Child's play

The Beavers Beaver

It’s always difficult to remember your own childhood with any genuine objectivity, mine seemed to be one of eternal Summers spent building dens, scrumping apples and pears from the nearby orchard, collecting sticklebacks and frogspawn in jam jars, fishing from halfway up a tree or deep within reed beds because you didn’t have a fishing licence and playing football and marbles in the street from dawn till dusk. It probably wasn’t idyllic but it certainly feels that way looking back on it now.

Playing in the street and just messing about with your friends with little or no adult supervision seems to be frowned upon these days but in the ‘60s that was the way children grew up. I hear people saying, “but things were safer in those days!” Which is of course complete rubbish. When I was a child the number of evil nutcases in the world was pretty much the same as it is now - the Moors murders were taking place just up the road!

No, all that has really changed is our attitude. My parents knew there was a risk involved with me playing in the street but they also knew that that risk was quite low and, most importantly, that every other parent accepted it. That said, I got hit by a motorbike and a mate got run over by a car. Fortunately, I also had a season ticket for the local A&E, so my latest bang and scratch would be cleaned up and I’d be on my way again, just in time to fall out of a tree. In the 60s this was regarded as “growing up” but I dare say that these days it would be regarded as negligent parenting that puts undue pressure on the NHS and the Daily Mail would be running a campaign calling for all parents who indulge in this madness to be put behind bars and all tree-related injuries to be exempt from NHS care.

To make up for ‘messing about with their mates’ children today join clubs, lots of clubs, lots and lots of clubs. This year alone Marty has joined the village Taekwondo club, the village football club, and our local Beavers. During his day off he’s learning to swim and he’s already talking about starting rugby and maybe cricket, this is despite not having a clue what rugby or cricket actually are. Don’t get me wrong, this is all great stuff and he thoroughly enjoys himself but I can’t help feeling that he is missing out, just because everything he does is ‘supervised’.

When I was young, in the summer holidays all the kids on our street would meet up in the early morning and we would all play together until the mums came out and started shouting that dinner was ready. Our ages would range from about 5 to 10, so the 10-year-olds were effectively our adults. They would say something was true and the rest of us would believe them and, with no adults around to pass judgement, comment or contradict, we were left to live in a world of our own imagination. The fantasies fed off each other. One of the bigger boys would say he saw a wood elf in the woods yesterday, some of us would scoff but then another boy would say he saw it too. A wide-ranging conversation about Wood elves would ensue - 90% of which was just made up at the time - and by the end of the day every one of us would be absolutely convinced that not only did they exist but they existed in the woods just down the road, and if we found one they might tell us were their gold was hidden, if we were really nice to them and looked after the wood. This would then set the theme for the rest of the summer. We would meet up in the early morning, all of us kitted out in various shades of green, with our bows and arrows on our backs and head off into the ‘Seven Woods’ to track down elves, fight off poachers and save all the woodland creatures and sundry fairy folk from certain doom. At 2 minutes to dinnertime I’d screech into the house, covered in mud and twigs, happy that our merry gang had saved the day, yet again, and convinced that we’d be awash with Elven gold before the new school term started!

Okay, anyone who’s read ‘Lord of the flies’ will be able to tell you that leaving children to their own devices for any prolonged period of time is not necessarily a good thing but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and it saddens me a bit to think that the world has changed so much that Marty might never get this opportunity.

On the plus side, we live in an area that seems to be blessed with good and affordable activities, most of them are within walking distance of our home and, because everything is organised by parents these days, I get to watch and be involved, which is good fun.

Because Marty is my only child it’s very difficult to gauge quite where he is; is he bright for his age, is he short for his age, is he fast, is he slow? It’s very difficult to tell until you see him with his peers, and in this respect watching him play football is not only very entertaining but very informative.

For example, with the season almost finished I’m fairly certain that the chances of Marty building a career in football are slim, in much the same way as my chances of waking up tomorrow morning and discovering Elvis mowing my lawn whilst Che Guevara trims the hedge are ‘slim’. However, what he lacks in raw talent he makes up for in enthusiasm and, whilst he might be much smaller than many of the other boys, he is incredibly fast!

Sadly, I’m pretty much housebound at the moment after neck surgery so I missed his 1^st goal of the season. Fortunately, Marty has mentioned it once or twice and is happy to describe his goal prowess at great length with little or no provocation, so much so that it now feels as if I was there at the time after all.

It’s probably a reflection on modern football but whilst most of the boys still struggle to kick a ball properly they have all practised and practised their goal celebrations. So, whilst half the lads are crying their eyes out because they’re a goal down, the other lot are sliding gracefully along the grass on their knees, arms raised to greet the imaginary crowd before starting a series of elaborate handshakes with their teammates. 

Much to my surprise taekwondo has been considerably more sedate than football. I must admit that I was a bit reticent about teaching Marty how to fight. As great ideas go I suspected it was right up there with trying to put out a small fire by smothering it with petrol, but so far my fears have been unfounded; he enjoys showing off his latest ‘moves’, he looks cute in his little uniform and, despite his greatest efforts, he still carries the sort of threat level more commonly associated with hamsters.

We bumped into his taekwondo instructor this weekend as he was wandering around town, which confused Marty no end:

Marty: “Is that you Malcolm?”

Malcolm: “Yes Marty.”

Marty: “Are you sure?”

The other club he really enjoys at the moment is ‘Beavers’, which is Cubs for the under eights. Again, it was surprisingly cheap to join but all these uniforms can eat away at your finances. For some very odd reason Beavers opted for a bright turquoise uniform, which makes the kids look like they belong to some sort of Barclays bank youth programme or have joined a cult created by David Icke. It’s most odd!

Now I am six

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything about fatherhood, not because it hasn’t been interesting and full on, but because it’s been too interesting and too full on. 

Okay that’s a bit of an excuse, I can’t blame Marty for taking up all my time but it’s amazing how a small child can nibble away at the edges of your spare time until it pretty much disappears altogether.

The shame is that this blog is really a diary for me, to remind me of all those little moments that made me laugh at the time and then, 20 minutes later, are forgotten. Parenthood is heavily sprinkled with these moments, a classic example was last Christmas when Marty’s phrase of the day was “I definitely, weffinately, weffinately want that!”, which he shouted loudly at the telly every 10 minutes or so.

All parents will be familiar with this scenario, you sit your child down in front of the television hoping they’ll be entertained by some innocuous cartoon, forgetting that every five minutes the programme will be interrupted by advertisers trying to flog your child everything from sugar to Transformers and back to sugar again, it really is bloody annoying!

On the run-up to Christmas it gets particularly arduous, we tried to moderate it by using the idea of a wish list; rather than fight out the pros and cons of a particular toy or a particularly sugar infested confection at the time, we would write everything down in a list and then we’d pick what he wanted for Christmas from this list. The big advantage of this approach is that most five-year-olds can’t read or write well enough to contest the list and its accuracy, so not only do you avoid a meltdown at the time but, given long enough, your child forgets that he wanted a life-size gorilla made entirely from corn syrup and licorice and the fact that it has mysteriously vanished from his wish list is no longer a cause for concern.

Anyway, the point was that “definitely weffinately” was a brief moment. He occasionally says it now but very rarely. I guess this is the way it is from here on in, there are no major milestones any more, it’s just a series of gentle transitions that make you laugh, then fade away and are replaced by new ones.

At the moment Transformers are the big thing in Marty’s life. Tigger and Pooh lie in the corner of his play room gathering dust, Thomas the Tank Engine has had his railway lines privatised, his sheds sold off, his steam-driven drivel forgotten. Meanwhile, Octopus-Prime fights it out with Gridlock and Bumblebee. Who will win? Who will wrest control of the conservatory? It’s a fascinating question that keeps Marty occupied for much of the day.

I can’t say I’m too distressed, yes I still miss the Winnie the Pooh movie, yes I still sing along with Zoe Deschanel given half the chance but I was never overly fond of Thomas. Can I understand the Transformers cartoons? I have tried, really I have. It seems to be based on “wizz, bang, whoosh, rat a tat” then they talk a little in portentous American accents and then it’s back to “wizz, bang, whoosh, rat a tat.” To me at least, it makes as much sense as Theresa May, although not much more. 

