Dear Dave

  Slugs and snails

Dear Dave,

Thanks for asking how Marie's first day at school went. She seemed to enjoy herself. She certainly emerged from the playground gate with a drawing and a big grin. Then she smugly pointed out all the children who'd cried.

Ho well. I suspect her turn for tears will come in a couple of weeks when she gets tired and realises she has another thirteen years to go...

Still, things have gone very smoothly so far. She's even found a good answer to satisfy the various people who've asked her what she learnt. Her instant reply is, "Where the toilets are." It's not exactly rocket science or brain surgery but it's a solid start that can be built on. Truth be told, I always count my own initial session in any new situation as a success if I manage to locate the facilities. She'll go far.

The highlight of her first day experience was the moment she noticed that her choice of uniform options meant her socks and hair scrunchy coordinated with her dress. She was delighted to find herself a green Gingham fashion icon. The only thing which came close to this was getting to show off all her pink jewellery when a friend came round after school.

As you know from my recent rant, I'm not a fan of gender stereotyping. I'm clearly not in a traditional role myself and I'd be quite happy if Marie became a physicist or a plumber. I really have tried to bring her up the same as I did the boys, it just hasn't turned out quite the way I expected.

I suspect much of this is down to her nature but it came to my attention recently that treating girls and boys the same is harder than it sounds. You see, I had to buy birthday presents for a mixed pair of four-year-old twins, Katie and Peter. (Don't ask.) I don't know them that well and I wasn't sure what kind of stuff they had already, so I wandered round a toy shop searching for inspiration. Since they're the same age, have had the same upbringing and share the same home, the task became a perfect experiment to test my own attitudes. With little knowledge of their individual preferences and nothing to distinguish their circumstances, I could only be swayed by their genders into getting them different types of toys. I was confident, however, I could easily overcome any deep-rooted prejudice I might have and find a couple of play-things that would be acceptable to any child, no matter whether the kid was composed of sugar and spice or molluscs and canine extremities.

I was wrong.

I immediately found myself considering anything pink, sparkly, fluffy or creative for Katie and anything involving vehicles, flashing lights or sport for Peter. In fact, the obvious choices were a design-your-own fairy kit and an electronic rally car.

This was not a great start.

It's not as if my own boys like cars or sports (although they can be very easily distracted in an emergency by dangling a torch on a bit of string and giving it a good spin). Marie has played with our toy garage far more than both of them put together. Nonetheless, I felt drawn to buy speedy mechanical things for Peter in a way I simply didn't for Katie. They would have been good enough to get for her if I couldn't locate anything else but they weren't really right. In contrast, there were plenty of art materials and doll sets I thought Katie would love but I couldn't imagine buying for Peter. When it came down to it, I didn't mind getting them both 'boy' toys but couldn't bring myself to get them both 'girl' stuff. (To a certain extent, anyway - two Ninja Robot Aqua Commandos^TM would have been as inappropriate as two Rainbow Princess Ponies^TM.)

I stared at the shelves for several minutes, unable to find gifts that adequately satisfied both my gut instincts and my finely-honed liberal values, then I struggled on round the shopping centre, consumed by indecision. I didn't want to go with traditionally gender-oriented toys and I wasn't brave enough to make role-reversal purchases. My closest approximation to a solution was to pretend the twins were both rather restrained boys. This made me uncomfortable, though, because as I said in my last letter, equality that's achieved by making everyone act male isn't very pleasant. I was stuck.

To complicate matters further, I had Marie with me, holding the power of veto over my choices. Every so often I forlornly picked up a box, turned it over in my hands and showed it to her. "What do think of this for Peter?"

She rolled her eyes. "That's a girl toy, silly. It's got a picture of a girl on the box."

"He might like it anyway."

"I'd like it more. Can I have?"

I sighed and put the box back on the shelf. "Maybe when it's your birthday..."

This scenario repeated itself a number of times, interspersed with occasions when Marie picked up a fuchsia item covered with glitter and mermaids, and said, "I think Katie wants this."

"I'm sure she does but we're not getting it for her."

Marie nodded. "Can I have it then?"

I sighed and took it from her and put it back on the shelf. "Maybe when it's your birthday..."

After the third shop, I lost the will to live.

I gave up and got a Bob the Builder board game between them. Of course, buying one present between two children because they're twins is a whole other issue, so I felt compelled to buy a small toy car as well, just so they'd have a parcel each. Unfortunately, this back-fired later when it came to handing the gifts over. I went into spasm over who should unwrap which one, holding them out to the kids and then crossing my arms over a few times in rapid succession as my brain did some last second calculation. I ended up literally tying myself in a knot and then falling over.

The twins astutely ignored the gifts and frisked my dazed body for sweets, loose change and credit cards...

There are a couple of important lessons here:

1. Gender preconceptions are clearly insidious.
2. All kids, irrespective of gender, are cheeky little chancers.

There's not much to be done about the latter problem (apart from keeping your PIN numbers safe) but, in an effort to break some social conventions, I may have to go paint my boys' nails and then encourage them to become primary teachers.

Oh, no, wait a minute, I've already agreed to play a board game involving space marines with them this afternoon, while Marie makes a bead mosaic and watches a show about yoga-loving animals with pet butterflies. I'm booked up.

Maybe tomorrow, eh?

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children, discrimination, school

 
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11:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Porridge stains aren't sexy on anybody

Dear Dave,

The holidays have gone by rapidly and it's only another couple of days until the new term starts here in Scotland. I'm going to miss the laid-back schedule of the summer but it will be nice to return to routine again.

We've stocked up on all the necessary equipment - gym shoes, uniform, stationery, etc - and we're nearly ready to go, despite being slowed by Lewis' resistance to change. He had a meltdown when he learnt the trousers he's had for the last two years are now too small. He promised to stop growing at once if allowed to keep wearing them, and he assured us that the hole in the knee isn't a problem (even though it's so big that a passing family of rabbits have taken up residence). We've insisted the trousers are replaced, however. Now he just wants to erect a shrine to them in his room... Ho well, doubtless he'll become equally attached to new leg-wear in a few days and I can sneak the old pair to the recycling centre. I'll tell him they've gone to live on a farm.

Marie is still excited about starting school. I made the mistake of reading the reassuring pamphlet for parents of new pupils that we were sent, though. It lists all the concerns I might have about my daughter's primary school experience, describes them in detail and then briefly attempts to quell them. Somehow, it wasn't entirely soothing. Despite having had no qualms about shoving my boys through the playground gate on their first days, I'm now a bit nervous about how Marie may fare during her introduction to formal education. What if she gets bullied or forgets to go to the toilet or gets mistaken for being English? What if she joins a gang or is allergic to the class hamster? The stress is beginning to get to me.

Deep breaths.

...

...

I'm sure she'll be fine, really. She's bright and she's good at making friends. She'll only have problems if when she argues with her teacher:

Teacher: Look at this picture of a dog.
Marie: Don't be silly. That's not a dog, it's a puppy.

Fortunately, thanks to her two brothers, the majority of the teachers in the school are all too familiar with this kind of behaviour by now and should be able to counteract it quickly and efficiently without the surreptitious use of blunt instruments.

Yep, she'll be OK. I suspect I'm merely channeling some of my own angst in her direction. She has five weeks of half days before she's in full-time and then I'll have reached another housedad milestone. With all my kids at school, I'll have to re-evaluate my purpose and my position in society. Given the grief it's possible to get sometimes for being a housedad, I'm kind of wondering what becoming a part-time housedad will be like.

We had a salesman round the other day to give us a quote for a new front door. As he talked at length about security hinges and neoprene seals, Marie sat quietly at the kitchen table, threading beads and smiling sweetly. Then the man needed all our details for some reason. (I suspect he may have been gathering ammunition for a later attempt to sell us windows as well.) When he learnt that I'm a housedad, he seemed quite taken with the concept, affirming me with the apparently genuine assertion that he wouldn't mind being a housedad too. Sadly, his grin suggested that he was envisioning a tranquil life of supervising some gentle bead-threading while his wife was banished down a coal pit.

I felt the need to summon the boys to view the guy's product samples at that point. A quick whistle brought the sound of stampeding elephants from upstairs, closely followed by a tangled blur of flailing limbs surrounded by a cloud of dust and body odour. There was some arguing and hinge juggling and then they were gone again.

The man went a slightly odd colour and his grin wavered somewhat. I'm not sure if he got the full picture of my life but the conversation rapidly returned to the subject of nine-point locking mechanisms. I felt I'd won another small victory for our housedad revolution.

