them food, they will keep walking. They might complain, but they lack the energy for real rebellion. So I am strolling through the pouring rain with three slope-shouldered boys moaning and dragging their heels behind me. This, I think, is about as good as it gets.

Eventually, when I feel we’ve used up enough afternoon, we stop at a noodle bar for a late lunch. The children spot iced tea on the menu. To them, iced tea is an exotic American treat, like powdered pink lemonade or bubblegum-flavoured jellybeans. To me, an American, it is tea with some ice in it that costs £4, but I find myself in the mood to reward their patience. The food arrives, spirits lift and we all chat volubly. A strange sense of fatherly competence begins to steal over me. Only later in life will I come to recognize this feeling as a bad omen.

There is a lull after the plates have been cleared when the waiter seems to forget all about us. I’m trying to carry on a conversation with Mark, but the younger two, their blood sugar levels restored, have begun to poke each other with chopsticks as part of a game that is rapidly getting out of hand. I threaten to separate them. When they continue I carry out my threat, deftly sliding them apart and sitting down on the bench between them. As soon as I resume the conversation, they start poking each other behind my back. Then they start poking me. When I turn to remonstrate with the youngest one, the oldest leans across the table and sticks the point of a chopstick in my ear. This, I decide, is a step too far.

I accept that there must be something inherently amusing about my sense of humour deserting me. I don’t know why this is. No one laughs when my wife has a sense-of-humour failure, sometimes not for the rest of the week. But the children are hysterical, giggling maniacally and poking me over and over again with chopsticks, in the ribs, in the arms, in the side of my head. I am hissing for them to stop, and doing my most threatening eyebrows.

More than once I try to restore order by saying, ‘OK, I’m serious now’ but this only makes them laugh louder and poke harder. If I’m quick enough I can snatch a chopstick away – after a few minutes I have a big handful – but this is a noodle bar; there are lots of chopsticks lying around. At one point the youngest child actually goes to the counter to ask for more.

Before long I have completely lost control of the situation. Everywhere I look I catch the eye of someone staring at me with either pity or scorn, or some sieved mixture of the two. None of them is our waiter. My debit card has been sitting on the little dish for fifteen minutes, and still he hasn’t appeared.

I look at Mark, who is also looking at me with pity and scorn, and clearly wishing he was doing it from farther away. I shrug my shoulders at him wearily, and then recoil as the point of a chopstick stabs into my neck.

‘It’s because you gave them iced tea,’ he says.

When you have young children in London, most weekends break down into a basic binary choice: Science Museum or dinosaurs. Because the Science Museum is right next to the Natural History Museum, it’s an argument that can continue for your entire journey there. The choice never mattered to me, because I came to hate both places more or less equally. Once a PR person offered me the chance to spend the whole night in the Science Museum with my children and a bunch of other kids and parents. It sounded like some kind of community punishment order. I’ve never done anything wrong enough to deserve that.

There is, of course, a wealth of culture on offer in London, much of it child-friendly. Over years of weekends I enthusiastically made the case for many enticing alternatives: plays, galleries, street parties, food festivals, exhibitions, one-off happenings. And every time I did, my three children would look at me blankly. Then two would say ‘Science Museum’ and one would say ‘dinosaurs’.

Eventually I learned to lie about where we were going.

‘This is boring,’ says the youngest one, slumping against a temporary fence. He has a point. My three sons and I have made a trip to see the Serpentine Pavilion in Kensington Gardens, the majority of us under protest. The temporary pavilion – they put up a new one every spring – architecturally intriguing though it may be from the outside, is presently closed for some private event. Through its glass walls we can see someone giving what appears to be a lecture to a seated audience. I tell the youngest one he’s lucky, that it would probably be even more boring if we were inside.

‘Can we get an ice cream now?’ he says. As I look round for the nearest ice cream van I spy a poster for the adjacent Serpentine Gallery, which is currently exhibiting recent work by the US artist Jeff Koons. I had been planning to see it anyway, but I don’t imagine I’ll be back this way on my own any time soon.