The films are a bit better but they are a bit much for a six-year-old. I’m really not sure about them, people talk about them being violent but in reality it’s the sort of violence you’d see if a scrapyard got dropped into a very large blender; less blood and guts and more brake fluid and wiring. Then, when the violence gets too much, they bring on Megan Fox to run around a bit in short shorts and a little T-shirt, which improves the plot and dialogue no end.

The universal thread with children growing up is that they always grow up much faster than their parents would like. It’s not that I want Marty to remain stunted, naive and cute forever but children seem to move on from things much quicker than their parents, and children never seem to look back. On the plus side, every new phase (once you have got used to it) seems to be better than the last. I might miss Winnie the Pooh and I might get bored playing Transformers - which just involves banging plastic toys together until one falls apart completely - but Marty himself just gets better and better.

Like every age that has gone before it, five was wonderful and six will no doubt be better. I think I’d define five as ‘a sparkling intellect floating on a sea of complete naivete and wild imagination. A sea ruled by the all-embracing concept of ‘goodies and baddies’.

Everything but everything in Marty’s life is either good or bad and the people involved either goodies or baddies. We could be watching an advert for dog food and Marty’s first question will be “who’s the baddie?” I have been trying to teach him that life is slightly more nuanced than that but it’s a steep hill to climb and, judging by the number of UKippers and Tories out there, some people will always live in a world that that is either black or white, I just hope Marty is not going to be one of them.

School has been the other great change. I must admit that I was a bit worried by how much pressure they seem to want to put on small children these days. In my day you started school at five and you pretty much painted and sang until you were about seven. I dare say this was regarded as a traumatic period by those children who were tone deaf and allergic to paint but for the rest of us it was a halcyon time.

These days they’re thrown into the deep-end pretty much from day one. This is fine if they can keep up, but all children are different and assuming they can all embrace maths and writing at an early age strikes me as naive at best and possibly destructive at worst. Thankfully, Marty is really enjoying it and doing well, and he is not the least bit afraid to share the joy of his education.

Marty: “Daddy, what is 10+10+10+3?”

Me: “33”

Marty: “Noooo! You say it’s 24”

Me: “okay, it’s 24”

Marty: “ha ha! No it isn’t it’s 33!”

Believe me, he can keep this up for hours!

His language has also come on leaps and bounds in the last year, although now he is surrounded by schoolmates the words he comes out with aren’t necessarily the ones you’d hoped for.

An example of this is the word ‘pop’. For some strange reason my wife decided that a sudden release of air from the nether regions should be called ‘a pop’. Personally, I felt that the word ‘Fart’ was perfectly adequate but apparently this is deemed a bit rude - who knew!

So of course, after years of popping his way through life Marty learned from his friends that the better word was ‘Trump’ and then, after talking to the older boys, they all decided to opt for the word fart. Obviously, the fact that the word is slightly risque adds to its appeal; you don’t say fart, you whisper it, and in Marty’s case ‘perform’ it regularly, very regularly. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe the amount of grief our poor dog gets whilst Marty sits there, a picture of innocence ensconced within a faintly green fog.

The best part of all this learning in school, from both teachers and friends, is that you have absolutely no clue what is going to come out with next.

Marty: “Daddy, we don’t hit people in the winkie at school.”

Me: “I should think not!”

Marty: “No, we kick them in the nuts!”

You can change the world but little boys will still be little boys.

EU and ME

Well I’ve posted off my vote and I want to remain in the EU. To be honest it was never a difficult decision to make for me. I’m not a huge fan of the EU, I don’t like the way Greece was bullied, I don’t like the austerity heaped on the poorer European countries, I think there is too much corruption and I think far too many of the policy decisions are driven by political vanity rather than common sense.

Fortunately, this referendum isn’t about how perfect the EU is, it’s about where we see ourselves in the future; a small island or part of something much bigger. This idea of us turning our backs on our neighbours and pretending that we’re somehow different from the rest of Europe is just an anathema to me. I feel European, I always have felt that way. I like being British, I like being English and I like being a Northerner but none of these diminish, for me at least, the sense of being European. I guess you don’t have to be in the EU to feel like that but I really can’t see any point in leaving.

From the outset I thought this entire referendum was just a huge waste of money. Hundreds of millions of pounds, that we’re always being told we don’t have, just being poured down the drain in order to pander to the political vanities of the Right Wing of the Tory party. I assumed it would be a parade of half-truths and bare faced lies from the start but I didn’t expect it to be quite this bad.

The standard of debate didn’t fall into the gutter, it started in the gutter and has just been an exercise in muck-raking and made-up-bollocks ever since. I feel sorry for those people who are truly undecided because getting to the truth has been almost impossible.

A classic example of this was the 350 million quid a week to the EU. We never send that amount to the EU and the people posting it as ’the truth’ knew that. This of course didn’t stop them continuing to post it. Why? Well, mainly it’s because they know that a lie repeated often enough becomes believable to an awful lot of people.

What really annoys me about this figure isn’t that it’s not true, it’s that it is thoroughly misleading. Government expenditure always involves enormous figures, so they always sound frightening, so politicians always use them to their own ends. Apparently, this enormous sum equates to 0.5% of our GDP. To bring this closer to home, if you earn £500 a week, you would be paying out the princely sum of £2.50 a week to be in the EU! In terms of our country's income it’s peanuts, but apparently we’re going to pay for everything from this money; the NHS will be saved, our schools will flourish and all our fishermen will get new boats. It’s nonsense and the people spouting it know it’s nonsense.

The other problem I have with this money is why people object so much to us paying it. Everyone in the EU pays into the EU coffers based on how wealthy they are. That only seems fair to me. Even countries that are not in the EU pay into it; Norway, Switzerland etc. all pay for the privilege of trading tariff-free within the EU. I can’t see a problem with this. I pay to run a monthly advert in one of our local newspapers. By coincidence the amount we pay is roughly 0.5% of our turn-over. I can’t be certain that we get value for money from this advert. Maybe we’re wasting our money. If we stopped the advert would we really notice any drop in trade? To be honest I really don’t know. Am I going to stop the advert? Of course not. It’s a trifling sum of money and if we get just one job from it it’s paid for itself for the entire year. That’s how I see this money we pay into the EU. Maybe we aren’t getting value for money but we do get access to the world’s biggest market. Surely that’s worth something all by itself? And as people keep pointing out, we’re the 5^th richest country on this planet. So being in the EU and paying this money out is patently not doing us much harm!

The other side of this payment issue links to the migration problem, which seems to get a lot of people down. The idea of the EU expansion was to bring our poorer neighbours into the fold. Rather than have illegal immigrants pouring over the borders every five minutes and our neighbours turning back to Russia or just falling into turmoil, the EU decided to bring them into the fold, so to speak, and help them become wealthy like us. Yes, we’d have to spend a fair bit and yes we’d have legal immigration rather than illegal immigration but over the longer term it would all work out for the better and, once the new members were wealthy, the migration would slow right down to sensible levels. Sounds great, eh? Alas, it doesn’t seem to be working out so well.

The biggest problem with immigration is that it seems to be a call to arms for every right wing twat in the country. I have no problem with people disliking the idea of immigration. I have no problem with people disliking the way it changes their towns and cities. I have no problem with people fearing for their jobs. Where I have a problem is when people start calling all migrants, scum, rapists, murderers etc. I really did think that that kind of mindless racism and xenophobia was on the wane but, if Facebook is anything to go by, it’s getting worse and worse by the day. I called a bloke out recently for saying that all immigrants are rapists and before I knew it I was being accused by the Brexiteers of “using the racist card like all my kind do” WTF? I didn’t even know I had a ‘kind’. We seem to be turning into a frothing mass of xenophobes the longer this ‘debate’ goes on. Sadly, history would suggest that when that particular cat is let out of the bag it doesn’t go away quickly and it has been known to cause ‘a bit of friction’ in the past. I hope that’s not going to be the case but it’s not a side of the British personality I like to see.

Yes, immigration is a problem but I can’t see how walking away from the EU will solve it, after all it’s not our unique problem. The problems in Syria are the world’s problems and they won’t go away because we try to ignore them. The issue with EU migrants is a problem shared by the whole of the EU. The Spanish get pissed off by a million OAP Brits coming over and buying up their coast line, pushing up house prices and filling up their hospitals. The Germans have more problems with migrants than we have. The Polish government has the opposite problem. Every year their best and brightest up-sticks and head off to the big cities of western Europe seeking fame and fortune. The current system doesn’t work well for anyone and most of Europe is fed up with it but instead of trying to form a consensus and work it out with all the other countries in the EU - and most of them are just as keen as us to sort it out - we would rather have a temper tantrum, shoot ourselves in the foot, and then attempt to walk/hobble away.