Just as well really. Housedads have had more bad press recently. The Daily Mail ran an article about how lots of career women are dumping their stay-at-home partners. Mixed in with the dubious statistics, there are even quotes from an expert to explain that it's all down to a loss of respect brought about by the wives feeling a lack of support because their men aren't pulling their weight financially. The essence of the piece is summed up by the line, "In short, having a man whose primary function is not as alpha male breadwinner, but domestic drudge, just ain't sexy."

Cheers for that.

It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing simply on the basis that, rather than being a psychologist, the expert in question is a divorce lawyer but... erm... No, actually, that's a pretty compelling reason.

The only really valid point in the article is that, when it comes to custody, divorce courts in the UK are weighted heavily in favour of the mum - even if the dad has been the primary carer for years, it can have no bearing on how often he has access to his children after a break up. Apart from that, there's nothing much to the article but scare-mongering. In reality, relationships where the man looks after the kids aren't under any kind of unique stress. The accusation of being a financial lightweight could be levelled in any situation where one partner is earning less, whether they stay home or not. Loss of respect can (and does) happen in families where the roles are 'normal'.

Being dropped on from a great height is nothing new for stay-at-home parents. It's just that in the past they've all been female. Housedads aren't particularly asking for trouble by defying the perceived natural order, it's simply that when any relationship goes south, the partner with control of the money is bound to be at an advantage. It turns out that given the security of being the one with the income, women can be as sneaky, underhand, self-centred and ungrateful as men.

I suppose this is equality but it's not a very happy situation. The Daily Mail may not approve of housedads but I'm fairly sure they're in favour of mothers spending more time with their kids and, oddly, the only way for things to improve for stay-at-home mums is for there to be more stay-at-home dads. The Mail really should be on our side. You see, sexual equality is usually portrayed as being achievable by getting plenty of females into high-powered jobs. Traditionally female roles will only gain the respect they truly deserve, however, when they're also seen as perfectly legitimate avenues for men. We don't just need women in board rooms, we need men at toddler group and the school gate.

Then there's... Oh, hang on, that reminds me - I need to go and collect the navy pinafores and knee-length socks I ordered for Marie. She looks so sweet in her uniform. I can't believe she's going to be in Primary 1 already! I... I...

I'd better go. Remember: Being a housedad - it's a public service.

(For my part, I'll try and remember not to cry when my baby skips into the playground on Wednesday.)

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: discrimination, housedad, school

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Grumpy old housedad

Dear Dave,

It's not easy being the youth of today. Stay inside and you get bad press as a couch potato addicted to computer games and low quality television. Go outside and hang around with friends and everyone thinks you're in a gang and about to mug an old lady. Unless you can find somewhere to play football all day or you occupy yourself doing an underpaid menial job, the result is nothing but grief from whinging adults.

I have some sympathy. During the holidays there aren't many places where kids can afford to go with their friends. They loiter around swing-parks and shopping centres because there's nowhere else for them to be. Maybe it's true that in the old days bus shelters weren't full of bored teenagers when it rained but the poor kids aren't allowed to work down a mine or play on building sites anymore. They have to be somewhere and it's nice they're getting fresh air. It would be good if people got off their backs a little.

Then again, some of them could really do with being sent down a mine...:

I was at the swing-park with my three children the other day when I asked a kid (who was perhaps twelve) to stop cycling in the play area. I was reasonably polite but I did have to raise my voice to make sure he heard me. He immediately started yelling back that he was there first, I didn't have any right to tell him what to do, it was a free country and he'd have the police on me.

I tried to explain that it's not a totally free country - if you run over a two-year-old, you get locked up.

The kid merely declared that he'd been riding bikes for years and never hit anyone yet. Then he mumbled a correction about only ever having hit one person and adamantly argued that the little kids would get out of his way.

I tried explaining some more but he wasn't having any of it and I gave up. He was too old to have parents around to petition and I had no power over him. I concentrated on keeping my children out of his path. Unfortunately, the lad and his mates followed me about, wanting to know why I was hassling them. They accused Fraser of having ridden his bike in the play area on some previous and entirely fictional occasion. They pointed to a three-year-old being helped along on a bike with stabilisers by his mum and demanded I go tell him to stop too. I mostly shrugged them off but I had to shout at them properly when one of them took the ball Fraser was playing catch with and another kicked the swing Marie was on and made her cry.

There were maybe seven kids, most of them were eight to ten years old, it was broad daylight, other people were about and the place was overlooked by hundreds of windows. It wasn't a scary experience. I was just confused at how determined they were to be idiots. The oldest two went off to find another bike so they could show how hard they were by racing each other round the play area. One of them made fun of me for wearing glasses as he went. Since he was wearing some truly ugly thick-rimmed spectacles himself, I began to appreciate the level of thoughtless stupidity I was dealing with.

The oddest thing, however, was that all of the kids kept threatening to call the police and have me arrested and they actually seemed to believe that this would scare me. In fact the most tenacious pair only lost interest when I burst out in genuine laughter at the suggestion I'd be 'quaking in my pants' at the thought of the cops showing up. I had to explain to them in some detail that I'd be very happy if the police arrived and that it certainly wouldn't be me who got into trouble. It was wacky.

Gratifyingly, those two returned five minutes later to apologise for their behaviour. I'm not sure what led them to this change of heart because there still didn't seem to be any related adults about but it's possible that they went and made their case to some teenagers in the main body of the park and were told not to be such twits. No matter the reasons, they did seem sorry and I apologised for unwittingly saying whatever it was that made them so irate. Hopefully we can co-exist in future without the need for a SWAT team.

The incident does make me worry about the issues I'm going to face when my kids are older, though. One way or the other, I'm only going to have to deal with more of these stroppy pre-teens. Some of them may live in my house. I need to understand them better.

I suppose calling the police is the ultimate threat adults use on them (and possibly each other). Using it on me was a reflection of that. The genius in the glasses was also probably throwing back taunts someone had aimed at him without applying any thought.

But why did a simple and reasonably polite request turn into such a confrontation? I don't know. Perhaps they were defending the one spot they'd found to hang out where they believed they were free from being bothered by old fogeys...

Or maybe they needed a good clip round the ear. The youth of today... Bah, humbug...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: discrimination

 
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9:20 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Choosing a nanny

Dear Dave,

We'd reached the last nanny of the day.

I sat with Steve and Deborah at one side of their kitchen table and Potential Nanny Number 6 sat at the opposite side, giving a standard list of answers to our standard list of questions. It was beginning to feel like we were going through the motions and I'd lost track of which applicant was which. Had Potential Nanny 3 been the one with the draconian views on discipline or had that been PN4? I checked my notes. It had been PN2. PN3 had believed that discipline was an out-moded concept of a defunct patriarchal worldview. This made her the candidate most likely to be eaten by small children, and put her quite low on my list of choices. Still higher than PN2, admittedly, but not by much.

I sighed. It wasn't going well. Why on earth had I agreed to help Useless Dad and his wife select someone to look after their kids while they were at work?

As if in answer, Deborah deftly cut another slice of cake and slid it over to me without taking her eyes off PN6. I wolfed it down thankfully, the extra calories restoring my energy and renewing my resolve. We were almost at the end of the interview. I took the longest blink I thought I could get away with, breathed deeply and tried to stay awake. There was only Steve's bonus round left to go.

"If you were a squirrel with a paperclip," asked Steve, "what would you do?"

This wasn't on the online list we'd found of standard questions to ask potential nannies. Deborah and I had allowed it, however, on the basis that any successful candidate was going to have to deal with Steve on occasion. They needed to be able to cope.

"Trade it with a magpie for an acorn?" PN6 said hesitantly.

"Only one acorn?" queried Steve. "You don't sound very certain."

PN6 recovered quickly. "I'd have to check the current exchange rates."

"Hmmm..." said Steve, nodding, and looked over his notes. "Your CV is very strong. Decent academic record, a wide range of experience and glowing references. It couldn't be better." He paused. "Which really does beg the question of why on earth you want to look after other people's children all day for this kind of money?"

This was off script but it was an interesting point. Deborah and I let the question stand.

PN6 thought for a moment. "Kids are fun."

The three of us in the room who were parents all looked unconvinced.

PN6 hurried to add some qualification. "Mostly. Looking after them can be dull and repetitive sometimes, I guess, but, you know, I get to go home at night and turn up with fresh enthusiasm for Snap in the morning. I'm not going to be a nanny forever or anything - I'm thinking of applying to be a primary teacher next year - but I'm enjoying it for now. It's great making an impact on kids' lives and watching them mature."

There was a brief interlude as Steve, Deborah and I scribbled this down and ticked a whole load of boxes on the sheets in front of us. Sure, it was a hodge-podge of approved responses from the same website we'd used to get the questions but at least it showed some application. Besides, being able to answer awkward inquiries on-the-fly is an important childcare skill in itself.