‘Let’s go in there first,’ I say. ‘Just for a bit.’

The Serpentine Gallery has always been, to my mind, an easy-going cultural venue. As well as being a showcase for new and sometimes challenging art, it’s also free and in a park, and consequently full of sticky toddlers at weekends. They know their audience, and are correspondingly accommodating. But today things are different: gallery staff are holding people at the entrance in order to deliver a stern warning about the fragility of the artwork on display. My children chat all the way through it. Once inside we gather round a sculpture consisting of a large inflatable cartoon caterpillar poking through the rungs of a folding stepladder, and stare.

‘I’m really not impressed by this,’ says the middle one. ‘What’s so great about a pool toy stuck in a ladder?’ I explain that with this sculpture, as with much of the work of Jeff Koons, all is not as it seems.

‘It may look like an ordinary blow-up toy,’ I say, ‘but it’s actually made of metal.’ I begin to doubt these words even as they leave my mouth. I must have read this fact somewhere, but the caterpillar before me looks exactly like an inflatable toy, with perfectly puckered seams and a familiar plastic sheen. All three children immediately reach out to touch the sculpture. ‘Don’t!’ I hiss, slapping at their fingers. A gallery guard is already coming towards us.

‘What’s the point of making metal look like plastic,’ says the oldest, ‘if you can’t touch it to see it’s not plastic?’

‘It’s partly about raising the banal, the everyday, to the level of high art,’ I say. ‘But it’s also challenging our ideas about what art is supposed to …’ I realize I’m alone. The children have disappeared into another room, in order to touch some sculptures. By the time I get to them the middle one is circling a stack of plastic chairs pierced by two seal-headed swimming rings, his fingers splayed. Another guard is following him round and round it, trying to keep his hands in sight.

‘Let’s look over here,’ I say, grabbing the middle one. We now seem to have our own personal guard, silently shadowing us wherever we go. The children accept this escalation as a challenge.

‘You distract her,’ says the oldest to the middle one, ‘and I’ll touch the lobster when she’s not looking.’

‘No one is going to touch anything,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t you have any sense of …’ The three of them scoot ahead of me, and the guard passes by in pursuit. I catch up as they are bearing down on two blow-up turtles fixed to a chain-link fence, and gather them by their wrists.

‘I think we’ve seen everything now,’ I say, herding everyone towards the door. ‘Time for ice cream.’ As we reach the exit I find myself calculating the extent to which my children’s behaviour can be blamed on my singular lack of authority, and how much of it is the fault of the artist Jeff Koons. A light rain is falling in the park.

‘I actually brushed the caterpillar with the back of my hand on the way out,’ says the oldest.

‘What did it feel like?’ I say.

‘Metal,’ he says.

For obvious reasons I prefer to do most of my child-rearing in private. I can do it in public if I have to, but it takes a lot out of me; parenting is largely a process of trial and error, and I don’t like other people seeing the error part. Frankly, I find being in public on my own stressful enough, and for that reason I am only too happy to use my children as an excuse to stay in. Unfortunately this is not always possible.

Somewhere in my pre-Christmas clutch of invitations is one for a book launch. Although it is organized by friends of mine, I have already placed the event in a mental box marked ‘optional’. This is because I don’t know the author and because you never know how you are going to feel about going outside on a random day in the future.

I have forgotten all about the book launch when, a few weeks hence, with my wife away in Amsterdam, one of these friends rings in order to ensure my attendance that evening.

‘I can’t,’ I say with what I hope sounds like dejection. ‘I mean I would, but I’ve got the kids and no one to baby-sit.’

‘Bring them,’ she says. Her tone hints that non-compliance is not among the available alternatives.

‘Really? OK, that sounds great.’

I scroll back through my inbox to find the details. The book is called Once More with Feeling and the launch is described as ‘a festive evening of hymn and carol singing at St James’s, Piccadilly’. I may as well extend my sons an invitation to be nit-combed.

‘Guess what?’ I say. ‘We’re going to a party, which won’t end until past your bedtime.’