I wouldn’t mind so much if there weren’t consequences from walking away but there are. The first is this particularly nasty rise in casual racism. Whilst it’s only the likes of the BNP screaming bollocks people steer clear but once it becomes more mainstream, everyone seems to think they can join in. It really is quite shameful.

The other consequence of walking away rather than dealing with the problem is that it’s likely to follow us anyway. The EU always insists on free-movement of people in return for tariff-free trade. Ask Switzerland, they turned down a deal with the EU in 1992 because they didn’t want the free movement of people.

The EU sold more to them than they sold to the EU, so they figured they could play the waiting game. In 2008, after a decade of recession, they finally gave up and accepted the free-movement of people. They then voted against it in 2014 because they thought they disliked foreigners more than they liked the trade – in fairness, they did get A LOT of foreigners moving over there. Again, they thought the EU would back down, again they haven’t and now they’re realising that they might actually like money more than they dislike foreigners after all and so will probably have another vote soon and the polls suggest they’ll accept the EU’s conditions, yet again.

Yes, yes, yes. We’re not Switzerland… except when we think it’s good for our argument to be like Switzerland, in which case we are like Switzerland.

I also can’t see how the Calais issue is going to improve if we leave. We currently have an agreement with the French that they will maintain control of the non-EU migrants on their side of the channel in return for us paying towards the cost of that work. If we leave the French might want to carry on with the arrangement but, bearing in mind that they get nothing out of it, I’d be surprised if they do. I doubt they’ll hand the refugees a map and a boat but I wouldn’t put it past them to encourage them along their way with tales of cheap Fish and Chips floating in a sea of mushy peas and glorious renditions of the “White Cliffs of Dover”.

I suspect that you really only have two choices with migrants; either you spend a lot of money to make their country so nice that they want to stay, or you spend that self same money on building higher and higher walls, both physical and metaphorical. As I said, the EU idea behind the Union’s expansion was that we would bring these poorer European countries into the fold; make them like us and everyone would be happier. Personally, I think, given time, this will work. I also think they didn’t really think through the issue with mass migration. I’m quite used to being surrounded by foreigners and yet I still found it a bit shocking when I went to Boston a few months ago only to find the town buzzing but buzzing with people speaking Polish and Lithuanian. I imagine it’s come as a real shock to the locals, who only ever had themselves and a field full of potatoes to talk to in the past.

My biggest issue with leaving is the economics. We got through the worst part of the recession by the skin of our teeth and I really don’t want to go through that again. I know, Farage and Boris keep saying it will all be fine but then they both have millions in the bank and can afford to spend the next 4 years lying on a Caribbean beach and knocking back Bacardi. I on the other hand have a mortgage and a business to run.

I just can’t see how leaving wouldn’t be a huge hit to our economy. Firstly, we have an enormous level of debt. We owe various nations and investors almost 1.5 trillion quid. That’s the most money we have ever owed anyone, ever! And, under the wise governance of Mr Osbourne, it’s just going up and up with each passing year.

So why aren’t we in the sort of shit that Spain, Italy and Portugal etc. are in? They are having to pay huge levels of interest on their debt, so why aren’t we? Well, as far as I can make out, it’s because the money has to be invested somewhere and, whilst we’re not the greatest economy, we’re a lot more stable than a lot of others…. Or at least we are at the moment! I really don’t care if being ‘free’ of the EU works for us in the longer term, I doubt it will but it might, I don’t know. But in the short term just the uncertainty by itself is going to cause utter fucking chaos. Boris and Farage and the likes will be reaping it in by playing the markets but the ordinary citizen is going to get absolutely hammered.

When it comes to money I also can’t understand this “We’re the 5^th largest economy” argument. It’s a fact that gets trundled out on numerous occasions but I can’t see why we’d want to leave the EU just because we’re loaded? We’ve been in the bloody thing for over 40 years, if the EU is so terrible, how come we’re still the 5^th largest economy in the world? Surely, what with all that red tape and bureaucracy that they complain about, we’d have tumbled down the charts years ago?

So how have we manged to survive the EU? Did we pull this off by some sleight of hand, some battle against all the odds? Well if that was the case surely the Germans wouldn’t be the 4^th largest economy in the world - and yet they are. Well maybe they too managed to somehow circumvent the evil bureaucrats of Brussels. But hold on, the French are the world’s 6^th largest economy… and the Italians are 8^th, the Spanish 12^th, the Netherlands 14^th. How have all these nations managed to make themselves so rich when they are all shackled to this terrible, bureaucratic and horribly inefficient EU? This makes no sense! The terrible, unworkable, EU. The EU that’s going nowhere. The EU ridden by bureaucracy has all these huge, wealthy economies in it? And, they are all still growing!

I read a piece yesterday saying that we need to free ourselves of the EU because it is going down-hill. Instead we should be trading with the emerging nations (BRICS); Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Have any of these people actually looked at these economies recently? Yes, China is doing well, although not as well as many had hoped but as for the rest? Go and have a look, most of them are as stable as Farage after 7 pints of Hobgoblin!

Meanwhile, we have some of the richest nations in the world on our doorstep and we’re talking of walking away from them because… Well why? Because it costs too much? It doesn’t and it never has done. Because of migrants? That issue is a World and EU wide one and is best dealt with by the UN and the EU as a whole. Because it’s holding us back? It’s the richest trading bloc on the bloody planet for God’s sake! It’s filled with red tape! So that’s why Denmark is ranked as the 3^rd easiest country in the world to do business in and we’re the 6^th? The USA by the way is 7^th and those lovely BRIC countries we want to trade with? Well they are 116^th, 51^st, 130^th, 84^th and 73^rd respectively, so best of luck with that one.

Ar yes, but the EU is undemocratic! Oh right. Let’s have a look at that one.

A condition of joining the EU is that you can demonstrate that you are a democratic nation. Quite how the hell we managed to get in is beyond me because we, on the face of it at least, are the least democratic nation in Europe. Ok, a few other European countries have a hereditary Head of State, although most have no official power – ours, on paper at least, is very powerful but just opts not to use it – but no other European country has anything as remotely feudal as our own House of Lords.

I’d believe the people who go on and on about EU democracy if they’d ever shown any inclination whatsoever to sort out our own deficiencies in that area but they haven’t. When you do push them on it they point out that our system works, which in a way is right, and is also a good argument for the EU’s deficiencies, since they too work quite well.

The big problem with democracy is that it only works if people vote. In the last EU election 35% of people in the UK eligible to vote actually bothered to. The sheer audacity of people to complain about democracy when they can’t even be bothered to tick a box, fold a piece of paper and pop it into two envelopes! Ok, you also have to lick the envelopes and I guess for some folks spittle doesn't come cheap, but if you can’t be arsed to at least use the postal vote then you have no right to moan about a lack of democracy.

The big ‘democracy’ criticism is always about the EU Commissioners. They are not directly elected, rather, every 5 years, each nation within the EU gets to nominate a commissioner, with the Commission President being directly elected by the European parliament – the people we can’t be arsed to vote for. There is a call for the commissioners to be voted for directly by the electorate of each nation but the problem with this, aside from the fact that hardly anyone will bother to vote, is that commissioners get assigned a portfolio – Transport, environment, agriculture etc. So, if you want your nation to have a bit more power within the EU you put forward an expert in one of the more important areas. If he or she is deemed to be the best qualified for that role they get that important portfolio – I dare say a fair bit of horse-trading takes place here.

The problem with a democratic election is that we’d either end up sending Joey Essex to represent us in Brussels or each country would end up putting forward people who either have no expertise worthy of the name (Hi Joey) or we have a commission with 20 environmental experts but not a one who can even identify a tractor.

At the moment there is also a call to increase the power of the European Parliament, who currently vote laws in but do not have a role in actually creating legislation – that’s the role of the commissioners. This will probably happen but the downside of that is that it will probably take the EU even longer to pass laws.