"Thank you very much," said Deborah. "That's the end of the interview unless you have anything further you want to ask us."

PN6 had a few queries about hours and duties but they were wrapped up quickly.

"Thanks again," said Deborah. "We'll be in touch."

She managed to hold her smile until the front door was closed and then she came and collapsed, exhausted, in her seat. It was my turn to offer some cake. She took it gratefully. She knew as well as I did that we had a long discussion ahead of us.

On paper, it really wasn't hard. We should have been able to make a selection in a couple minutes. From personality to childcare philosophy, PN6 was the obvious choice.

There was only one small problem...

Steve was never going to hire him.

* * *

"What about PN2?" said Deborah, slightly desperately. We'd been talking round in circles for half an hour and not even approached a decision. The cake was gone. We were all jittery from too much coffee.

"You mean 'Scary Poppins'?" I said. "She'd have your kids cleaning chimneys or working down a mine. If you hire her, I'm never coming round to visit again. She was unpleasant and creepy. I wouldn't be surprised if her house is made of gingerbread."

"Well, who are we going to hire then?" snapped Deborah, exasperation getting the better of her.

"I liked PN1," said Steve wistfully.

"Yes. Rather too much," said Deborah. Potential Nanny Number 1 was young, vivacious, cute and, er... bouncy. I couldn't help noticing that Deborah had violently scribbled out all her notes on PN1 and replaced them with a single word in red biro: STRUMPET. This was somewhat unfair but I didn't fancy my chances of talking Deborah round. PN1 wasn't getting hired.

"How about PN4?" I said.

"Too old," said Steve.

"She wasn't that old," I countered.

"She got out of breath climbing the stairs to the flat," said Deborah. "I don't think she's up to the physical demands of two small children."

"Maybe," I sighed.

"I still say PN3 would be ideal," said Steve.

"In some alternative universe where children always do what they're told and don't have teeth," I said, rolling my eyes. "She was on another planet and had no experience. Your kids would have her tied up, lightly basted and in the oven on Gas Mark 5 by the end of the first morning."

They didn't deny it. Time passed. We all sat silently pondering the options and stared at the empty plate where the cake had been.

"PN5?" I suggested eventually.

"The pregnant one?" asked Steve, rifling through his notes.

"Yeah."

"But she was pregnant!"

"So?"

Steve was dismissive. "If we hire her, we'll have to do this all over again in four months time."

"Chances are that we'll have to do this again in a few months anyway," I said, trying to contain my anger. Having had to live through the consequences of decisions made by various clueless male managers (including Steve himself) when Sarah was pregnant, I'm quite touchy on the subject. "Any of the others could hand in their two weeks notice and be off at any time. A pregnant woman is extremely unlikely to quit unless she really has to. Besides, you can't not hire her simply because she's pregnant - that's illegal."

"She had a squint. Can we not hire her because of that?"

"No," I said and counted to ten under my breath.

Disappointingly, Deborah took Steve's side. "I didn't feel she really fitted in with our family."

"She so did. And your kids loved her. You're finding excuses to discriminate."

"They loved PN6 as well," said Deborah calmly, even though I was losing it.

Steve stiffened. "You were exceptionally keen on him yourself. Making those eyes. I didn't trust him at all. What kind of man looks after children?"

I blinked. "Er, hello? Housedad sitting right here. Heck, you haven't started your new job yet - you're still technically a housedad."

"I didn't choose..."

"I did."

"But..."

Fortunately, Deborah intervened at that point before things got out of hand. "Time for a break while I go check on the children."

* * *

Ten minutes gave us all a chance to clear our heads.

"OK," I said, tossing my notes aside as we sat back down at the table. "You're looking for someone who isn't too old, too young, too inexperienced, too evil, too male, too cute or too pregnant. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you're not looking for anyone too ethnically diverse, alternatively oriented or spiritually disparate, either."

Steve looked shifty and Deborah smiled knowingly. They kind of muttered in agreement.

"Right, well, you're stuffed," I said, shrugging. "You're simply going to have to go for someone competent who your kids like, which makes it PN5 or PN6. Personally, I'd go for PN6, but the decision is really up to you guys."

Deborah raised an eyebrow. "That was blunt."

"Well, you did ask for my help," I said. "All we've done so far is find reasons to exclude people. You need to start thinking of reasons why the remaining candidates are worth including in your family."

"OK, PN6, then," said Steve and started putting his pen away.

"Why?" asked Deborah sharply.

"Because you want to hire him," said Steve, obviously surprised the discussion wasn't over.

"And you don't?"

"I'd rather hire Five, to be perfectly honest, even if she is going to double in size and then leave us in the lurch."

Deborah frowned at him. "So why did you say Six?"

"Because... erm..." His mouth flapped as he tried to phrase some suitable excuse... but he was too slow.

"There's some sport coming on the television, isn't there?" said Deborah, her lips pursed. "You just want to get this over with."

Steve was confused. "You want to hire Six. What's the difficulty here?"

"I need to know why you want to."

"I don't want to."

"I know," said Deborah with patience born of dealing with small children. "But why might you want to?"

"Er..." said Steve, entirely out of his depth.

"That's what Ed wants us to talk about," said Deborah.

"Are you sure? Ed, what...? Oh..."

I'd already sneaked off. I left them to it and went through to watch the football on their big telly while pretending to keep an eye on their children. Around about half-time, they phoned PN5 to give her the job.

The selection process was over and Steve and Deborah had a couple of weeks breathing space before their new employee started and they had to make the decision work. Steve offered me a glass of wine to celebrate but I had to decline since it was time to go home and rescue Sarah from childcare duties. Deborah did line my pockets with cakes before I left, however - I wasn't going to say no to that.

I'm sure their newly-promoted Actual Nanny Number 1 will be fine and, if not, at least they made the choice together in their own mysterious fashion. Still, as I walked home in the chilly twilight, I was heartily thankful that I have the opportunity to look after my own children.

It's almost as good as having a coat stuffed full of warm blueberry muffins...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: discrimination, Useless Dad

 
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9:15 AM - Permanent Link - 5 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Bullying

Dear Dave,

Happy birthday to Daisy! I can hardly believe she's one already. Doesn't time fly?

Actually, don't answer that. I think we both know that where looking after children is concerned, time can do some very peculiar things. A year can disappear but a wet afternoon can drag on forever. The hour they spend napping can vanish in five minutes, while the five minute trip home with a kid desperate for the toilet can take an hour. The weeks start to whizz past so fast that Monday morning seems to come round every day and yet it's always an agonising wait for that tooth to come through or the tantrum to stop or for the kettle to boil so you can have a cup of coffee. (Or is that last one just me?)

The upshot is that they get older quicker than you expect but, then again, so do you.

I guess you're finally moving beyond the baby stage, though. Daisy is eating finger food and you can give her cow's milk. Sterilising stuff is pointless because she can feed herself breadsticks from under the sofa, dirt and passing spiders. Has she learnt to walk? (Being able to take three steps and then clunk her head on the telly counts.)

She may still be 'your little baby' but sit her next to a new born and you'll be astounded at how far she's come in a year. Another few months and she'll most-definitely be a toddler.

In contrast, now that Marie's turned four, I'm officially past all that. I no longer have a toddler in the house. She's a little girl. I should expect to get to the supermarket and back without a child falling over, wanting carried or complaining they need the toilet.

Of course, this seldom actually happens but at least now I can dream. I folded up the buggy the other day and put it away because I hadn't used it in a fortnight. The boys are capable of performing complex errands with a reasonable chance of success. Fraser even volunteered to carry a useful amount of shopping home recently. They really are all growing up.

This does bring new problems, however - the kind of problems that are much harder to deal with than a grazed knee, tired arms or trainers full of pee. The kind that involve social skills, popularity and fitting in at school.

Marie is fine so far. She already has a gaggle of girlfriends who gather round to admire the pinkness of each other's clothing and then swap hugs. Lewis, meanwhile, has a group of like-minded individuals to help him re-enact scenes from Super Mario Galaxy in the playground.

Fraser isn't so lucky. He's a geek in a class full of non-geeks. He's also academic, opinionated and has a lack of tact. Despite only being eight, he probably has as many enemies as he has friends. This rather marks him out as a target.

He generally gets on better with the girls in his class than with the boys but that's just not cool when you're eight. He could do with a couple of mates with big piles of Pokémon cards and an interest in Nintendo. Unfortunately, I can't conjure friends for him out of thin air. School is going to be tough for him on occasion.

I'm keen for it not to be miserable, though.

