Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me. Tim Dowling

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

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

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

      ‘Where are you going?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      It is the night before school starts.

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

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

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

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

      ‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Glue.’

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

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

      ‘Um, yeah,’ says the boy.

      ‘I agree,’ I say. ‘Brilliant.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

      ‘The egg,’ he says.

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

      ‘The egg.’

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

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

      ‘Because I do everything and you do nothing.’

      ‘I’m doing this,’ I say.

      ‘The egg,’ says the boy.

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

      ‘I’ll write it,’ he says.

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

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

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

      ‘I think that’s cheating,’ he says.

      ‘It’s not cheating,’ I say slowly, ‘and I’m going СКАЧАТЬ