The three of them, still in their school uniforms, stare at me from the sofa.

‘What sort of party?’ asks the oldest.

‘A book launch – there will be refreshments, though, and, um, a bit of carol singing.’

‘Oh no!’ screams the youngest, throwing himself to the floor.

‘It’ll be fun!’ I say.

We are late, threading our way up Piccadilly through crowds of pedestrians with shopping bags. I have foolishly driven into central London and left the car in a car park whose charges took my breath away.

‘Why is there singing at a book party?’ asks the middle one.

‘Well, the book’s a collection of hymns and carols, so I guess they thought it would be appropriate to sing hymns and carols.’

‘Hymns? You didn’t say that before!’

‘Exactly where is this thing happening?’ asks the oldest.

‘In a church,’ I say.

They all stop walking.

‘Oh my God,’ says the middle one.

‘Singing hymns in a church,’ says the oldest. ‘That is basically church.’

‘You said we were going to a party!’ screams the youngest, his eyeballs shining with fury. ‘And you’re taking us to church!’

‘But there will be refreshments,’ I say.

There are no refreshments. The youngest slumps with his forehead against the pew in front, staring at the floor. The oldest seems mildly impressed that one of the readers is Ian Hislop, whom he recognizes from Have I Got News for You. The middle one begins to sing along to the carols in spite of himself, while I repeat interesting facts I have gleaned from a pamphlet I found on my seat. ‘This church was designed by Christopher Wren,’ I whisper. For the moment, all is calm.

Afterwards I can think only about how much the car park is costing. The youngest one vanishes. The oldest drags the middle one away by the arm. ‘I’m going to get him to say “Ian Hislop” in a loud voice when Ian Hislop goes by.’

‘Don’t do that,’ I say. ‘This is a church. William Blake was baptized here.’

‘Who’s Ian Hislop?’ asks the middle one.

After ten minutes of searching I finally find the youngest one by the doors.

‘Let’s go, Dad,’ he says, grabbing my hand.

‘We need the other two,’ I say, thinking about the car park.

‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know.’ I try to walk against the tide of people leaving, but I can’t move. Then I spot the pair of them, standing on a pew near the aisle. The middle one has a beatific expression on his face. He tilts back his head, opens his mouth wide and clearly pronounces the words ‘Ian Hislop’. In the crowd I can just see Ian Hislop’s unmistakable head, looking this way, looking that way.

This is my Valentine’s Day gift to my wife: a romantic long weekend at home for one. I am taking the children away for a few days so she can work and sleep and go to the cinema with people who are not me. I left her to make all the arrangements, right down to the taxi at the other end, but sitting on the Stansted Express with our bags crushing my feet, I still take some time to congratulate myself.

I have enough experience of the Stansted Express to know that it doesn’t deserve the second part of its name. Even now it is crawling through North London, pausing for long periods, the drawn-out silences punctuated by incomprehensible apologies. It doesn’t matter, I think, because we are so incredibly early. If this journey takes twice as long as it’s meant to, we will still be at the airport before check-in opens. I look at my children, all staring into tiny screens, their faces alight with eerie concentration. There is, unusually, so little adrenaline in my system that I fall into a gentle sleep.

I am awoken by a sudden lack of forward momentum. As I open my eyes the lights go out and the air conditioning ceases to whir. Don’t worry, I think. We are still so very, very early. After ten minutes the PA system buzzes to life. ‘Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen,’ says a voice. ‘Unfortunately, we have hit somebody, an individual who was intending to commit suicide.’ I look at the oldest, who is sitting across from me and staring into his lap while tinny music leaks from his ears. I look at the youngest one, who is watching what the oldest has described as an ‘amazingly inappropriate’ episode of Family Guy on his brother’s iPod, and laughing quietly. I look at the middle one, who is looking at me.

‘Did you hear that?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Don’t tell the other two.’ In the seat in front of us, a passenger is trying to explain the situation to a German couple, but they don’t seem to get it. With the power off, the carriage quickly turns chilly.