I was bullied at school. I'm a geek, I'm shy, I'm not adept at a witty put-down, I had glasses from an early age and there is a portion of my genetic code that is part donkey. The only reason I wasn't called 'Big Ears' at school was because everybody was calling me 'Big Nose'. (I'm from Norfolk - I suppose I should feel lucky I'm not part turkey.)

For a few years, I spent a great deal of my existence being embarrassed and/or lonely. The bullying seldom got physical but it was horrible, nonetheless.

I wasn't sporty or popular, so I concentrated on what I could do, which was school work. I strove to excel academically. It was what brought me the most praise and attention from my family. It was what made me special. It was what made me worthwhile. I obsessed about coming top of the class.

This, in itself, didn't win me any friends. Then I became trapped in a situation where when I did well, I got taunted for being a 'swot', and when I didn't do quite as well as normal, I got jeered for 'not being as clever as I thought I was'. The latter was particularly unpleasant because it undermined the shield I'd put up around myself. I only became more stressed about doing well.

I tried fighting back. I tried ignoring the bullies. Neither tactic succeeded. I got contact lenses and stared at my nose from different angles in the mirror. I escaped into computer games and books and pretended I didn't care.

And, over time, I grew to care a lot less.

I realised that if people were going to pick on me, they were going to do it anyway, no matter the size of my nose or the quality of my eyesight or what mark I got in the last test. The people who were calling me names were idiots I didn't want to be friends with anyway.

After that, the bullies had less power over me and found being met with disdain and contempt much more off-putting than any witty retort I could have managed. We all got older and kept out of each other's way.

Sadly, I still feel that my worth is dependent on success. I'm sensitive to criticism, I hate getting things wrong in public and I'm overly keen to make a good impression. I grin like a lunatic when meeting new people. (Please like me! Please...) Whether all these issues are entirely down to the bullying is anybody's guess but the bullying really didn't help. As far as possible, I don't want my kids to have the same trauma.

Quite how to achieve that is the difficult bit...

I suppose the most important thing is to talk to them. We try to get the boys alone every so often (which is surprisingly difficult) and ask how life is going and if they're having any problems. Lewis is usually, "Yeah. Fine. Why are you asking?" but sometimes Fraser will think a little harder and tell us if anything is troubling him. This is a start. I generally kept it all to myself when I was his age.

The times I did confide in people, it didn't go particularly well, which discouraged me from doing it again, so I try to be as sympathetic with Fraser as possible. This alone seems to improve matters.

Working out what to do after that is more difficult. A couple of years ago, Fraser was being harassed by two older children who kept being obnoxious whenever they saw him, asking irritating questions and repeating everything he said. He wanted me to intervene but he only told me about the problem three days before the end of the academic year. I said I'd talk to his teacher if they kept doing it after the summer. They didn't. It all went away. Phew...

More recently, he was being picked on in the playground in the morning. Other boys in his class were lying in wait for him, taunting him to chase them and then acting annoyed if he caught them. To a certain extent, it looked like a game. Fraser kind of liked the attention to begin with but it became more vindictive as the weeks went on. It ceased to be any fun at all when Fraser's friends caved to peer pressure and started joining in.

We told him to ignore the other children and they'd quickly get bored. That didn't work, though. They kept goading him into taking part. Still, it was all relatively mild and confined to the five minutes before school, so we encouraged him to keep trying to sort it out for himself. We thought the eventual outcome would be better that way.

Then, one morning, I was standing at the school door, waiting for Lewis to go in, when I saw Fraser in the distance. He was surrounded by at least eight other boys, a couple of whom weren't even in his class. Two or three of them were making fun of him and Fraser was holding back tears. Another boy shoved him from behind. It looked like it was about to get very ugly.

If I'd seen a similar situation with adults, I'd have called the police.

I would have gone over and got involved myself right then but Marie was holding onto my leg, refusing to go to nursery. It took me a few moments to drag her off and then the bell went. The mob dissolved. The kids disappeared into the school.

There really wasn't any choice but to inform Fraser's teacher. I checked Fraser was happy with that first, however. When I was at school, I was under the distinct impression that telling a teacher about bullying would only make things worse - they'd downplay my story, not believe it or use it to cause humiliation. I thought I might even get into trouble for telling tales. There was certainly no expectation they'd be able to fix the problem and a good chance the bullies would use the whole experience as fresh ammunition.

With hindsight, I now realise that this was maybe exactly what the bullies wanted me to think. If I'd been reasonably careful to pick the right teacher, I'd have been OK. More than that, if I'd talked to my parents and had them backing me up, the situation would definitely have improved. (Teachers are less likely to fob off parents and just having my parents on my side would have been good in itself.)

Bearing this in mind and having been told that schools are much more geared up for discouraging bullying these days, I was optimistic something could be done to help Fraser. Crucially, from what I'd seen of his predicament, getting a teacher involved seemed unlikely to make things worse. I still didn't want to barge in without consulting him, though.

As it turned out, when I spoke to him after school, Fraser was delighted with the idea of me talking to his class teacher about it all. Knowing that he wasn't alone cheered him up. I quizzed him for more details of what had been going on and we both spoke to Mr Campbell at the end of the next day. Mr Campbell was suitably concerned, came up with an action plan and praised Fraser heavily for telling him what was going on.

I didn't hear the details of what happened in class the next day. Fraser didn't want to go into it but he seemed happy enough. Apparently, Mr Campbell had 'sorted it out'. The morning ordeal stopped straight away.

Fraser was also made that week's star pupil in his class - in recognition of 'his sensible decision to talk to people about his problems'. This was possibly a little more attention than I'd have wanted in Fraser's situation but Fraser was too relieved things had been dealt with to care.

Crisis handled... for now.

Fraser is never going to be stunningly popular and there's every likelihood he'll get picked on again in the future. All we can do is keep talking to him and listening. Hopefully he'll learn not to be concerned what other people think of him. That's a lesson I wish I'd picked up earlier and more fully at school.

The one thing I really should have done back then, though, is stuck up for the other victims. If I was going to be unpopular anyway, it might as well have been for doing some good. I had nothing to lose and there's a possibility it would have made school better for everyone.

I'll run that past Fraser sometime soon. I can't see him being too thrilled at the idea but at least I'll have planted the seed...

Ho well, I wonder what else I'm going to have to deal with as the kids get older? How long before it's all sex, drugs and rock'n'roll? One day I'll look back on those trainers full of pee and reminisce about how my problems used to be so simple...

I should be prepared. The way time flies with kids around, that day may well be tomorrow.

Good luck when Daisy brings her first boyfriend home.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: discrimination, school

 
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  There's no going back now

Dear Dave,

Things are looking up. Sarah's been given a rundown of the reasons she's been picked for the redundancy list at LBO and they're decidedly unconvincing. As far as we can make out amidst all the business babble, there are three main strikes against her:

• She hasn't done the training course for the customer data analysis tools. This is true but, then again, she helped specify the system in the first place and has been using it daily for nearly seven years. The only reason she didn't go on the course was because it was a fortnight before she went on maternity leave with Fraser and her manager at the time couldn't see the point.


• Aiding and abetting the competition. This one's just nonsense. Sarah led a project designed to reduce customer turn-over. She spent months analysing the data, identifying the customers most likely to leave LBO and formulating ways to get them to stay. It was fantastic. The only problem was, she had to go on maternity leave with Lewis before the mailshot was finalised. Someone who had been on the training course pressed the wrong button and sent the letters to exactly the wrong people - hundreds of thousands of loyal customers received offers of sweet deals and all the customers who were already thinking of leaving got nothing.
  
  They left.
  
  This was, of course, disastrous, but definitely not Sarah's fault.


• The annelid debacle. On returning from maternity leave with Marie, Sarah was put in charge of implementing a marketing campaign that was already in the final stages of development. She had had nothing to do with the planning, however, and was dubious about the whole scheme. It was an attempt to persuade financial advisers that, although the products of other companies might look attractive initially, they had various legal complications and long-term costs. The campaign involved sending each of these financial advisers an unsolicited can of worms.
  
  And, of course, like fools, they opened them.
  
  Believe me, the complaints department received some irate calls that day. Still, not really Sarah's fault. Crucially, when she pointed out the madness of the scheme, she was threatened with dismissal if she didn't implement it. You can't sack someone for doing something they would have got sacked for not doing. (Well, not unless you use the kind of logic that can take you from the statement, 'All chocolate digestives are brown,' to the conclusion, 'All brown things are chocolate digestives.' And the people who do use that kind of logic don't last long - they have a tendency to choke to death on their own shoes at biscuit time).