All told, whilst far from perfect, it's not actually as undemocratic as people like to make out, certainly not as undemocratic as the UK.

The final argument from the Brexit brigade is that we have lost our sovereignty. Whenever I hear this argument “Rule Britannia” starts playing in my head, no idea why.

The problem with sovereignty – the ability of a people or a nation to rule themselves – is where does it end? We spent most of last year telling the Scots that Scotland being a sovereign state was a daft idea. Why? If it’s so good for the UK, why on earth isn’t it good for Scotland? Or Wales, or Northern Ireland, or the North of England? Where do you stop? Freedom for Tooting?

In reality, absolute sovereignty, in terms of complete control and independence, is a myth. We live in an interconnected world where decisions made in China (to dump cheap steel for example) have massive impacts on the other side of the world – although the UK vetoing EU tariffs on the practise didn’t help. You can beat your drum and wave your flags as much as you like but it doesn’t give you complete control over your country or region.

The closest you can get to real sovereignty is hegemony i.e. to be more powerful than everyone else. The USA tends to get its own way most of the time, China is learning this and starting to throw its own weight around and Russia is once again beating its chest. Fortunately, the EU is no push over itself. As a union of small but rich and relatively powerful states it can stand toe to toe with pretty much any one – although militarily it’s rather weak.

So to me that leaves an obvious choice. Since we can’t stand up against the big world players by ourselves – and stop kidding yourself, we can’t – who do we want to take our lead from? The US? They never seem to actually listen to us and I personally don’t have much faith in their beneficence. China? Er, thanks but no thanks. Russia? Well, maybe China isn’t that bad after all?

The EU, for all its faults, is filled with countries that share most of our core values and beliefs. Yes, we might not get our own way all the time but who does in a union, and why does it really matter? And why do we seem to think we are the only nation with a sense of identity that needs protecting? You seriously think the Germans would just give up their sense of being German? That the French don’t share our sense of individuality and the feeling that we’re better than everyone else? Of course they do, we’re all basically the same. And that’s the point, sovereignty is only a genuine issue if you have a fundamentally different belief system or fundamentally different desires from the rest of the people you share sovereignty with. Whilst the majority of our fellow Europeans want the same things from life as we do – and I believe they do – it’s better to work together and share sovereignty as a powerful EU. Globally, we’re far more likely to get a European vision of the world if the EU is a powerful voice within it and I believe that a European vision of the world is going to be a better place to live, for everyone, than an American, Chinese or Russian world.

That’s not to say that local control is a bad thing, it isn’t, it’s just getting the balance right between what happens in your town, your region, your country and your union. I really don’t buy into this argument that laws passed in Westminster are bound to be better than laws passed in Brussels.

I look at the house of commons and I don’t see ‘us’. I see a bunch of over privileged, public school wankers with whom I have absolutely nothing what so ever in common. I suspect Brussels is the same but with an accent, but this idea that, free from the shackles of Brussels, our MPs would suddenly become half decent and start making laws that actually benefited ordinary citizens is bollocks.

I really don’t care if a law comes from Brussels or Westminster. All I care about is if it’s a good law or a bad law.

Anyway, why am I posting this on a Fatherhood blog? Well because it’s my son who will be affected most by all of this. It’s not that I fear for his well being if we leave, nor that I think European war will break out or that he won’t be able to travel around Europe and make friends with other Europeans. It’s more that I worry about what the UK will become and, without us, what the EU will become. The tone of this entire debate has been largely loathsome and I really don’t like the idea of him growing up with a ‘little-island’ mentality, treating foreigners with disdain and looking at the world only as an opportunity for profit. I hope that won’t be how we become but I can’t help feeling that leaving the EU would be a terribly misguided step in the wrong direction and that my son and his generation will be the ones who end up paying the price.

Boris as PM? Brrrrr!

Should we smack our children?

So should you smack your children? It’s rare to get a reply to this question that isn’t passionate and it’s rarer still to find people who are happy to just sit on the fence.

It does seem to be an issue that polarises views. On the one hand you have those parents who see no harm in it, providing that it is just an occasional smack. They tend to justify their approach to discipline by explaining how they were smacked as children and yet here they are, perfectly normal and well-adjusted parents. If you still seem a bit sceptical they’ll then go on to explain how the woes of the world, and juvenile delinquency in particular, are caused by a lack of discipline and that if more children were smacked a bit more often the world would be a better place for it.

On the other side of the fence are the people who stand aghast at hearing this defence of assault and battery. They wouldn’t dream of hitting their children and are quick to point out that it can lead to terrible emotional consequences for the children involved and that it really ought to be made illegal.

To be honest I can see some value in both arguments. As a child of the 60’s I, and pretty much everyone I knew, were occasionally smacked. If it had an awful effect, then we must have all suffered it together. Yet the vast majority of us manage to muddle through life without feeling the need to dish out wanton violence. That said, whilst I struggle to see how an occasional smack does any genuine, measurable, harm to a child I also can’t see how it does any good either.

When I was a kid most schools used the cane and most parents smacked their children. Were we all little angels as a result? Of course we weren’t. We still broke the rules, we just accepted that there would be a physical consequence if we got caught. I can’t recall a single instance when we decided not to do something because we might get the cane, or a belt, if we were caught. In fact, being punished was often a badge of honour, showing everyone else in the school just how hard you were.

Then, as now, children broke rules because they either couldn’t see any value in the rule, or because they thought they wouldn’t get caught, or because it sounded like a lot of fun, or for every one of the above. The whole reason children need parents is because they are very poor at working out the consequences of their actions and I don’t believe that smacking them has ever improved this juvenile blind spot.

The only time I’ve slapped Marty was when he was about 2. We were walking along when he let go of my hand and made to run across the road just as a car hoved into view. Before I even knew what I was doing I’d screamed in terror, hauled him back onto the pavement and slapped his backside.

I remember this event clearly, not because I thought Marty was going to be killed, he wasn’t, but because I’d slapped him without even thinking. It wasn’t hard and I don’t think Marty even reacted to it but it worried me. I’d been brought up believing that it was wrong to hit anyone smaller and weaker than myself, and that if I did I was nothing more than a bully. Yet here I was slapping the smallest person I knew! Yes, I could justify it, but it still didn’t seem right and my excuses sounded hollow, even to myself.

So I had a long think about it and I realised that whenever I got really annoyed with Marty it had less to do with what he’d done and had far more to do with the kind of mood I was in. True, his behaviour was a tipping point but it was still mainly down to me; I was fed-up, or tired, or just plain-old-fashioned pissed-off, whilst Marty was just behaving the way most children do, a way that I might have found cute and amusing if I’d been in a better mood.

Which led to the question, “If I smacked Marty would I be handing out calm, considered, and well deserved punishment or would I be venting my own frustration on a small kid?” To be honest I suspected the former might be the case more often than not.

I started watching other parents. I never saw a parent calmly smacking a child, it was always done as an act of rage or at least one of severe annoyance. On the odd occasion that this wasn’t the case it was wrapped up in some perverse logic that made little or no sense – the classic was the mother smacking the 5-year old for hitting the 3-year old, with the scream “Don’t hit people smaller than yourself!” or “How many times have I told you… smack. You don’t… smack… Hit people.” If children are supposed to be learning from these punishments I have yet to figure out what the lesson is, other than that ‘Parents are funny creatures that make as much sense as UK Foreign Policy’.

The other thing I noticed was that parents that smacked their children tended to reward them afterwards, no doubt because they felt a bit guilty about smacking them in the first place. Once again, what the hell is the lesson that’s being taught here? And if you felt you were handing out well-deserved and appropriate punishment, why the guilt?

Another argument I’ve heard for smacking young children is that “They’re too young to listen to reason.” According to this thought process you only resort to physical violence when logic has failed. I have a few problems with this. Firstly, it doesn’t say much for your powers of persuasion if you can’t even coax a 2-year old around to your way of thinking. Secondly, it’s not the greatest lesson to impart; if you can’t argue your point, just lash out with your fists instead. Thirdly, if an unwillingness to listen to reason was your excuse for smacking your 5-year old, what on earth are you going to do when they are 17? They’re no more likely to be listening to reason at that age but are far more likely to hit you right back.