Eventually, in response to a quizzical look from the oldest, I take a notepad from my bag and write, ‘Someone jumped in front of the train’ on it. He removes his earphones and watches policemen wander up and down the track. The other passengers conduct themselves with seemly reserve, talking in hushed tones into mobiles. There is no trouble when the snack trolley immediately runs out of everything.

After an hour it becomes apparent that we will not be moving for at least another hour. I ring my wife to ask, almost in a whisper, about the possibility of other flights, if necessary to other airports.

‘There’s one at six-thirty to Munich,’ she says. ‘If München is Munich. It is, isn’t it?’

‘Well, I’d always thought so,’ I say, but it occurs to me that I once believed that Bayreuth was just an alternative spelling for Beirut. ‘Now I’m not sure.’

The youngest one suddenly laughs out loud. He still has headphones on, and he is still watching Family Guy. His brother prods him in the shin.

‘Do you actually even know what’s going on?’ he says. The youngest looks up.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘A poltergeist comes and Stewie gets sucked into a portal.’

The man in front of us tells the Germans that this sort of thing happens once or twice a year. In fact, I discover later, this is the fourth ‘fatality’ on the Stansted line in two months. The full sadness of it struck me only later in the evening, back home nine hours after setting off. Only then did I remember the conductor walking into our silent carriage to ask the trolley man for a coffee for the driver.

Now I think of it, the term ‘trial and error’ is a bit misleading when applied to fatherhood, because one is rarely in a position to adapt in response to mistakes. You can’t just stop doing things because they keep going wrong; you’re more or less required to carry on. You take your children to a restaurant, and it ends badly. A month later you try again, and it goes badly again. Over the long term you may begin to notice incremental improvements in the outcomes, but this is more to do with your children getting older than anything you’re doing.

My wife’s book group – of which she is a founder member – meets monthly in various locations, including, occasionally, our kitchen. The last time this happened I was away, so I’m not certain how the children and I are to be accommodated.

‘What happens to us?’ I ask while my wife arranges cheeses on a plate.

‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Just stay out of the kitchen, that’s all. And don’t let them shout swearwords on the stairs. Or fight. I don’t want anyone running in covered in blood.’

When the women of the book club begin to arrive, I assemble all three boys in the sitting room.

‘Put your shoes on,’ I say. ‘We’re going out.’ I take them to the Thai restaurant over the road. At my insistence, we order starters none of us has tried before. We chat about school, sport, politics and YouTube videos we’ve seen of people falling off things. The children, to my quiet astonishment, comport themselves with uncharacteristic maturity. They are polite. They are open-minded about some of the stranger dishes. They do not bicker, or complain, or knock over my beer while fighting over a dumpling. No one asks to play with my phone, or storms out leaving the word ‘Arsehole!’ hanging in the air.

The restaurant, almost empty on our arrival, fills up, mostly with groups of women, some of whom look over and smile. After a while I start to grow self-conscious, losing the drift of the conversation and beginning to see myself in the way I imagine these women see me: as an embattled single father bringing up three boys on his own, beautifully. When I occasionally catch one of their admiring glances, I try to acknowledge it wearing a modest, vaguely embarrassed expression that says, ‘Yes, it has been a struggle, but it’s been worth it. These kids mean everything to me.’

‘Why don’t you just shut up?’ the youngest says to the oldest.

‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ the oldest says to the youngest.

‘Can we have the bill?’ I say to the passing waiter.

When we get home, the book club is still in session in the kitchen. We creep into the sitting room and I shut the door quietly behind us.

‘It was a good dinner,’ I say softly. ‘We’ve expanded our repertoire to include starters four and seven, and I learned a lot about the many different ways a person can hurt himself skateboarding off a roof.’

‘Whatever,’ the youngest says, kicking off his shoes so they hit the window blinds and then diving face first into the sofa. The middle one picks up the TV remote and points it at the screen. As the tail end of Police, Camera, Action! comes blaring into the room, he starts playing keepy-uppy with a dirty tennis ball. The oldest one is already sprawled on the other sofa with his laptop open under his chin like a sun reflector. Seizing the opportunity to check my email, I pull my phone from my pocket and turn my back to the noise.