So there we have it: one reason is illegal, one is spurious and the other is as insane as eating your own boots. Persuading management to see things that way is the tricky part. It might make them look bad. Still, they don't really have a leg to stand on.

Obviously, all the uncertainty has made life somewhat subdued round here but we're coping. We've had plenty of commiserations from friends and family, so we don't feel alone, but there's been some fairly dreadful advice as well, ranging from platitudes along the lines of 'It will all work out for the best' to idiotic suggestions that we use the opportunity to go traveling the world.

Hello! Three small children, people! We're entitled to be a little apprehensive of the future and to be reluctant to go backpacking in Borneo. (Everything else aside, I can't imagined the buggy would cope well with the rainforest terrain. And where would we plug in the Game Boys to recharge them? Not going to happen).

Oddly, however, nearly everyone Sarah has discussed her imminent redundancy with has, at some point, laughed and said, 'You could always send Ed back to work.'

On the one hand, they're half joking. As if they're sure she won't be able to persuade me to leave the house after eight years of, as they see it, sitting around eating cake and playing the Xbox. Which is, on reflection, a little insulting.

On the other hand, they're half serious. Getting me a job solves the problem of not having any money coming in, after all.

It doesn't solve the actual problem of getting a job but I guess that's just a minor detail. I mean, there's no reason I couldn't get a job. What people don't seem to realise, though, is that I can't compete with Sarah. When I stopped work in advance of Fraser's arrival, Sarah and I were earning similar amounts. Money wasn't an issue when deciding who stayed home to be dribbled on. That was eight years ago, however. Sarah now has eight years more experience than me. She has new and up-to-the-minute skills. She has smart clothes that fit and that aren't all wrinkly from dribble.

She has much more chance of quickly getting a decent job than I do.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that we're now financially trapped in our role-reversal situation but we'd definitely take a big hit in the bank account if we tried to swap back. It's strange how people just don't seem to get that.

Sadly, I suspect they would get it if I were female. It would probably be taken for granted rather than come as a surprise.

And, now I come to think of it, that would be far worse. I'll stop whinging.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Marie's favourite song at the moment goes:

Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody... everybody likes being a person.
Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody... nobody likes being a pie.

It's quite sonorous but does tend to attract some odd looks on the bus...

Labels: corporate madness, discrimination, housedad (vol.2), jobs

 
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1:00 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  One-dimensional eating habits

Dear Dave,

Thanks for the sympathy over all the things that aren't going entirely to plan just now. I know you have enough on your own plate to worry about at the moment. (Have you decided on any names!?) Sorry to hear Sam's acting up and refusing to eat anything which isn't long and thin. This does give you plenty of scope for nutrition, however - breadsticks, Cheestrings, carrots, chocolate fingers, crayons... There's a fairly long list of readily available foodstuffs and plenty of other things aren't too hard to cut into linear snacks. Obviously, you're going to be struggling with items like baked beans and peas and cake but I'm sure there must be ways round it. Mashing them up and squishing them together might work. Maybe not all at once but, you know, depends how much time you have...

Marie had a phase where she'd only eat doughnut-shaped food. This was much more awkward to accommodate. For a while she was made of Cheerios, Hula Hoops and Party Rings.

I should maybe just have given her the doughnuts and called her Homer.

Her Simpson-esque traits became even more apparent the other evening at the point I was getting her ready for bed. She was just annoyed and acting up about everything and I asked her if she was tired.

"No," she said, fighting her pyjamas as I tried to get them on her.

I wrestled one arm into her top. "Do you want to go to bed?"

"No!" she said, taking it off again.

"Are you sure?" I said, forcing the garment back over her head. "I think you need to lie down and get some sleep."

"NO!" she screamed and started to cry. She obviously and desperately needed some sleep but wasn't having any of it.

I was exasperated, frustrated and tired. I made the mistake of being sarcastic with a two-year-old. "What do you want to do then? Stay up all night and drink beer?"

She stopped. She looked at me. She jumped up and down excitedly. "Yes!"

"Er... I didn't really..."

"I not go to bed," she yelled, her body quivering with anticipation at the prospect of a six-pack, a sofa and a marathon of late night cable TV. "I not sleep. I drink beer!"

At which point Fraser and Lewis appeared from nowhere. "How come Marie's getting beer?" said Fraser.

"We want beer, too," said Lewis.

"Yes, can we have beer?" said Fraser.

Marie started running backwards and forwards, the length of the landing. "Want beeeeeeeeeeer! Want beeeeeeeeeer!" Then the boys joined in.

Needless to say, they didn't get any. But, by the time I'd finally got the whinging chancers off to bed, I did have a peculiar craving for a can of Tennents. Funny, that...

Anyway, as you've probably realised, I'm just avoiding talking about the stress in hand.

The mouse situation, at least, seems to be a little more under control now. I haven't actually seen any sign of one for a few days so it's possible they've gone away. Of course, I thought that with the ants, and you'll remember how that turned out. There's every chance that I've just managed to kill the stupid ones and that I'm using natural selection to breed a race of super rodents who will be able to avoid traps, open tins and steal the fridge. At the point they work out how to sell my stuff on ebay, I'm moving house.

The plumbing saga continues. Apparently out pipework is quite 'unusual'. (Translation: It was designed and implemented by a gibbon). The heating is now 88% fixed. Making it 100% fixed, however, may involve demolishing the bathroom.

As for Sarah... Well, things didn't go so well on Friday. LBO are laying people off left, right and centre. Branches are closing, work is being out-sourced, the final salary pension scheme is no more, services are facing the axe and the directors' bonuses have been linked to how much money they can lop off the operating budget. Not good.

Steve's still sitting pretty, as he predicted. Rob's department is gone but he's been shifted elsewhere. Technically, in terms of leadership and responsibility, it's a promotion. In terms of his annual salary, he's even had a pay rise. He was pretty pleased about that until I pointed out that the changes they've made to his holidays and working week mean his hourly rate has gone down. He's been sulking ever since.

Sarah has been made provisionally redundant. This means she has a couple of weeks to prepare and then she has to argue her case to be kept on with a special committee set up to give the impression that there has been some consultation with staff over all of this. It's already being called The Inquisition. Handily, each person will be interrogated by their manager and their manager's manager - i.e. the people instrumental in picking them for the chop in the first place. There will be an 'independent' member of senior management there from another division as well but I don't imagine that will be much comfort in most cases. Sarah's going to have to pull something pretty impressive out of the bag to make Steve and Scott perform a U-turn. (I'm thinking a bazooka would do it).

Ach, well, it isn't the first occasion something like this has happened and almost certainly won't be the last. We're coping as best we can. At least she isn't on maternity leave this time.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Mmmmmmm... Doughnuts...

Labels: children (vol.2), corporate madness, discrimination, flood, mice

 
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10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Useless Dad's friends

Dear Dave,

It could have gone worse.

It could have gone a whole lot better but it could have gone worse...

I should have known something was up when they all arrived wearing raincoats. The way this summer has been going, that wouldn't normally be odd but the sun was shining and the four of them were wrapped up like a quartet of Inspector Gadget clones. I was distracted by the chaos of all our children colliding in a maelstrom of tantrums, greetings and wittering, however. I didn't take much notice.

As I said in my last letter, I was meeting Steve (Useless Dad) and his friends at the soft-play. They pretty much all turned up at the same time. Todd was an earnest American about my age with scarily perfect teeth and hair. Darren was bright-eyed, fresh-faced and said, 'Yes!' a lot. Scott was a burly man in his mid-forties who gave the impression of being a rugby player. I quickly twigged that Scott was Steve's manager. This, of course, made him the boss of my wife's boss. Never good. I felt butterflies in my stomach - the kind of evil, misshapen butterflies that three-year-olds draw.

I picked Marie up and carried her around as a human shield.

We had about ten children between us, ranging in age from Scott's eldest daughter, who was around nine, down to Steve's youngest, Josquin, who's under a year. All the kids that could walk kicked off their shoes and charged into the enormous, multi-coloured hamster run. Steve handed me Josquin for a moment, as if to take off his coat, and then charged in after them. The other dads followed. I was left, quite literally, holding the baby.

I stared after them, not quite believing how easily I'd been duped. I hefted Josquin over my shoulder and set off to give Steve a piece of my mind. At that point, however, he and his friends actually took off their coats. I stopped. I blinked. I turned around and took Josquin back to the area for very small children. I walked slowly, whistling nonchalantly to myself. Facility attendants dressed in red t-shirts ran past me in the other direction. Behind me there were thuds and screams, interspersed with tinny, futuristic sound-effects. It was as if a couple of Space Invaders cabinets had turned up and started a fight.