So do you stop hitting them when they’re older? Sorry, but this would just mean you are a coward, only hitting the small child because they can’t hit you back. Or do you carry on hitting them and just accept the inevitable consequence; they will hit you back sooner or later and you will have no moral defence when they do so?

I am very glad to say that, aside from that one incident, I’ve never felt the need to smack Marty, partly for all the reasons I’ve just gone through but mainly because I don’t think he’s ever done anything to warrant it.

So how come we’ve got a little angel? Well, firstly we haven't but, on the whole, he is just a nice, easy going, kid. That said, I think a lot of this is also down to the fact that we live a steady, consistent and disciplined life.

A classic example of what I mean is the kid in the supermarket badgering his or her parents for sweets. This is a common sight because supermarkets go out of their way to display sweets at child height throughout the store, especially at the check-outs, and they do this precisely because they know children will start badgering their parents.

The parent says no, but the child won’t drop it and eventually the parent cracks. At this point two things might happen, either the parent just throws a wobbly and starts screaming random threats and, occasionally, smacking their child, or they give in and buy them sweets. Often they scream the random threats, smack them, and then give in and buy them sweets. Either way, the kid already knows that if they keep up the pressure they will eventually get what they want, even if they do end up with a slightly warm backside as well.

We don’t really get this problem with Marty for no other reason that we never have the ‘at this point two things might happen’ stage. We never, ever, give in to him. Personally I find this approach to discipline really easy because I’m particulary obstinate, but this approach really does work.

Once we say no Marty knows that’s the end of the discussion and no matter how much he pushes things nothing will change. To start off with this approach can be very tiresome but it’s amazing how quickly children come around once they recognise that discipline is consistent and fair.

Of course this doesn’t stop him trying entirely but he tries less and less often and more and more half-heartedly. These days we can usually end a tantrum simply by counting slowly to 5 because he knows that when we reach 5 punishments will be handed out, either he gets no dessert, or no bath, or no stories etc. None of the punishments are draconian but they are all things he really values and the degree of punishment rises the more he pushes things – he starts off getting no dessert, then we go to bed early with no bath, then no stories etc. The result is that we very rarely get to count past 3; by applying consistent discipline we rarely have to punish him at all.

This isn't to say that I don't occasionally crack. Like all 5-years old's Marty is brilliant at knowing how to wind his parents up and my wife keeps telling me off for 'growling' at him when I'm particularly livid but that's as far as it ever needs to go.

This is the critical point that most of the people who advocate corporal punishment seem to miss. They struggle to see the difference between discipline and punishment, which is a real shame, because, as a general rule, the reason why they need to inflict punishment all the time is because they don’t apply consistent discipline.

If you give a child a short set of simple and clear rules and implement them fairly and consistently it is very unlikely that you will ever need to smack them.

So we don’t smack, because it’s pointless, doesn’t work, is asking for trouble in the longer term and is masking the fact that we’ve failed to apply discipline in the first place. However, there is one other reason that really swung it for me. In the UK it is actually illegal to hit anybody, with one solitary exception. Yes, the only people you are legally allowed to hit are those members of our society who are most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves; our own kids! When you look at it like that it’s shocking, no?

This is why many people are calling for the smacking of children to also be made illegal; it doesn’t work as a method of discipline and its inconsistent with the law of the land. Personally I’m not sure if making it illegal is such a good idea. We choose not to smack our son because we think it’s wrong. That doesn’t mean it is wrong, it just means that no one has ever been able to give me a good, solid reason for thinking its right. So I am loathe to inflict my opinions on others, other than in a blog that people are free to stop reading at any point and can just ignore anyway.

The other reason I’d back off from making it illegal is that, even if the parents smacking their children are wrong, it’s not because they are bad parents, or bad people or because they are being deliberately cruel. They are usually smacking their children out of misguided and ill-considered love; their hearts are largely in the right place, it’s just their brains that are lagging a fair way behind.

If we locked people up just because they failed to think through the consequences of their actions Westminster would be a very quiet place and PMQ’s would look like an episode of Porridge.

Oh! Sugar!

The upside of your children going to school is that you finally get a little time for yourself. Ok, that time tends to be almost entirely occupied by work but at least work tends not to scream and stamp its feet quite as much as a four year old.

The downside of Marty going to school though is that we lose a little control. Ok, I’m no control freak so this isn’t a big deal but I do worry… about sugar.

Don’t get me wrong, sugar is wonderful stuff. It’s a terrific and completely natural source of energy. We are all hard wired to find sugar delicious. In fact, from a biological point of view, it pretty much defines the word ‘delicious’. You could scrape up something from the darkest recesses of your drains and by coating it in enough sugar make it taste appealing – a fact that has not been over looked by the food industry.

Given half a chance all of us would gladly gorge ourselves on sugary foods, we’re pre-programmed to do it and it would take an awful lot of effort to deny this entirely natural drive. Of course, for hundreds of thousands of years this was not a problem. Most sugar was only seasonally available and you had to either dig it up, wait for it to drop from a tree or be prepared to take on an awful lot of bees if you wanted to get at it.

Times changed but sugar stubbornly remained a luxury and a rare treat until the 1950’s when cheap corn syrup suddenly erupted onto the scene. All of a sudden we really could get as much as we wanted, which would have been fine if it wasn’t for the fact that we wanted a lot…. an awful lot.

The food industry quickly realised that this cheap additive could make damp cardboard taste delicious, so why not make it taste super delicious? Before long pretty much every processed food product contained added sugar. Worse still, was the effect sugar had on drinks; why make a cola that tastes ok with 4 teaspoons of sugar, when you can make it taste great with 8 teaspoons full?

And then came the most audacious marketing campaign in recent history, the “High Energy Drink”. Here we have a population already saturated with cheap sugar, a population that needs extra ‘energy’ like a fish needs a bike. Yet they somehow managed to con the majority of the population into thinking that their sporting ability would be enhanced if only they consumed a bit more sugar – and a bit of salt and a few things with long Latin names just to make it all look scientific!

It’s truly amazing! To get any benefit from these drinks you’d have to be jogging to Aberdeen twice a week – the caveat being that you don’t already live in Aberdeen. Seriously, you really need to be pushing yourself to the physical edge to get any genuine benefit from these drinks yet I’ve seen small boys knocking back these drinks just because they’ve kicked a football around a field for a bit! No child should be subjecting their bodies to the sort of demands that a high energy drink is designed for, yet, because of this marketing, they feel under pressure to use them, with the result that the poor souls are leaving the football pitch a little fatter than when they jogged on to it.

As a parent a lot of things worry me, it’s part and parcel of the job. The fact that Marty’s generation is predicted to be the first western generation to have a lower standard of living than their parents is a worry – although we’ve set the bar pretty low so he should be able to just edge us. Another, far bigger worry, is that his generation will likely be the first to suffer a drop in life expectancy. 

There are a lot of factors at play here, not least of which is that governments around the world seem to have decided that they are not responsible for anything any more and that they should just leave the world to the capitalists. In some areas this might be sane but when it comes to science it’s idiocy; when profit is the driving force behind research a breakthrough in new antibiotics is going to come way behind a cure for baldness, 3D TV’s and perkier boobs. As our antibiotics become less and less effective life expectancy will plummet. As if this wasn’t bad enough we exacerbate the problem by deliberately making ourselves unhealthy.

I say deliberately because it is completely unnecessary; when a young child is thirsty their bodies are craving water. If you give them water, the thirst goes and the association between water and thirst is strengthened, so water actually starts to taste good. Alas, a huge amount of parents in the west feel that water is somehow inadequate so they add some fruit juice – which must be good for them because it’s got the word ‘fruit’ in it. As a result, the child grows up associating sugary drinks with thirst. Every time they feel thirsty they drink sugar, quite a bit of it because it’s not as good at quenching thirst. So every time they satisfy their thirst they take on board 100’s of calories that they have absolutely no need for. Keep this up for just a few years and you have a child who, through absolutely no fault of their own, is overweight. At which point society turns around and starts blaming and name calling with mindless enthusiasm.

Ok, sugar isn’t the only culprit in the rise of obesity but is it the main player primarily because the majority of people still view sugar through rose tinted glasses. We wouldn’t celebrate an event in our child’s life by handing out fags or dishing up great lumps of lard but we will immediately reach for the sugar.