At this point the door swings open. I glance up from my phone and see my wife, and behind her a group of rather elegant women in long coats, peering in. My wife gestures with one upturned palm, in the manner of a museum curator.

‘Typical,’ she says. ‘Any time of day or night, if you open this door, this is the scene that greets you.’

I start to say something in protest, but then I see myself as the six smiling women framed in the door see me, and I decide to go with it.

One fine autumn day I elect to take my children to the grand opening of London’s new mega-mall, because it is half-term and we need an activity, and because the mega-mall happens to be very near our house, which has not heretofore been very near anything. In fact, it is now our closest retail experience, our local forty-three-acre shop, and I want them to be familiar with it so that in future I can ask them to nip out and get me some Louis Vuitton luggage.

We are worried, however, that we might be underdressed for the occasion. Our shoes are muddy. The middle one is wearing a hoodie, which for all I know might disqualify him from entry. The youngest is sporting a huge cut above his blackened eye, the result of running into a friend while celebrating a goal with his shirt pulled over his head. We ditch the hoodie, change coats, wipe food from each other’s faces.

As we walk along the road I try to set the mega-mall opening day in some sort of wider historical context, because we should really be going to a museum or something in half-term.

‘This entire area was the site of the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition, the centrepiece of which was the dazzling White City,’ I say, lowering my voice as we pass other pedestrians in case my facts are wrong.

‘Is that why the Tube station is called White City?’ the middle one asks, pointing.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That is exactly why. They also held the 1908 Olympics here.’

‘Dad,’ the youngest says, ‘remember on Family Guy, Stewie was like—’

‘I’m talking. The last remaining exhibition halls were demolished to build the giant mall,’ I say, ‘a temple to capitalism.’ As we pass the new Tube station I see the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, chatting to reporters. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘There is the mayor of London, Boris Johnson.’ The older two crane their necks appreciatively.

We enter the mega-mall just as Dannii Minogue opens the new branch of Next, and become caught up in the whirling vortex of the crowd trying to get a look at her. We ride escalators while consulting a map we were handed at the door. Eventually we end up on a balcony towering over the atrium. Three storeys below, flashbulbs are popping at the foot of a stage.

‘The man now shaking hands with Boris Johnson,’ I say, ‘is Philip Green, the owner of the Arcadia group.’

‘Who’s that one?’ the oldest asks.

‘That,’ I say, ‘is Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks and Spencer.’

‘Ah,’ he says. My children seem oddly intrigued by the proximity of fashion industry bigwigs.

‘And that man, unless I’m mistaken, runs the—’

‘Bye,’ the youngest says suddenly, turning on his heel.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Anywhere,’ he says, ‘but here.’ His sullen expression and cut eye make him look like someone in search of trouble.

‘You can’t wander around a giant mall by yourself,’ I say. He stalks off defiantly to lean against a pillar twenty yards away, where I can just see him being quizzed by a succession of security guards.

The other two insist on waiting for the ribbon cutting. I begin to feel I have overplayed the historical significance of what is essentially the opening of a bunch of shops. People pile in around and behind us. Half an hour later, an orchestra starts playing. Boris Johnson makes a speech, but we can’t make out the words, only the familiar harrumphing cadences. Finally I pull them away.

‘This is a mall,’ I say. ‘Let’s shop.’ As we approach the youngest and his pillar, I can see that he is being questioned by yet another security guard. He answers, but the guard puts his hand to his ear, unable to hear anything above Leona Lewis singing below.

The boy leans towards the cupped ear. ‘CELEBRATING A GOAL!’ he shouts.

I once made an incredibly realistic giant pencil, which my oldest son wielded as part of a Book Week costume, in the guise of a fictional character called the Number Devil.

