by Tim Dowling
‘It’s midday,’ I say. ‘Are you ever going to get dressed?’
‘I am dressed,’ he says.
I look him over: he’s wearing a dark-green New York Jets onesie.
‘Would you go to the shops dressed like that?’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ he says.
‘Will you go to the shops dressed like that?’
‘No.’
I find the youngest one playing on the Xbox while barking a running commentary into a headset.
‘Can you go to the shops for me?’ I ask.
He pulls the headset to one side. ‘I’m trying to kill these people,’ he says.
‘But I need you to go down to the Tesco Express for some—’
‘You can’t keep sending your children to the Tesco Express,’ he says, ‘just because it’s against your principles.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ I say. ‘It’s not against your principles.’
‘I’m busy,’ he says.
I have actually been in the Tesco Express a number of times since it opened. Eight times, in fact. I always leave feeling like a creature deluded and derided by vanity, partly because I’ve betrayed a principle for the sake of convenience, but mostly because they never have what I want anyway. I invariably promise myself that my most recent visit will be my last.
My children are clearly not in a mood to conspire. I pocket my list, pull on my coat and head down the road.
The Tesco is brightly lit and busy. I know from experience that on a Sunday it’s the only place you can buy a chicken breast within walking distance, but as usual they have none of the other things on my list: no ginger, no coriander, none of the stock cubes I favour. I realize I could pick up all this stuff at the shop over the road, but then I’d have to go in there holding a Tesco bag with two chicken breasts in it.
I am furious with myself, because this has now happened to me nine times in a row and I still haven’t learned my lesson.
I’m standing in front of the chiller cabinet, frowning at their three remaining chicken breasts and grunting audibly in frustration, when I realize I’m attracting stares. As I step back and sidle along the aisle, I feel two sets of eyes following me. Have I been talking to myself, or swearing under my breath?
I suddenly feel as self-conscious as if I were shopping in a New York Jets onesie.
As I turn to scrutinize the shelf behind me, a young man in his twenties steps up and touches my arm. I turn to look at him.
‘Are you Tim Dowling?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘I thought you said you’d never come in here.’
The Hobbit was the first book I ever put down. I was twelve or thirteen. Before that, I had failed to finish a book for many reasons – a lack of application; a gradual dwindling of interest; a lost library copy – but never because I’d decided, on the basis of twenty or thirty pages, that it was rubbish. Up until then, I had never really held an opinion about literature, but now I had a position: I don’t read books where the swords have names. I promised myself I would never make my children read The Hobbit. I might even forbid it.
It is not of my own free will, therefore, that I find myself sitting in a cinema on a Saturday afternoon trying to jam 3D glasses over my regular glasses. I am here because my wife felt able to characterize my reluctance to take the youngest one to see The Hobbit as an example of my failure as a father, and as a man.
‘You never do anything you don’t want to do,’ she says.
‘I mostly do things I don’t want to do,’ I say, ‘but most of those things don’t last three hours.’ The boy looks up at me with his big blue Gollum-eyes. I think of all the fool’s errands I have dragged him on over the years, simply because I wanted company. I book tickets.
Within minutes of the film starting, I have decided that high-frame-rate 3D doesn’t agree with me: there are dark, fogged spots at the edges of my vision and I find the scale confusing. Gandalf looks huge, but he’s surrounded by dwarves and tiny furniture. Perhaps he’s only supposed to be 5 feet 6 inches. They should put a phone box in the corner of the room, to give the viewer some perspective.
As the plot unfolds, all my old objections to the genre resurface in the form of questions. What year is this meant to be? What kind of apples are those? Which way is New York?
I look over at my son with a disapproving smirk. In his 3D glasses he looks exactly like a miniature Kim Jong-un. When I turn back, there is a woman in a huge fur coat and hat standing up two rows in front of me, blocking half the screen. Only when Gandalf speaks to her do I realize she is actually a heavily foregrounded dwarf. I close my eyes.