‘Oh there’s no comparison between sugar and fat and fags!” I hear you say. Well you may be right but, in the early part of the 20th century, cigarettes were regarded as a cure-all for pretty much everything and foods with a high fat content were our everyday treats. Tobacco and fat haven’t changed since those days, just our attitude; we realised the dangers and moved away from them.

The same thing is starting to happen with sugar and I suspect that in 20 years’ time it will be quite rare to see a parent giving a child a can of coke or a bag of sweets. Alas, Marty is four so if we leave it to society alone it’s going to come too late for him.

So we’ve been fighting our own little fight, not to avoid sugar completely but to keep it to a bare minimum, and educate Marty about the downside to this glorious sweetness. Sadly, this fight gets that much harder once they start school. It’s not really a problem with the school itself, although many do seem to have a rather outdated attitude to sugar, rather it’s the other parents, many of whom don’t seem to share our concern.

Virtually every little event in a young person’s life seems to be celebrated by swamping them and their friends in sugary treats, so much so that it’s not really a treat anymore, it’s become commonplace. If we’d left Marty to his own devices his sugar intake would have quadrupled since he started school!

The huge problem with this is that, whilst it’s relatively easy to keep a small child away from sugar, it is very, very, hard to get them to cut back on sugar once they’ve got a taste for it. The other long term problem is that of ‘association’. A number of fast food companies have gone to great lengths to associate their products with the good times of childhood because they know that the food habits and associations formed in childhood tend to stay with us for the rest of our lives. If your child grows up eating healthily the odds are they will always eat healthily. If they grow up regarding sugar as a treat and a mark of the ‘good times’ it will be the first thing they reach for in adulthood when they are feeling fed up and depressed, that or the burger that reminds them of childhood parties.

Of course this is no reason to demonise sugar, or burgers for that matter, but if our children are going to grow up healthily they need to learn to avoid sugary foods in much the same way as we’ve already learnt to avoid fatty foods. We wouldn’t give a child a tub of lard for their birthday so think twice about giving them a bowl of sugar, even if that sugar is hidden in colourful jelly, and what ever you do, don't give them yet more sugar to quench their thirst afterwards.

Now I'm Four

Well now that we have the nonsense of school admissions out of the way we can carry on with the more fun aspects of parenthood.

Marty has now reached the grand old age of four and the only noteworthy fly in the parental ointment is the realisation that the well known adage “The Terrible Two’s” is a load of old bollocks! The first problem is that it rarely starts at two, which is no bad thing but can lead to a short lived false sense of security. The second problem is that it never, ever, ever, finishes at two. A far more apt phrase would be “The terrible Godknowswhen’s”. I grant you that it mightn’t trip off the tongue quite so well but at least we’d all know exactly where we stand.

In truth we’ve gotten away with most of the amateur dramatics and the sudden need to beat your way through the floor of ASDA using nothing more than your fists and a loud wail. I’m not sure why we’ve gotten away with it but I suspect it’s partly because Marty isn’t that keen on the thespian life and partly because we just ignore him every time he does try for an Oscar.

Wailing aside, the move from 3 to 4 is very much a transition; he talks better than he did, counts better, runs faster, argues in a way that can occasionally be described as rational, if you ignore the references to Thunderbirds and Peter Rabbit, and is just like a three year old who’s learnt a bit more. It’s evolution rather than revolution, which makes it pretty unique so far but I suspect is the way it will always be from here on in.

One change that I hadn’t seen coming, but probably should have, is the fact that he’s become a far fussier eater. There was a time when you could put pretty much anything in front of him and he’d eat it but now the look of the food matters. We do try to persuade him that it’s all about the taste but it’s been a forlorn battle. On the bright side this means that Leanne and I get to eat all the mussels, although he’ll make an exception for Moules Mariniere, which is frankly a disappointment as this is one of my favourites.

“It’s too spicy!” Is his usual complaint at meal times. I wouldn’t mind if this was because we were feeding him vindaloo every night but it applies to the nutmeg in lasagne, the Chorizo sausage in Paella, the pepper in cacciatore. The only exception to this rule is ASDA’s ‘meat feast’ pizza, when he’ll drink a glassful of milk with his meal just to ensure that he can cope with the heat and get as much pizza into himself before I beat him to it.

The good side of all this complaining is that he will try his best to explain the problem. All complains and arguments start with the opening line “Actually Daddy...”, which gives me time to settle down for the entertainment. There really are few things more guaranteed to raise a smile than a four year old explaining to you how life really is. Sometimes his reasoning is truly impressive but most of the time he’s lost me within the first few minutes, especially when the ‘tree falls down onto the house’, which is an event that features in most of his arguments and is something that he finds extremely funny... presumably because a tree has never fallen down onto his house.

Another joy of four year olds is listening to them narrate their own games. Marty has become a big fan recently of Thunderbirds, partly because of the new TV series but mainly because he has an old dad who still loves them. The up side of revisiting old TV series’ is that you get to ‘borrow’ the toys off all your older cousins, so Marty will now happily spend the afternoon ‘wooshing’ around the house with various Thunderbirds to hand, all the time explaining the unfolding drama to any who’ll listen: “What’s the sitruation Scott?...Oh No! The pit of peril!... This is a case for internatural rescue. 5...4...3...2...1” At which point he starts singing the theme tune, or at least that’s what I think he’s doing, it’s hard to tell on account of sounding little or nothing like the theme tune to Thunderbirds

My mum keeps telling me off for correcting Marty’s pronunciation. I can see her point in that it is a brief moment in time and it is cute... but I correct him anyway. Fortunately it seems to make not the blindest bit of difference, so my mum and I are both happy. I particularly love ‘Internatural rescue’ and his avoidance of the letter T at the start of words. ‘Prane” instead of “Train”, “Fry” instead of “Try”. That one particularly threw me at the time as we were watching Saturday Kitchen. James Martin was in mid cook when Marty suddenly announced that he was really frying. It took me ages to figure out that he was talking about putting his shoes on.

Another one that threw me completely at the time was “d’skies”. Aficionado’s of Thunderbirds will know of The Hood’s penchant for disguising himself. Alas, I’d forgotten all about this, so when I wore a hat one summer’s day I was utterly flummoxed when Marty asked if I was in d’ skies and spent a few minutes looking upwards before it finally dawned on me what he meant.

One of the hardest joys to explain to others is how you feel when your child uses a word or phrase for the first time. Ok, there are certain words that might not leave you suffused with joy but for the rest it really is wonderful. Just yesterday Leanne was explaining to Marty that he couldn’t have any fruit because it was almost dinner time. He sat back on the kitchen worktop, digested this information, and then sighed “Unbelievable!” 

See! How is that in any way funny? Yet Leanne and I both reacted as if we were watching ‘Live at the Apollo’!

As a result of this uncontrollable mirth Marty has come to the conclusion that he is a natural comedian, and in fairness he’s probably right. “Only joking!” is now one of his more popular phrases, along with its counterpart: “You joking?”

Another favourite of mine is “Give me a clue!”, which is particular funny in that he doesn’t distinguish between him revealing something to me and me revealing something to him.

Me: “Marty, what did you do at nursery today?”

Marty: “Er.... Give me a clue!”

A slightly less humorous development has been his attempts to grasp the concept of death. For us this topic arose when he was trying to figure out how his family are all related. He took great delight in discovering that his Nanny was my Mum but that inevitably lead on to where my dad was and where his mummy’s parents where.

It’s a difficult topic to explain to a four year old. I know many adults who can’t get their heads around the idea of death; its inevitability, its utter permanence and its complete indifference to your sorrow. So trying to explain it to a child is far from straight forward. I guess all parents will have to deal with these questions sooner or later and we all have to find our own answers. However, because it is such a mind blowing concept, the odds are that your child really won’t understand what you’re saying... but they will pick up on your emotions. So if you appear upset and scared of death, your child will be upset and scared by it as well, which isn’t a good thing. Another no-no is explaining it as ‘sleeping’. Not only does this confuse the hell out of your child but it also makes them scared of sleeping.

I’ve been reading “The Lion King” to Marty recently, which also deals with the concept of death in the guise of ‘The circle of life’. Marty seems quite happy with the idea that we’ll always be with him in his heart and will always be looking down on him in one sense or another but he also seems to think I’m going to be grass one day, which I guess is right in a biological sense but has resulted in Marty having a slightly morbid fascination with our lawn.