Honestly, this pencil was amazing – it could have come straight from the props department of The Borrowers. I kept it around for years because I was so proud of it, and also because it was the perfect length for batting the TV aerial back into position whenever strong winds pushed it out of alignment, a dangerous chore that required me to clamber out of a third-storey window and up onto the flat roof at the back of the house. Getting back inside was even trickier – some dangling was required – and I usually spent at least ten minutes sitting on the edge of the roof contemplating unwanted outcomes before I got cold enough to go for it. It was during one of these periods of reflection that I realized what a macabre detail the giant pencil would add to reports of my death. It would probably be enough to upgrade my obituary to the status of quirky page four news item. After that I started using an old mop handle, and the pencil got thrown away.

The point is, I am good at making things. I approach creative tasks with a fussy precision you don’t find in many eight-year-olds; above all I am proficient at damping down the childlike enthusiasm that causes children to be so rubbish at making things. For this reason I can sometimes be a difficult collaborator. Trust me – you don’t want my help with your science project. You want me to do it for you.

Towards the end of the Easter holidays my wife starts finishing every statement with the words ‘because I have done everything and you have done nothing’. I am left trying to recall even a brief period in the last fortnight when I had the opportunity to do nothing, but I’m too knackered to think.

It is the night before school starts.

‘You are helping them with their eggs tonight,’ says my wife. ‘Because I have done everything and you have done nothing.’ I know she is referring to the younger boys’ Easter egg competition entries. The older of the two has already decorated an egg with the flags of many nations, and only needs me to paint a tiny red dragon in the centre of the Welsh flag. The younger one has painted his egg in the likeness of Ringo Starr – he hasn’t done a bad job, considering that he neither knows nor cares what Ringo Starr looks like – and only needs me to help him construct a complete scale-model drum kit for the egg to sit behind.

After half an hour spent holding an empty loo roll tube and staring into space, I am suddenly struck by inspiration.

‘We’re going to need more of these,’ I say. ‘Bring me some glue and some wooden matches.’ I look around, and see that I am alone in the kitchen. The boy has gone into the other room to watch television. I scream his name. He slouches into the kitchen and I explain my plan to use sections of loo roll to create the different drums – snare, floor tom, etc. – with glued-on matchsticks for legs.

‘Or we could just use Sellotape,’ he says.

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Glue.’

Over the course of the next two hours I have to keep reminding myself that this is not my last-minute school project; I am merely here to facilitate someone else’s vision. I disguise my bursts of inventiveness with leading questions.

‘Do we think we need some sort of base, some sort of sturdy cardboard base, to anchor the whole thing?’ I say.

‘Um, yeah,’ says the boy.

‘I agree,’ I say. ‘Brilliant.’

I find a tin of refried beans which, if Ringo Starr were a medium-sized egg, would be the perfect proportions for his bass drum, but it still has refried beans in it.

‘We need this emptied immediately,’ I say, handing it to my wife as she passes. ‘Washed out, label off, open both ends.’

‘I think you can probably manage that yourself,’ she says. ‘Because I have done everything and you have done nothing.’

‘Wait!’ I shout. ‘We’ve changed our minds. Open one end only.’

The boy and I agree on a late innovation: pipe-cleaner arms holding toothpick drumsticks.

‘So,’ I say, ‘should the arms be glued to the egg itself, do you think, or to the back of the cardboard stool?’

‘The egg,’ he says.

‘I think the stool, and I’m going to explain why—’

‘The egg.’

‘You need to clear all this stuff off the table before supper,’ says my wife. ‘Which I’ve just made, again, by the way.’

‘It will look as if they’re glued to the egg,’ I say, ‘but it will be more structurally sound if we—’

‘Because I do everything and you do nothing.’

‘I’m doing this,’ I say.

‘The egg,’ says the boy.

The final debate centres on who will write ‘The Beatles’ on the front of the bean-tin bass drum.

‘I’ll write it,’ he says.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Good, yes, you write it.’ I hand him the pen. He writes, ‘THE BEA’.

‘Actually, you write it,’ he says, handing the pen back.

‘I’ll tell you what we could do,’ I say. ‘We could download an actual picture of the front of Ringo Starr’s actual drum, and we could print it out and stick it on.’