When we return home many hours later with the ingredients for supper, I feel as if I have been on a quest. ‘Let us cook many things,’ I say to the youngest one. ‘And let us tell many stories, in order to allow this cheesecake sufficient time to defrost.’
‘Whatever,’ he says.
It’s past nine when we finally sit down to eat, but we are, for a Saturday night, uncharacteristically quorate.
‘How was The Hobbit?’ my wife asks.
‘It was actually OK,’ the youngest one says.
‘Are you kidding?’ I say. ‘It was awesome.’
‘Seriously?’ says the oldest one.
‘It was great!’ I say. ‘Rocks fighting each other, people all flying on eagles everywhere.’
‘Should I go see it?’ the middle one asks, narrowing his eyes sceptically.
‘You should go tomorrow,’ I say. ‘The only problem I had is that people speaking Elvish makes me drowsy. I slept through this whole, like, elf board meeting in the middle, but then, when I woke up, there were—’
‘Hang on,’ the middle one says. ‘Are you recommending a film that you fell asleep in?’
‘I fall asleep in most films,’ I say. ‘It’s not necessarily a criticism.’
‘How can they make three whole films out of such a short book?’ the oldest one says.
‘It’s not that short,’ I say.
‘How would you know?’ my wife says. ‘You’ve never read The Hobbit.’
I turn to look at her. ‘You’re goddam right I haven’t,’ I say.
Lessons in primatology 2
Occasionally the younger members of my family raise objections to the way they are portrayed in print, largely in an attempt to extort money from me. I can see that being described as looking ‘exactly like a miniature Kim Jong-un’ merely because you are wearing 3D cinema glasses could be annoying; I just don’t think it’s injurious enough to justify damages to the amount of ten quid. For this reason it has become temporarily necessary to disguise the identities of people appearing on these pages. This safeguard will not, I trust, distort the basic truth of what follows.
So, anyway, my life partner – we’ll call him Sean – is on this fashionable new fasting diet that allows him to eat normally for five days a week, provided he consumes no more than 500 calories on each of the remaining two days. According to Sean, this strict regime has improved his energy levels, if not his mood.
At lunchtime I open the fridge, which is packed with food. I always find it curious that the discipline of eating less invariably requires the purchase of additional food; in this case foods that cannot possibly be combined to exceed 500 calories. I spy a big tub of cottage cheese. I didn’t even know there was still such a thing. I thought we’d all agreed to stop producing it.
Kurt, the youngest of our adopted ex-research chimps, joins me at the open fridge door. He makes the sign for ‘something to eat’, then shakes his head until his ears flap audibly. His meaning is clear: there is nothing to eat.
‘You’re telling me,’ I say, glancing towards Sean, who is sitting at the table reading the paper and eating a packet of Maltesers.
He catches my eye. ‘I fasted yesterday,’ he says.
‘I thought it was two days a week,’ I say.
‘Not in a row,’ he says. ‘You can choose.’
‘So it’s a movable fa
st,’ I say, hilariously.
A brief silence follows. Kurt turns his lips inside out, grabs a banana and leaves the room.
In truth, Sean is at a loose end – his latest ground-breaking study on primate behaviour is behind him, and funding for new research is non-existent. If Sean’s considerable administrative skills cannot find an outlet in the field of primatology, they are brought to bear at home, with occasionally alarming results. Throughout the house I find scraps of paper containing lists of foodstuffs with their calorific values scribbled alongside, and calculations beneath. Innovative recipe books keep dropping through the letterbox.
On the afternoon of the next fast day, I find Sean in the sitting room flicking his finger across the screen of my iPad. Anton, our middle chimp, is watching an FA Cup match.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘Going through all your emails,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Wait, what? You can’t do that.’
‘I think you’ll find I can,’ he says.
‘You won’t find anything,’ I say. ‘I have a different address for incriminating emails.’
