Where's North?

Walking back the through the village to our house Grace, 4, suddenly asks 'Where's North, Daddy?' I'm usually good at unravelling concepts for children but this one is hard. I wave my arm vaguely across the fields to our right where rain looks to be pressing in to ruin our day. 'Over there, where those clouds are. Do you see?' 'Can I go there?' 'Not really darling. It's a direction.' Hopeless. 'You remember how I told you that we live on a giant ball. Well when we walk up that ball we're going North.' Still no good.

32 Toyota Tankfuls

On most days of the week we both finish work work around five and then switch straight over to childcare, which goes on until at least nine. Or maybe one of us is working later. Either way there's no let up, for either of us. This hefty routine has been going on, on and off, in my life since the early 1970s and the sheer exhaustion you feel on the last leg is the surest way to alcohol dependence. It starts with a single glass of wine, just enough to neutralise the buzz and get you smiling at each other. Quite soon this becomes two and from being an undiscerning quaffer of plonk you begin to know a little about wine. The idea of dependence doesn't occur to you - it's just a way of making a hugely stressful experience manageable, enjoyable even. Supper time is fun. You give yourself to bath time. You are present when you're reading the story and could even recount it if asked. And there's the thought of what's left in the bottle for that quality time together later on.

I stopped drinking completely nearly three years ago - not a drop since apart from a couple of glasses of Prosecco at our wedding and even this made me feel rough the next day. What struck me was how STRONG it was and what shocked me was how much of it I must have drunk in the previous 35 years. When I stopped I was drinking about a bottle of wine a day, not excessive by alcoholic standards, but then what exactly constitutes alcoholic? I had been trying to stop for a while until one day was just the right day to go for it. Why stop? Because something I'd thought was making me more present was doing the opposite, cumulatively, over a long period of time. Not that I was ever drunk. More that I realised that effect of alcohol never really left me. I can't say, at the end of a long day of work work and childcare that not having a drink has made me feel that different. Once past the sense of achievement it's DAY ONE of the rest of your life. But my older children tell me I'm different, less emotionally absent, easier to communicate with and I suppose they'd know. I do miss good red wine though. But a bottle of wine every night for 30 years? At 12% alc that's 12% 0.75 litres x 365 days x 30 years = 985.5 litres of pure alcohol - or put another way - 32 Toyota Avensis Tankfuls. That's a lot.

Hearing the Cry

As my mother grew older she grew steadily more deaf. When it wasn't funny, it was annoying having to shout and repeat what you'd said to her. The TV was always turned up too loud when we visited and she was too vain to use her hearing aid. Do you know what? I'm going the same way and, like her, I've resisted a hearing test. Pathetic, isn't it.

When I found out, aged 63, that I was to be a father yet again the hardest thing to accept was that I was going to be in it to the finish. Oh yeah, of course there was all the pride, the thrill of a boy at last, quiet pleasure in the visible evidence that I could still, you know. But the fact was there would be no Indian Summer to my life, no sitting back to enjoy a fat pension (no chance of that anyway). I had already been looking after my young children since 1972 and this wasn't set to change. Challenge now was to stay alive for long enough - say 90 - when Bobby would be 27 by which time all of them would have got enough FATHER to live reasonably balanced lives and my death would be more relief than tragedy.

What they don't warn you about getting older is how bits fall off. But like an old car, most of us still run OK with a few faults. We keep going through bad teeth, gouty toes, piles (not me), high blood pressure (managed) etc and of course, hearing loss. One of the upsides of mild deafness, I'd thought, was that I wouldn't get woken up so much by the baby crying. Natural earplugs, I joked. After 30 years of broken nights I would at last get some sleep. Not a bit of it. While I often don't hear him when he wakes when I'm downstairs in the evening there's something about the wavelength of his cry later in the night that goes straight through to me, especially when he's in the same room as he has been since a series of weekend of visitors have been sleeping in his room. Encroaching deafness does not shield you from your own baby cries. Nature's made sure of that. Not that this has made much difference in the share of baby care I've been doing through the night this time round. When he wakes I take him groggily from the cot and pass him to Lu, then decamp to the bed in the other room. But more of this bad habit another time.

The 1st Washing Machine

It was a Hoover, bought in Woolworths (RIP) on Holloway Road in North London early in 1973. The money for it (£84) was a present from my Uncle and Aunt to celebrate the birth of Jo. We lived in a collective household at the time, not quite a commune, but shared responsibility for the house and a little bit (very little) for children (Jo was the only one). The washing machine became the house's washing machine. When I thanked my Aunt for it she was horrified to discover that other people's washing - ie not family - went through it. A PURITY AND DANGER issue. The commune contaminates the nuclear family. Repellant. Disgust, almost. The emotional core of ideological conflict.

Biped

The zillionth time a human adult has gasped when a child of theirs stood for the first time. But I am still filled with awe as holding my gaze, wide eyed with pride, Bobby gradually eases himself from a crawling position to a... to a... hold it boy, hold it there darling boy, to a wobbly, unstable, all over in a few seconds... STAND... before, bump, collapsing on to the cushion of that wet nappy I should have changed and clapping the air to our cheers.

The Poppy Seed

I baked bread before we left for Tessa's mill on Saturday. I've got this down to an art now where I gauge quantities by eye and feel rather than use the scales. This batch was 95% white flour with a touch of whole meal, splash of olive oil and more salt than you'd think you need because of the way the yeast interacts with it during the rise. Then a hefty sprinkling of poppy seeds which an ignored intuition told me was unwise and would spell trouble later on. Which it did, because when Grace asked for a ham sandwich later in the day I said, 'Of course darling, with some of Daddy's lovely new bread and the ham I bought at the butcher this morning.' Good ham, much better than the supermarket stuff and cheaper too - (later puzzle to solve: why do I now order ham in metric - 200 grams please - but persist with Imperial when buying everything else - 1lb of sausages please, a 5lb chicken, half a pound of mince please?). So Grace says, 'Yes please Daddy', and I make this delicious sandwich, bread cut thin just so, crusts off because Grace neither likes the crust nor the poppy seeds that have sunk in during the bake, cut artfully into quarters, here you are darling... 'I don't like that sandwich!!' Loud whiny tears. 'I hate that sandwich!*!*' Exactly the response to trigger my anger and here it comes, whoosh, rising up inside me - 'I DON"T LIKE IT WHEN YOU TALK THAT ABOUT FOOD PEOPLE HAVE MADE YOU! STOP THAT NOISE!' Then to Tessa, our hostess. 'Sorry about this, I just can't stand waste. Or ingratitude. It's just so damned rude.' But my stupidly angry response just escalates matters and if I'd only paid attention to the little voice that said in a Cognitive Therapeutic kind of way 'Don't respond angrily, it will only make things worse, count ten, deep breath, who cares about a silly sandwich anyway', but I let fly instead and rationalise my anger by saying to Tessa, Lu and Anna - who hates my outbursts - 'Well somebody's got to raise a voice round here. It's the only thing that gets results with this spoilt child.' The trouble is, today it patently has not got a result, just made things worse, because Grace's cry has now escalated into a wail and a choked explanation, finger pointing at said sandwich 'I don't (sniff sniff) like (choke cry) those things...' I follow her finger to a tiny black speck in one of the sandwich quarters - a single poppy seed - defiling dot. 'ALRIGHT!' I'm still angry and pick out the offending impurity, flick it crossly away. Moral of tale: 1) pay attention to intuitions - no poppy seeds. 2) Don't try and deal with 4 year old daughter's vile temper by losing it yourself.