Steve and friends were playing Laser Tag.

I knew they couldn't get away with it for long - lights flashed all over their plastic guns and body-armour, and the air was thick with trash-talk and zapping. I didn't want any council employees shouting at me, however, so I sat down and wished the ground would open up and swallow me. I promptly toppled over backwards into a ball swamp and disappeared from view.

I think if I hadn't had my arms sticking out holding a rather surprised-looking baby, I might have gone unnoticed. To be honest, I was as surprised as him. I lay there and held Josquin clear of the balls, his face an arm's length from my own, and we stared at each other. Somewhere above us and to one side, out of the corner of my eye, I could see four men being led away by guards in red t-shirts. One of the men was letting out long, low bloops and bleeps like you imagine Frogger would make as he limped forlornly into the path of a truck after you stood on him.

One of the guards stopped by the edge of the ball swamp and looked around while mumbling into a walkie-talkie. I made quiet shushing noises to Josquin. He grinned at me and giggled. I made the shushing noises more urgently. He grinned some more. I grinned back. We grinned at each other. He was quiet and I dared to breathe.

Then a glistening bead of dribble appeared on his lower lip.

My eyes widened. Josquin's mouth was directly above mine but the soft-play guard was still there and I didn't dare move. There was nothing I could do. The bead turned into a drop. It grew bigger. It began to bulge. The guard continued to loiter. The huge, quivering globule of saliva hung downwards, glistening in the light. Still the man would not go away. I tried to hold on for another few seconds. I tried not to think of the warm, sticky ooze that was precariously balanced only inches away from me. I tried to ignore the urge to leap up and run. I tried to think of a happy place. I tried... I...

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhh!"

The guy just about swallowed his walkie-talkie as I erupted, shrieking, in a shower of plastic balls right beside him.

Ho, well. At least I didn't get banned from the soft-play altogether like the others. I just got a verbal warning and three points on my leisure card. It did mean, however, that I was left to look after an entire riot of small children while Steve and friends sat in the cafe and drank coffees.

I'm not sure a 'riot' is entirely the correct term but I've decided this whole collective noun thing is merely a way for retired colonels and English teachers to feel superior. I've started inventing my own. Forget a murder of crows or a pod of whales, how about a slapstick of toddlers or a brood of teenagers? Or maybe an irritation of Tweenies or a prospective-freezerful of Teletubbies? I await your own suggestions... Thinking of such things kept me sane as the rest of the hour passed.

When time was up, I took the sweaty horde for chocolaty snacks and sat down for my own coffee.

"So what do you do?" asked Darren before I'd even caught my breath.

"Steve said you're one of Deborah's colleagues," said Todd.

"Like she does any work these days, sitting at home watching Neighbours," said Scott.

I didn't know where to start. Should I point out how much work being a stay at home parent entails? Should I mention Deborah's ambitions to return to her career? Would talking up both sound contradictory? Should I just tell them my own situation and brazen it out?

I wasn't sure and Steve was desperately trying to signal at me without the others noticing. He looked like the cool kid caught in close proximity to a geek, a thick rulebook, some character sheets and a large pile of twenty-sided dice.

Using my normal line of defense, I decided to make a joke of it. "I'm Executive Vice President of a domestic services partnership," I said and fished out of my pocket some of the business cards I keep for these occasions. "My portfolio includes surveillance, sanitation, education and catering."

"That sounds interesting," said Darren.

Todd nodded. "Do you have share options?"

"He means he's a househusband," said Scott, somewhat contemptuously of both me and them.

"Housedad," I corrected.

Todd looked puzzled. Darren let out a long, "Ohhhh!" and then continued with, "Does your wife earn a lot then?"

"No, not really," said Steve. "She's on..."

I coughed loudly. He looked guilty and shut up but I suspected he would tell them all later anyway.

"Still," said Darren, "must be cushy staying home while she goes out to work."

"What do you do all day?" said Todd.

"Wipe bottoms I expect," said Scott. "We can't sit around here finding out. We need to drop the little terrors home and continue the meeting back at the office."

I choked on my coffee. "You're counting this as work?"

Scott looked down at me. "Aren't you?" he said.

"I, well, erm..." I'd walked into a trap.

Steve didn't exactly back me up. "We got plenty of planning done while you were in there having fun," he said.

(Grrrr.

Are you sure you don't want to come up and give him a good talking to?

Actually... I know exactly who to get to do it. It'll take a week or three to organise but it might work.

Hmmm... )

Anyway, the four of them collected up their offspring and headed off to their impressive cars before I could think of anything much coherent to say. I was livid.

They did, however, invite me to go paintballing with them soon. I couldn't really say no. I did ask if I could bring some friends of my own, though. They weren't fussed. 'The more, the merrier,' apparently.

Of course, they may not be so sure about that once they've been hunted down and decorated by Scary Karen and her mates...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.2), discrimination, housedad (vol.2), Scary Karen, Useless Dad

 
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  Maternity madness

Dear Dave,

How's Liz getting on at work now her maternity leave is fast approaching? Sarah had some pretty strange treatment at LBO as her own waist-line expanded. By the time there was three months to go, she wasn't being given any work to do on the basis of her 'imminent' departure. All the good stuff went to one of her male colleagues. He spent about six months doing two-thirds of the analysis badly and then got another job and handed in his notice. He had so much holiday and flexi-time accumulated, he was gone two days later. Sarah ended up redoing the entire project from scratch in three weeks when she got back. It was insane.

Her manager, Steve, really didn't appreciate how much the enhanced maternity benefits and their tie-in clauses enforced her loyalty to LBO. From the moment she was pregnant until the day she had been back at work for a year after maternity leave, it was financial foolishness for her to change job. Of course, by the time she had been back a year, Marie's teething ensured we were all too tired for Sarah to go looking for anything else then either. Her incompetent male colleague, however, had meanwhile changed jobs twice more, doubled his salary and come back to LBO in order to oversee a monumental disaster in another department. (Remember that weekend last year when half the ATMs died, a few started spitting out cash and one in Stoke kept challenging passersby to a game of tic-tac-toe while threatening intercontinental thermonuclear war? His references didn't look so good after that. He's now head of business development in Ulan Bator).

Anyway, it was really Steve I was meaning to write about. The conspiracy centering around him is not entirely progressing according to plan. His wife, Deborah, isn't really succeeding in making him a better manager; I'm not really succeeding in making him a better dad. We're both just trying to hold up our end of the bargain in whatever way we can.

I keep inviting him and his kids to the park and such-like so Deborah has some space to work on her interior design business but somehow I always end up doing nearly all the child-care while he has a conference call on his mobile or re-organises his schedule on his PDA in order to fit in an extra round of golf.

Deborah keeps trying to persuade him to run his department better but her suggestions aren't sinking in. He arranged a discussion on transparent decision-making but then changed the time and location and wouldn't say why. He sent out a memo encouraging openness in communication but only to half the department. He was sympathetic to the concept of treating those who worked for him as human beings but just couldn't create a suitable spreadsheet in order to facilitate the process.

Gah!

The upshot is that, most of the time, Deborah simply tells Sarah when that extra round of golf is going to be. Sarah then knows when she can organise her team without interference. Anything which needs clearance is passed back to Deborah, who slips it to Steve and convinces him it's his own idea. Thus, when he suggests it to Sarah and it's already done, she looks scarily efficient rather than like a treacherous usurper.

Obviously, this isn't ideal. Basically, everyone is taking up the slack for him. In the short-term this is making all our lives easier but it's going to be hard to maintain. We really need him to get a clue and I've no idea how that's going to happen. I'm kind of hoping he'll suddenly have some revelation of his own uselessness and come begging to us all for forgiveness. Like St Paul on the road to Damascus, he will be blinded by the light and his foolishness will be swept away. In a single moment of realisation, all our problems will be gone.

More likely, one of us just needs to sit him down and tell him straight that he's an idiot. It should probably be Deborah but that's not really in her nature. He has too much power over Sarah for her to do it and I'm not good with conflict...

Any chance you could make it up here for the day? I'm sure we could arrange for the two of you to get trapped in a lift together or something...

Hmmm... Thought not.

You wouldn't get here in time to save me from Thursday anyway. That's when I'm going with him and his friends to the soft-play. I haven't dreaded anything so much since Scary Karen persuaded me to invigilate the sponsored breastfeed she and her mates held to raise money for Children in Need. (With hindsight, I guess I was naive to think she'd mentioned what we were up to when applying for tickets to the public gallery at the Scottish Parliament. It was almost worth it, though, just to see the astonished looks on the faces of the armed response team... Also, thanks to a bus load of tourists with cameras I'm apparently now a cult hero in Japan).