Anton makes the sign for ‘shh’.
‘I’m sure you do,’ Sean says, ‘but I’m not looking for that. I’m just checking to see how you’re engaging with the wider world.’
‘And how am I doing?’
‘Not too bad,’ he says. ‘Don’t forget you have that magazine party on Tuesday.’
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘I never RSVP’d to it.’
‘I think you’ll find you have,’ he says.
Kurt turns off the TV in disgust and makes the sign for ‘What is for supper?’
‘You’re on your own,’ Sean says. ‘I’m just having a salad.’
Kurt folds back his ears, grimaces and points at me. It’s a typical example of primate humour. Roughly translated, it means: you’re a salad.
CHAPTER FIVE
During breaks in the school calendar, the drama of family life bleeds into my office hours. Children scream at each other at a time when I normally have the house to myself, and my wife is screaming at me to do something about it. I want to scream back that I am working, but in truth I am trying to buy a secondhand clarinet online and I don’t want to put myself in a position where I might have to give reasons. I don’t really have reasons, just a computer and a credit card.
I go downstairs and, on discovering the source of the dispute between the youngest two, offer a form of mediation.
‘How about if I smash the Xbox up with a hammer?’ I say. ‘How would that be?’
‘Fine!’ the youngest one shrieks. ‘Please do!’
I am momentarily thrown by this response, as I always imagine Solomon must have been when one of his petitioners agreed that, yes, half a baby each sounded about fair. I go farther downstairs, where I find the oldest, still in his pyjamas, looking askance at yet another salad.
‘It’s one of my fasting days,’ his mother says. ‘Feel free to make your own lunch.’ The boy pokes at the salad, and recoils.
‘It’s got avocado in it,’ he says, sneering. ‘And seeds.’
My wife turns to glare at him. ‘I was put on this earth to raise you to the age of eighteen,’ she says. ‘After that, you’re either my friend or my foe. You choose.’
‘I like the seeds,’ I say.
‘What are you doing down here?’ my wife says. ‘I thought you were working.’
‘I just came to see if there was any post,’ I say.
‘No,’ my wife says. ‘It’s Good Friday.’ I retreat back up the stairs, muttering something about it not being a very good Friday for me.
By mid-afternoon I resort to paying the children to go away, peeling off notes so the oldest one can top up his Oyster card enough to get him south of the river, and giving the other two money to buy sweets on the condition that they spend an hour in the park.
On Saturday morning I wake to the sound of the youngest two fighting over the Xbox again. An agreed rota system has broken down, apparently because the online multiplayer experience refuses to conform to a timetable.
‘What if,’ I say, ‘I pulled all the wires out of the Xbox and ran it under the shower? Any use?’
‘I wish you would!’ the youngest shouts.
Saturday is haircut day – a quarterly standing appointment wherein Kelly and Hayley, who used to work in the salon up the road, come to our kitchen to do five haircuts and half a head of lowlights for a bulk price. It takes up a whole morning, and fills the kitchen with hair. After that the middle one embarks on a twin-track project: baking a cake while pausing periodically to bad-mouth Premier League footballers on his blog. The younger one spends the afternoon watching the television and his laptop at the same time. I find it quietly infuriating that neither of them wants to go on the Xbox.
That evening the oldest one returns from south of the river.
‘What are you staring at?’ he says.
‘You missed haircut day,’ I say. ‘And it shows.’ Above our heads I hear chairs being knocked over. My wife pauses the television.
‘They’re fighting over the Xbox,’ she says. ‘Do something.’
I go upstairs. ‘If you don’t stop,’ I tell them, ‘I’m going to take the Xbox down to the street and run it over with the car.’
‘Do it!’ the youngest shrieks. ‘I’m begging you!’
‘Seriously,’ I say, ‘I don’t know how to react to that.’