Questions abound when you live with a four year old and I must admit that I do enjoy trying to answer them. I probably don’t answer them correctly and I’m not sure Marty even follows what I’m saying but at least I give it a go. What has shocked me though is how youngsters can appear to be paying you absolutely no attention whatsoever and then, 3 weeks later, repeat what you said to them verbatim. A classic example of this was my reply to the question of Monsters and Dinosaurs.

We were walking through a wood when Marty suddenly got it into his head that the wood might be filled with Monsters and Dinosaurs. I pointed out to him that monsters didn’t really exist to which he replied that actually they do but they are really good and get energy from laughing and not making you frightened unless they are bad monsters, but they lost. An answer that only made sense to me when I remembered he’d been watching Monsters Inc.

On the question of Dinosaurs I replied that all the Dinosaurs died out a long, long time ago. So long ago that no humans had even been born and that we all looked more like hedgehogs than humans when dinosaurs lived. Ok, so it’s not the best answer but it didn’t really matter because Marty was throwing sticks for the dog and wasn’t even listening.

About a month later and we’re on a camping holiday. We’ve all just had a short walk and are returning to our tent when Leanne happened to mention Dinosaurs.

“Don’t worry mummy,” Marty replied, “All the dinosaurs are dead and we were hedgehogs!” I was shocked that he’d listened to me, Leanne was wondering what the bloody hell he was talking about.

There is of course a downside to this retentive ability; I’ve overheard a few exasperated “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” comments coming from his play room. To be honest I’m amazed that I’ve managed to forgo swearing around him for the past four years and, judging by the amount of times my wife has explained to me what we do if he does start swearing, she has little confidence that I’ll manage to keep it up.

Apparently, we ignore him. No shouting, no telling off and certainly no laughing. If they get a reaction they are more likely to do it again for the simple reason that all children crave attention. Ignore them and there is a fighting chance they’ll never bother saying it again. If he does try it again we apparently have a quiet word after the event about it being a bad thing. God knows if it’ll work but hopefully we won’t have to even try.

Another urge that has increased now he’s four is the competitive streak. When he was three he was pretty competitive, I assume all kids are, but these days he wants to turn everything into some sort of competition. The only real downside to this is that he will not tolerate losing. Oh no! Beat him and he’ll dissolve into tears of anguish and outrage.

I’ve managed to temper this a little bit by introducing the concept of the draw; if he wins, he wins. If I beat him by a country mile, it’s a draw.

To be honest it’s quite a handy thing all ‘round. Want to get him to bed? Seems reluctant to go? Just race him up the stairs, see who’s the first to get into their jim-jams, who can brush their teeth best and who can jump into his bed first. Simples!

Not content with reasonably fair competitions he’s taken to making up his own rules.

Marty: “Daddy, what colour is that car?”

Me: “Red”

Marty, now looking a little crestfallen: “No! You say it isn’t and I’ll say it is!”

Me: “Oh, now I think of it, it looks blue!”

Marty: “Ha Harr! You’re wrong! It’s red! SEE!”

This can seriously keep him amused for most of the day!

To be honest it’s amazing what goes on in children’s heads. Marty currently seems to think that the world’s ills can be cured with sellotape, it’s pretty much his answer to everything. A toy breaks, where’s the sellotape. The car breaks down, just grab the sellotape. Feeling a little poorly? Try Calpol and sellotape.

We were at the National Railway Museum in York a few weeks ago and one of the guides was attempting to explain that the Mallard train could no longer run because the boiler needed a very expensive repair. At this point Marty butted in and patiently - and loudly - explained to everyone that all that was needed was an ample supply of sellotape. You probably had to be looking at the face of the guide to get the full effect but it was very, very, funny.

All these joys involve the entire family but there is one fascination that is just for us boys. I am of course referring to the ancient art of urination. To women, having a wee is a mundane bodily function that can only be made interesting by inviting all your mates to join you in the Ladies. However, for the male of the species, it is a wondrous and ever evolving art form. One of Marty’s recent discoveries is that ‘I can wee on a tree, ‘cos I’m a boy and girls can’t wee on a tree ‘cos they’re girls!’ The downside of this is that Marty can’t go near a tree these days without wanting to pee on it.

“Daddy, I need a wee. I know! I’ll wee on this tree!”

“Marty, the toilets are just over there!”

“But the tree is just here!”

We usually end up dragging a protesting child into the loo but, if we’re not quick enough, we, and the rest of the National Trust visitors, are subjected to his impression of the Manneken Pis; bottom shining in the mid day sun as he contentedly communes with nature.

A slightly more bizarre development has been ‘Clash Wees’. As all parents know, privacy, like time and sleep, are things that vanish over the horizon the moment you opt to have a child. This was brought home to me when, whilst quietly going about my business, I heard a little voice right behind me say “Oooooh Daddy! That’s a clever wee!”

From this moment on Marty insisted on standing to do his business. Alas, the thrill of the standing wee was not enough for him and it is now virtually impossible to go to the loo without Marty accompanying me so that we can stand side by side and ‘clash-wees’.

As a result I’m left in a typical parental dilemma; part of me wants him to grow out of this asap, part of me wants him to never change J

Nursery fees

There’s been a lot of debate on this recently, some of it sensible and objective, most of it raging and irrational.

To listen to some people you’d think that nurseries were a new phenomenon, they’re not. Mill owners started them in the early 1800’s because it was a way of encouraging cheap labour (women) to work for them. I went to a nursery in the ‘60’s. Ok, they were far more informal in those days, usually self organised affairs where a group of mums would be given free access to a church hall and they’d all take turns apiece to look after the kids. As I recall, the downside of this arrangement was that, in lieu of a rental fee for the Church hall, we were all expected to attend Sunday school.

Parents have always needed nurseries in some form - if only to prevent them being driven insane by the incessant chatter of three year old's - and children have always needed them in order to develop the social skills that will be essential in a few years time when they start school. All that has really changed is the formality of the nursery and the degree of need of the parents.

In an ideal world women really would have a genuine choice to either work or stay at home and look after the kids. In reality most households now rely on two wages, they might not need two full-time working wages but the vast majority of women – and let’s face it the difficulties here are usually dumped on the women – have to earn a wage and, by definition, this means someone else looking after their children for at least a few hours each week.

The other more recent change is the amount of legislation now surrounding nurseries. These were all brought in for the right reasons but they all seem to be based on the idea that parents aren’t capable of distinguishing between a good and a bad nursery by themselves. So, in theory at least, all nurseries are now wonderful places for your children but, as a direct result of this legislation, are far more expensive.

Anyone who’s paid any attention to the nursery debate will have heard at least one person say “If you can’t afford to bring up your kids don’t have any!” 

In an ideal world we would all be able to sit down with a big bag of popcorn and watch the man who uttered this comment explain to his young, broody, wife how she can’t have a baby because interest rates are set to rise and the car needs new tyres. I could be wrong but I suspect it would be a blood and gore spectacle of epic proportions.

No, for the majority of couples, having a child is not a wholly rational decision driven by a spreadsheet and economic predictions, if it was I suspect London would now be a small village populated entirely by the gentry, all having to cook and clean for themselves because the poor had become extinct. Most of us enter parenthood well aware that we will be broke for at least a few years, in fact most people will go through a period in their lives when things aren’t going so well and a helping hand would be appreciated.

And after all, that’s all we’re talking about; a few years. Why should a couple’s entire life be affected by the fact that they can’t afford to get through the first few years of a child’s life without some help?

Which leads me on to another popular comment in this debate, namely “Why should I pay for other people’s children to go to nursery?”

One of the people who came out with this statement was Stephen Davies, of the Institute for Economic Affairs, which begs the question why is he still in a job as he patently doesn’t understand how tax works. Just for Mr Davies, let’s have a brief look at the concept of tax.

Most of us love the idea of good roads, fires that get put out before the entire town burns down, police that keep ourselves and our property vaguely safe, schools that produce roughly intelligent children, armed forces that give us a fighting chance of still living in our own country tomorrow and a health care system that tries its best to ensure we’re still breathing when the new day dawns.

People from the right of politics usually suggest that government and taxation shouldn’t be involved with these things and that we should all just pay for them directly, usually because they can afford to. They see little wrong with the idea that you should flash your credit card before the fireman turns on the water, primarily because they have every intention of owning one of more of the fire stations involved.