I'll let you know how it goes in my next letter.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Due to some technical difficulties, I'm going to be using pay-as-you-go dial-up for the next couple of weeks. This is somewhat akin to writing using an old-fashioned typewriter immersed in treacle, the keyboard of which is illuminated solely by the flames from a stack of burning money. Bear with me.

Labels: corporate madness, discrimination, Scary Karen, Useless Dad

 
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  Another conspiracy

Dear Dave,

Sorry to hear your neighbour thinks you're moving in on his wife. I take it he believes that because you're both home most of the time there's more scope for temptation.

Which is just mad.

He doubtless goes off in a suit to a workplace full of smartly-dressed female colleagues who he has ample chance to meet up with in his lunch hour. You, meanwhile, are run ragged by a toddler every minute of the day, barely have a moment to brush your hair and are covered in a multitude of minor stains. Also, quite how you'd find the opportunity to get up to something - let alone keep it secret - with three small kids between you, is another matter. I can't sneak away for a four minute game of Geometry Wars on the Xbox without a little person searching me out and demanding some attention.

If he keeps hassling you, drop Sam round their house one Saturday morning and let him witness how impractical the whole suggestion is at first-hand. I don't know about you, but it can be hard finding time and energy for the woman I already have in my life. I'm not looking to borrow another.

That said, though, I did have an uncomfortable conversation myself the other day. I answered the phone and a well-spoken and attractive-sounding woman on the other end said, "It's Deborah."

The name didn't ring any bells straight off and I didn't recognise the voice. "Er..."

"Steve's wife." I still couldn't place her. "You know - Useless Dad."

"Oh!" I'd spoken to her briefly at parent and toddler a few times but not for several weeks. I remembered her as intimidatingly confident and pretty. Calling her own husband by the derogatory nickname I'd given him had the combined effect of making me warm to her but also of scaring me. I couldn't recall having mentioned the name in public. What else did she know? More than that, what did she want and how had she tracked me down?

She smiled at me down the phone. "I was wondering if you want to meet up for coffee?" For some reason I felt like a fly being waved at by a cheery spider. Something didn't entirely add up.

"Er, well..."

"I've got the cleaner in just now but she won't be here long - it's only some tidying up really. Why don't you come round at eleven?"

Normally that would be a rubbish time but Lewis was going round to a friend's house after nursery so I didn't have to collect him. I had the distinct suspicion, however, that Deborah was the kind of woman who would remember that I had a child in morning nursery. She probably even had his name, birthday and favourite foods in her mental Rolodex. So why would she suggest a time that she knew I wouldn't normally be able to make? Unless she already knew it wasn't a normal day... But she couldn't possibly know that unless the kids' conspiracy had reached new heights and they were bringing in adults to help them... But that was insane thinking... I was reading too much into things. I... I decided to be non-committal.

"How did you get my number?"

"It was stuck to our fridge."

"Er..."

Being a man in a woman's world has many advantages, such as receiving adulation in the park for being able to reach high enough to unwrap the swings and having a changing room all to ourselves at swimming lessons. One of the disadvantages is that taking the kids round to visit their friends can be a little awkward. It's just socially odd meeting up with a woman in her house without any other adults present. It's not like we're alone or that anything could possibly happen or that I would want anything to happen - it's just strange. I couldn't help feeling it would be even stranger going round to see a woman who was rapidly giving the impression of stalking me.

"Oh come on," she said, discerning my reticence. "I hear the girls get on really well. It would be good for them to get to know each other better. I'll make a cake. We only live ten minutes away."

As attempts to get me to do things go, that was pretty persuasive. She made me feel like a bad parent for not wanting to go and then pointed out the way to be a good parent involved only a short walk to eat free cake. Genius! After a bit more back-pedalling, I eventually agreed to take Marie round and sorted the details. As soon as Deborah hung-up, however, I speed-dialled Sarah. Nothing was going to happen but it's always worth informing the wife after accepting an offer of home-baking from a mysterious woman - that way there's less chance of a misunderstanding turning life into an American sitcom. Only less chance, mind:

"LBO marketing department, Sarah speaking. How can I help you?"

"Your boss's wife has invited me round for coffee. I was just checking..."

"I can't speak right now, Sandra. I'll call you back in a few minutes." She hung-up and I was left staring at the phone. Somehow I'd found myself in a re-run of Friends.

I filled the next while encouraging Marie with her drawing while I pondered whether I would rather be Ross, Joey or Chandler. Then the phone rang.

It was Sarah. "She called you already then?"

"What?"

"Steve's still around here somewhere," she said and then lowered her voice. "He's not to know about it."

"He's not to know I'm going round to his house?"

"No."

"But you know about it?"

"Yes."

"I'm a little confused."

"Well I knew that before I married you. Just go round and listen to what she has to say. You still owe me on all of this, remember?"

"For letting your boss into our house? I thought you'd forgiven me for that. But if you're in on it, no wonder she found it so easy to persuade me. There was no need to go telling her all your secret techniques for manipulating me."

Sarah laughed. "Don't be silly. If I'd told her my secret techniques then you wouldn't have known she was doing it."

"That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be. Oops, got to go. See you later, Sandra."

I was left staring at the phone again. I felt like such a Chandler.

An hour or so later, I set off with some trepidation. Marie was very excited about the whole prospect, however, and toddled along at speed. "We go play! I run!" she shouted. I did my best to concentrate on gently steering her through the usual obstacle course of puddles, dog poo and admiring old ladies.

Deborah lived in what appeared to be an old, stone-faced hotel that had been expensively renovated into luxury flats. I expected high ceilings, marble finishing and a mezzanine level in the vast lounge.

I wasn't disappointed.

She greeted me with a peck on the cheek and then ushered me through to sit in a bay window where tea and cake had been set out on fine china. There was a table-cloth and everything - the cake was even on a stand. None of this helped put me at my ease.

Marie was oblivious. "I go play now," she said and ran off hand-in-hand with Ophelia. I hoped anything valuable had been put out of reach but I spent the rest of the visit expecting her to come back shaking a Faberge egg, hoping to get the surprise toy out.

Settling back in a wicker chair festooned with cushions, I looked about. Whoever had decorated the place had really known what they were doing - it was elegant yet welcoming. I was acutely aware, however, that the cup I was drinking from probably cost more than all the crockery in my own house put together.

"Nice place," I said.

"I'm an interior designer," Deborah replied and I instantly wished I'd been a bit more effusive.

"Well, it's really nice. Really, really nice." I guess, on reflection, I'm just not a very effusive person. I pressed on. "Do you get much chance to do any work?"

"Not as much as I want. Ophelia will start nursery after the summer but Josquin doesn't sleep for long during the day so it won't help a great deal. A nanny is one solution, I suppose, but I don't like the thought of that. I really need Steve to do more of the childcare in the evening and at weekends."

"Are you sure that's wise. He's a bit... er..."

"Useless?"

"Yeah."

"I am aware of that," Deborah replied. "I phoned him on his mobile yesterday and Josquin's nappy rang. I get the impression that your wife has some issues with him as well."

"She's not up for meetings on the golf course, she'd prefer to see her family than go down the pub and she has a tendency to disagree with plans which are obviously stupid. This has her marked out as 'not a team player'. She also feels her work is under-appreciated because she doesn't get involved in the testosterone-fuelled bragging his leadership tends to encourage."

"It sounds like she's told you a great deal about it," she said, obviously knowing full well I'd had my share of angst to sympathise with.

"Sarah's mentioned it on a few occasions," I replied diplomatically.

Deborah raised an eyebrow. "OK," she said, spreading her hands on the table in front of her. "I'll be blunt. I need him to be a better dad. You need him to be a better boss. I think we can help each other. You teach Steve to be an involved father and I'll exert some influence on his managerial style. I can also supply Sarah with any useful information that comes my way, such as when he's going to be out of the office and anything he's planning, so she's prepared."

This wasn't the kind of proposition I'd been fearing. In some ways it was scarier. Still, it was a chance to make Sarah's life better, so I couldn't really turn it down. (I do love her).

I sighed. "I guess I could give it a go. Where do you want me to start?"

"You're going with him to soft-play on Saturday. I hear you should be free to meet him round here at two."

"I thought you were supposed to be supplying Sarah with information, not the other way about."

"We're all working together now."

"Apart from Steve," I said, frowning. "I take it he's not to know about any of this?"

"As if he'd believe you."

"Good point. He hasn't really taken in I'm a housedad yet."

"Exactly."