‘I think that’s cheating,’ he says.

‘It’s not cheating,’ I say slowly, ‘and I’m going to explain why.’

The next morning the Ringo Starr egg, carefully packaged for transport, goes off to school, and I decide that its hasty construction and our troubled father–son collaboration will make a charming Guardian Weekend column. Also I have a deadline, and nothing else has happened to me all week.

In my account I am rashly frank regarding the extent of my contribution, because I figure it’s the only credit I will ever get for my work – indeed for any of my primary school projects.

But that Friday something happens that I don’t expect: Ringo Starr is awarded first prize in the egg competition. I am quietly overjoyed, and also surprised. In ten years, none of my three children has ever won the egg competition. Even Joseph Cast Into The Pit By His Brothers, a biblical tableau produced by my oldest son under my unstinting micromanagement and requiring no fewer than seven eggs, failed to move the judges.

By an awful, if wholly foreseeable accident of scheduling, the column in which I had been so rashly frank regarding the extent of my contribution to my son’s Easter egg competition entry appears in print on the day of the annual school Fun Run.

I am sitting on a picnic rug near the back leg of the Fun Run course, drinking coffee and trying not to catch anyone’s eye. Another father of my acquaintance approaches.

‘So,’ he says, ‘I understand you engineered a victory in the egg competition. Nice one.’

‘I didn’t know it was actually going to win,’ I say.

‘I heard you slipped in a Fabergé egg,’ he says. ‘That’s the rumour.’

‘It was an egg playing the drums,’ I say, weakly.

From where I am sitting, I can see my wife circulating with a copy of the Guardian Weekend magazine, just in case any of the other parents have missed the column in which I was so rashly frank. She stands over them, pointing out relevant passages. Eventually she returns to our rug.

‘Everyone’s shocked,’ she says.

‘You’re jealous,’ I say, ‘because you’ve never won anything.’

‘That’s a lie,’ she says. ‘I won for a Book Week costume. Captain Underpants.’

‘You sent that child to school in his pants. In March.’

‘And a bathing cap,’ she says. ‘It was brilliant.’

‘Well, they can’t take my prize away,’ I say. ‘He’s already eaten the jellybeans.’

‘Ooh,’ she says. ‘There’s the headmistress. I’m going to show her.’

‘Please don’t do that,’ I say, but she is gone. I watch my sons jog around cones, wondering how many relatives I’ll have to invent to pad out their Fun Run sponsorship forms. I think back to a humiliating encounter with my seventh-grade science teacher, who felt he had reason to suspect that my project on The Causes And Symptoms Of Gum Disease did not spring from a private passion.

‘Is your father a dentist or something?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied, feebly. I have a sense of an unbroken line of academic corruption, passing from generation to generation.

‘Look how many I’ve done,’ says my son, pointing to the little stickers decorating the number on his front, each representing a completed lap.

‘Wow,’ I say. He turns to show me his back, on which he has a different number, equally studded with stickers. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘Someone gave me theirs. Can I have money for an ice cream?’

‘You can’t just appropriate someone’s number,’ I say. ‘You’re meant to run your own—’ I stop, because I realize his only responsibility is to sponsors I have yet to invent.

‘The headmistress would like a word with you,’ my wife says.

Fortunately, the headmistress, who is holding the magazine my wife has lately presented to her, is smiling. I am smiling, too, as broadly as I can manage in the circumstances. It is ironic, the headmistress says, that this year they had gone out of their way to ensure that prizes went only to entries that were clearly the children’s own work.

‘That’s a sort of double deceit,’ my wife says, ‘because he deliberately made it look like he didn’t help.’

That’s not true, I want to say. Yes, there was a certain deliberate naive quality, but that was just part of the effect, so the materials could be seen for what they were as well as for what they represented – a section of loo roll cardboard serving as a snare drum; arms that are still identifiable as pipe cleaners. It’s about clarity of vision. It was never about the jellybeans.

I don’t say this, though, because everyone is laughing, and I think it best to laugh along as realistically as possible.