However, most of us wouldn’t be able to afford these basics by ourselves, so we all pay into the tax pot and take out of the pot dependant on need. Some of us contribute far more than we take out, some of us take out far more than we put in. Some people think that’s unfair, some think that it creates a more level playing field and a better and happier society, which ultimately benefits us all.

So when people say “Why should I pay for your child’s nursery place?” I ask why they think that I should pay for their children’s school place when I have no kids at school or why I should pay for their hospital stay when I’m perfectly healthy.

Surely, in any sane world, we would all accept that bringing up a young family is a short but financially taxing period in any couple’s lives and that is makes sense to help them out through these few, short, years? I think this is especially important when we’ve gone out of our way to manufacture a society that pretty much insists that women should work and labels those who stay at home to look after their children as somehow “unemployed” at best and “scroungers” at worst.

The last comment you always hear is “If it’s too expensive don’t work”, which once again appears to be the reflections of a person that doesn’t like to get too involved with thinking and who would probably be at the front of the queue accusing you of being a lazy scrounger if you ever did decide to take them up on the offer.

Yes, for some, work is just a mundane, drudgery, that - pay-cheque aside - has few if any redeeming features and if this is your situation I’d suggest that a five year break – if you can afford it – wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. However, for most of us work brings far more than just money and if you’ve just spent the last ten years fighting your way up the corporate ladder you are probably not entirely happy about the prospect of starting all over again in five years time – which is almost certainly what would happen.

If you want to build your career then the most you are realistically going to get away with is a year off work, followed by a few years of part-time work and then back full time until you croak or retire – whichever comes first. And that is if you have a very understanding and appreciative employer!

So it’s not really a question of being able to afford the nursery today, it’s a question of being forced to pay out more than you earn now in order to have any hope of a decent salary in the future.

It just seems an impossible situation; we complain that women are under-represented in the higher echelons of business and government but them give them the choice of look after your children or build a career - try to juggle the two and you’ll most probably be accused of being both a poor mother and a slacker at work.

The age at which children are going to nursery is a side effect of all this. There are now one and two year olds spending most of their time in the care of others. I’d be shocked if the parents of these children had freely opted for this arrangement because I suspect it’s not that good for either the child or the parents. In reality they probably felt they had little or no choice in the matter and that this arrangement was the best of a poor bunch. Sadly, until government and business open their eyes and realise that they bear much of the responsibility for this situation, little is going to change.

I remember in the ‘80’s that crèches where all the rage. People talked about all businesses having one. Ok, your child might still be being looked after by someone else but you would be able to pop in from time to time during the day and were only ever a short run away if there was an emergency. It sounded ideal... right up to the point that business decided that looking after the needs of their workforce was not their responsibility. I dare say some forward thinking companies do provide crèches but I imagine that they are very much in the minority these days.

On a personal level this debate isn’t too much of a concern. We changed our careers deliberately to give us more flexibility and far more time with our boy. We knew there would be a financial hit involved with this move - although in truth we didn’t realise quite how hard a hit it would turn out to be - but we figured it was worth it – which it has been.

We are also fortunate enough to have my mother living just down the road, so if I can’t cover for my wife, she will usually pop over and feed Marty cake and biscuits until we return. As a result Marty didn’t have to go to nursery until he was three, by which time the government was happy to pay for 15 hours a week, which is generally enough for us.

We also live in a fairly rural area so nursery costs here bear little resemblance to those in London, where they could readily be mistaken for a defence budget.

I find this more than a little odd though. Virtually every person I’ve ever seen working in a nursery is either on, or is very close to, the minimum wage. So where is all this money going to?

Is there a nursery mogul somewhere, sipping pina colada on his 50ft yacht and haggling down the phone in a fiendish attempt to corner the market in Pampers and Calpol?

The Older Parent

Pretty much every year there will be at least one article in the media involving age and parenthood, whether it’s people being too young to have kids, or being too old to have kids.
 

What I find most bizarre about these articles is the eagerness with which people offer their opinions on a matter for which the sentence “What the fuck has it got to do with you?” would appear to be tailor-made. Yet offer them they do.

There was an article a few years ago about a rich elderly lady who became pregnant at the grand old age of 60 something. As a result the Radio 5 phone-in was alive with indignation and phrases like “It’s disgusting!” and “It’s against nature!” were being bandied about with venomous delight.

I haven’t got a problem with people having opinions on things like this, I just find it odd that they should. After all what effect will it have on “Mrs Angry from Tunbridge Wells” if a 60 year old has a child?

Are they jealous? I can’t see why they would be. Are they concerned for the child? Again, why? They have a rich parent who has all the time in the world for them and has a reasonably good chance of still being around and compos mentis when they’re ready to fly the nest. Is it an ideal age to have kids? Maybe not... but I think it’s a better age than many seem to think.

As you might have already guessed I was getting on a bit when my son was born, not dramatically so but 48 wasn’t an age I’d have picked if offered the choice. That said, I’m not sure what age I would have picked. 

According to the ‘experts’ we should all be procreating in our 20’s when all our biological bits and bob’s are at their prime. Which would be fine if parenthood was just about biology but realistically that only covers the first 9 months, after the birth it settles back and takes a back seat, only being wheeled out for special occasions such as when relatives gather together to dissect your children – he’s got his father’s eyes, his mother’s smile, his aunt’s elbows etc, or for when your offspring are being particularly exasperating: “Oh my God! He’s sooo like his bloody father!”

No, opting to become a parent just because you’re currently fertile would be like getting a tattoo just because you’re particularly drunk, which of course happens.... but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

The usual arguments against having a child later on in life are a bit limp to be honest. “How will you ever keep up with him?” Is one. To which the answer is “He is 3 ft tall and I’m 50 as opposed to dead!”

Of course he’ll be quicker than me one day, but that’s the natural order of things. I could beat my dad over a mile by the time I was 12 and he was 36. I dare say Marty might be able to make this breakthrough slightly earlier but it’s hardly going to be a drama when he does. And of course this all presupposes that people in their 20’s are fit and healthy and studiously steer clear of Greggs because they wish to beat their eight year old at the egg-and-spoon race the next morning.

Another argument is that the older parent will be dead before their child has flown the nest. If you push it too extremes this is a possibility but sadly none of us know how long we’re going to be here for so it’s hardly worth worrying about. The truth of the matter is that kids cope with the death of a parent much better than they do with their parents divorcing. So, logically at least, we should all be delaying children until we're really sure we're in a solid marriage, even if that does mean you're getting on a bit when they finally arrive. Sadly, I suspect the strength of a marriage isn't much easier to predict than life expectancy - we all know at least someone who we expected to be divorced by the end of the reception and who are still happily married, then others who appeared to be soul-mates but were on the phone to their lawyers before the honeymoon had even finished.

To my mind, fertility aside, most of the requirements for being a decent parent develop with age, although I’m not sure if this isn’t a chicken and egg scenario. For example, most people are far more patient in later life, but is this the effect of age or the effect of having children? I am certainly more patient than I ever was in my 20’s but I’m probably far more patient than I was just 4 years ago, which is hardly a surprise when you discover that impatience calms down small children in much the same way as petrol calms down small fires. No, taking a deep breath, counting to 10 and then screaming “Oh My God! Is that a steam train?” works much, much, better.

But what about other vital parenting commodities, like time? I guess the only thing you can say with any certainly about time is that it seems to vanish the moment the kids arrive. It’s quite shocking really! I used to have loads of it now I can’t find any of it at all! I’m only writing this because Leanne has taken my son out to see Santa and it’s another 5 minutes before the potatoes need to go in the oven - and as you can see from the posting date of this Blog, that didn't really work.

Time really is essential to parenting; Kids demand it, lots of it, and life can turn quite nightmarish if you don’t set aside enough of it. The problem is that you aren’t setting aside time for yourself – which I used to find quite easy - you’re setting it aside for your kids and I suspect people are more likely to do this when they are older. Not because age bestows upon you some sort of saintly benevolence but just because you’re more likely to have done most of the things you wanted to do for yourself and are now more inclined to do things for others, especially if the other in question is small, cute and entertaining.

In short, I think being a parent is easier when you’ve done everything you want to do for yourself and have got bored with the idea of eight hours sleep.