At that point, Marie and Ophelia entered the room wearing Wedgwood bowls as helmets and Josquin woke up wanting fed. We turned our attention to keeping children happy and there wasn't much more opportunity for discussion before I took Marie home for lunch.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. I guess I'll meet up with Steve on Saturday and see how it goes. Maybe simply by being round me he'll pick up some fathering skills by osmosis. You never know... Sarah's seeming pleased, though, so that's a bonus.

Good luck with your situation. I just hope that this doesn't all blow up in my face like a steriliser full of popcorn. (Don't try that by the way...)

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: discrimination, housedad (vol.1), Useless Dad

 
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  Worlds collide

Dear Dave,

I'm a dead man.

Sarah is going to kill me. I'm surprised she hasn't left work early and come home to do it already. Maybe she's just stopped off at B&Q to buy some bladed garden equipment... Or a nailgun... Seriously, once I've finished writing this I'm throwing a change of underwear and all the gadgets I can carry into a suitcase and heading for Bolivia. She'll never find me there.

The day started well. I was at parent and toddler and everything was going fine but then I ended up sitting next to Useless Dad at biscuit time again. Scary Karen was sitting across from us and I waved but she was too busy telling Stefania the details of her colonoscopy to notice.

Useless Dad looked up from his newspaper. "Your wife sent you here again as well?" His baby son was lying at his feet, a rattle having rolled just out of reach. I picked it up and gave it back. The baby smiled and giggled in a transparent attempt to get himself adopted. I could see his three-year-old sister in the distance filling her shoes with Play-Doh.

I played dumb. "Yeah, you could say that."

"Deborah threatened to pour away my whisky collection if I didn't take the kids out of the house."

"Really?" I said. I'd met his wife a few times. She'd seemed calm and confident. I was suddenly concerned that having to do pretty much all the child-raising herself had caused her to lose it.

"Yes. This is getting totally out of hand. I'm going to have no end of work to make up. I might only be able to play golf twice this week."

"Really..." She wasn't losing anything. She was taking back what was hers.

Then my day took a rapid down-turn.

"My God, what is that woman doing?" said Useless Dad rather loudly. I glanced across to see Karen wapping out one of her enormous bosoms in order to feed her baby.

"Er, that's Sca... er, Karen," I said in a low voice. "She's just giving the baby some milk."

No one else seemed to have heard him. I think we would have gotten away with it if Karen's toddler hadn't wandered over to her just then looking peckish.

"Is that even legal?" squealed Useless Dad as the other undulating meal was wrestled into view and shoved into the waiting boy's mouth.

The conversation around us died. Other parents glared at us. And when I say other parents, I of course mean mums. We were the only men in the room and we were staring goggle-eyed at a breast-feeding woman. Useless Dad was even pointing. This was not the sensitive, enlightened image of fatherhood I have worked hard to cultivate over the years. I reached over and lowered his outstretched finger.

Karen was looking at us with a visage normally reserved for Norse gods who are about to do some smiting. I edged as far away from Useless Dad as I could without falling off my seat. Grinning nervously, I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. "Shouldn't you be leaving? Aren't you going to try working from home this week?"

He shook his head. "My laptop is still having the vomit removed after last week."

"Oh." I grinned harder and gave Karen a friendly wave. Her countenance only darkened further. Little lightning bolts sparked around her. Everyone was now watching us closely, waiting to see whether we would run or die. Some of them were obviously looking forward to a good smiting.

It was every parent for themselves.

I surreptitiously waved the remaining half of my biscuit at Marie and then gestured extravagantly towards Useless Dad. "New guy, everyone." I still couldn't remember his name but it wouldn't have made an impact anyway. I told them what they needed to know. "This is Deborah's husband."

Eyes widened, realisation dawned and understanding swept the hall. Those mums in the know turned to those next to them and began recounting their favourite tales of Useless Dad. Only a few continued to eye me with suspicion.

Marie ran over and grabbed my half-eaten chocolate digestive. "Thanks. I eat biscuit."

"Good, girl. I love you," I whispered so that only she could hear.

"I love you, daddy!" She shouted back and gave me a big hug.

After that, I was safe. I had an endearing guardian angel sitting on my lap (or a human shield dressed entirely in garish pink, depending on how you want to look at it). There were audible, "Aaawws!" from around the room. The storm passed. Karen finally returned my wave and went back to talking to her Polish friend.

I didn't want to push my luck, however. "We should probably go now," I said.

"Where to?"

"Er... home?"

"Deborah told me not to come back until lunchtime."

"Why not?"

"She wouldn't say but she'd looked out a leotard, a box of chocolates, the soundtrack to Pretty Woman, two cans of paint and some dust covers."

"That doesn't sound good." I would have suggested a trip to the swing-park but it was raining. I didn't fancy his chances of surviving a trip to the shops, the library was closed and I didn't want his kids loitering in a damp bus shelter for over an hour. "Er... Want to come round to ours for a bit?"

"Can I check my email?"

"I guess."

"Great. Let's go," he said, suddenly very keen.

"The girls should get on well."

"What? Oh, yeah... Yeah... How fast is your broadband, did you say?"

We wrapped up our various offspring, emptied out their footwear and headed back to our house. Marie led her new friend off to destroy some toys together, Useless Dad logged on and I looked out an old baby-seat for his sleeping son.

After I'd provided half an hour of free childcare, Useless Dad came through and said, "Your internet connection has stopped working."

"It does that sometimes," I said, kicking the cable I'd just yanked from the wireless router out of sight. "It might be down for a while. Cup of coffee?"

Grudgingly, he followed me through to the kitchen and was somewhat thrown by the confusion of colour. I've put off redecorating by covering all the available wallspace with the kids' artwork. He raised his eyebrows at our Nintendo-themed calendar. He perhaps realised that an infestation of children only becomes harder to ignore as they get older.

"What is it you do again?" he asked.

"I look after the children."

"When you're not looking after the children."

There are many tempting things to say in this kind of situation, such as, 'I'm not telling you my secret identity', 'Sleep' or 'Shh! When they can't see me, they think I don't exist'. All are true but usually take more explaining than is really worthwhile. "No, that is my job," I said.

"Oh..." said Useless Dad. "What does your wife do then?"

"She's a marketing analyst."

"Where?"

"LBO." He looked confused and didn't respond. To fill in the awkward silence, I asked, "What is it you do?"

"I'm head of marketing at LBO."

"Oh..." I suddenly recalled Useless Dad's name. It was Steve. Sarah's manager is also called Steve. He's quite useless as well. For there to be two useless managers called Steve in LBO's relatively small marketing department was really quite a coincidence. I mean what are the chances of...

My eye developed a spontaneous twitch. I inhaled sharply as if someone had stood on my toe. I stifled a whimper. On the list of people not to invite into your home, the wife's evil, misguided boss is pretty near the top, just above Dracula and Jabba the Hutt.

"What was your wife's name again?"

"Er..." I decided to lie and said the first name that popped into my head. "Brian?"

I remembered the two reasons why I normally don't lie: a) It's bad and wrong. b) I'm rubbish at it.

"Pardon? Your wife's name is Brian?"

"Erm, it's a pet name I use sometimes. You know, like 'dear' or 'hen' or, erm..." I glanced around the room for inspiration. It was not my day. "Er, or 'Donkey Kong'... Erm, actually her name's Sarah. You probably know her."

He gave the impression of having to think about it but eventually he managed to put all his ducks in a row. He looked around the room with new eyes. Narrowed eyes.

"So Sarah has children then?"

"Yes," I said, biting my tongue. Useless Dad/Manager had made the presentation on two of the three occasions she had gone on maternity leave. On the third occasion he had simply forgotten and phoned up after a couple of days to see where she'd got to.

"How many?" he asked.

"Three."

"Three!?" He said it like we were some kind of subversive breeders intent on taking over the world. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty much certain," I said. I took some deep breaths and sat on my hands to stop myself slapping him.

He pumped me for all kinds of further information to do with such things as the kids' ages, schools, holidays and health. I might have thought he was just showing an interest but I was fairly sure he didn't know some of the answers for his own children. It was also possible he was trying to gain some understanding of our situation in order to help Sarah maintain her work-life balance. I suspect, though, he has more sinister plans...

I tried not to say anything career damaging and stated several times that I'm the one responsible for looking after the children even when they're ill. I'm not sure what registered, though. Then, at last, it was lunchtime and he hurried off to dump his children with his wife and then go and play squash. I've been chain-eating chocolate bars ever since. Sarah's not going to be happy. I don't know whether to phone her and warn her or wait to see if Steve mentions it to her. Or maybe I should just text - that might be safer. Or...

Is Bolivia nice this time of year?

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: discrimination, housedad (vol.1), playgroup, Scary Karen, Useless Dad

 
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