From time to time we find it necessary to abandon our house during breaks in the school calendar, if only in order to escape the machines that rule our lives. Some people might call this ‘going on holiday’, but for me that’s a deceptive phrase. One might also imagine that time spent in bucolic surroundings would eventually lead to some kind of outbreak of harmony, but that is not my experience. And actually, we tend to bring a lot of our machines with us.
Eventually my wife saw fit to impose a holiday no-screens rule: a ban on the use of laptops, iPhones, tablets or hand-held consoles of any kind before 6 p.m., no matter how awful the weather, for the duration of the so-called break. So what did we do instead? We played games, often of our own devising. I offer an outline of the rules to some of our perennial favourites:
Is It Six Yet? Three or more players. All participants gather round a clock and watch the minute hand creep forward. At any point, a player may shout, ‘Is it six yet?’ even when the clock clearly shows that it’s 11 a.m. If the umpire feels the shouting is too frequent, he may threaten to extend play until 6.30 p.m., or even 7 p.m., although he’s only making a rod for his own back, frankly.
The Break Fast Club A perfect game to while away the hours in rented or borrowed accommodation. On a rainy or unseasonably cold day, players form a ‘club’ and rampage through the house seeing how fast they can break everything. Extra points are awarded for objects of sentimental value, difficult-to-replace items, the cooker, etc.
I Hate You! Player One selects a younger player and charges him with performing a small task or chore – hanging up a towel, perhaps, or retrieving a shoe from the roof. Player Two’s response should be affirmative but non-committal (‘OK’, ‘I will’, ‘I said I will’, ‘I’m just about to’, or some other regional variation), but he must not be put off from his present activity: sitting on the floor tearing an old issue of FourFourTwo into tiny strips. Player One continues to repeat the request until Player Two is moved to shout, ‘I Hate You!’ and run from the room. Once this portion of the game is complete, Player Two is free to take out his anger on the next youngest player. Carries on for five days, like Test cricket.
Galley Slaves Game for two parents. Players sit opposite one another. The first to speak issues a statement along the lines of, ‘I didn’t come on holiday to spend the whole time washing up.’ The second player counters this with something like, ‘I did the washing-up this morning while you were still in bed.’ The first player then says, ‘I’ve cooked five of the last six meals, and I’m sick of it.’ The second player say
s, ‘I feel as if I’ve spent the entire week sweeping up broken glass, and I think I have swine flu.’ This continues until one player starts packing the car.
What Do We Bring To The Party? Two or more families. When all forms of recreation have been exhausted, Player One, in desperation, proposes an impromptu visit to another family who happen to be holidaying nearby. A second player, doubtful of the prospect of a warm welcome, asks, ‘But what do we bring to the party?’ The first player lists such delights as adult conversation, children of the same age, knowledge of the local area, etc., even though the real answer is half a bottle of Pinot Grigio and nits.
The holiday place we retreat to most often is my father-in-law’s cottage in Cornwall. He’s owned it for decades, since my wife was a toddler, and its rusticity is authentic and unremitting: there is no TV, or washing machine, or mains water, or mobile signal, or heating beyond two wood stoves. It is accessed by a long, steep track that makes you think twice about leaving once you’re there. It’s beautiful, and my children have been permitted to inflict all kinds of damage upon it over the years. But it has not always provided a backdrop to our finest moments as a family, or to mine as a father.
Although some of our happiest times have been in Cornwall, our holidays there are still catalogued in our collective memory according to what went wrong: the summer the well ran dry; the time the clutch went; the year of the chimney fire; the winter we arrived to find that mice had eaten the puzzle.
Once it rained so unforgivingly for so long that the house was left standing on a little island surrounded by raging torrents, across which we ferried children and supplies. Some of the supplies didn’t make it. A visiting child, who was clearly traumatized by his stay, later drew a picture of my wife standing waist-high in churning water as shopping bags swept past her, with a balloon emerging from her mouth that said, ‘MY WINE MY WINE.’