So when Alf and I have pulled on our cycle helmets and high-vis jackets (we like to give the 4×4s a bright and easy target) and step outside to mount the bike, a lovely calm feeling descends on us. It’s our moment …
But most mornings as we get on the bike, Alf looks up at me and says, ‘What shall we play, Dad?’ And I look back at him and I think, ‘Why don’t you just fuck off? It’s eight o’clock in the morning. I’m a comedian; technically I don’t have to be up for another thirteen hours. I’m already cycling you to school. What do you mean, what shall we play? I don’t have a game in me yet. If at all.’
I’d hate for anyone to know this about me and think I’m trying to portray myself as some sort of cool, hard-hearted, uncaring thug. ‘Yeah, look at me, I’m so cool I barely love my kids.’ That’s not it. Not at all. I’m trying to explain this stuff for exactly the opposite reason. This sort of stuff, these thoughts and fears, kill me. They make me feel alone and I wonder how much worse I am than anyone else. What sort of man am I? What sort of father? I want to be able to do everything my son wants of me but sometimes I’m not up to it. Even when I am it’s not for long. I can’t keep it going because it’s hard and I’m sometimes an arsehole.
Alfie’s imagination sparks the moment he wakes up. I’m not like that; I’m not sure I ever was. Some time in the middle of the afternoon I may begin to have a thought, depending on the quality of the cheese board at lunchtime. Not so for Alf. The moment he opens his eyes in the morning, bang, his brain fires with a million disconnected thoughts. ‘There’s more clouds in the sky than there were yesterday, I know because even though the curtains are drawn I can see the light coming in. Why does Scooby Doo change shape when Scrappy’s around? You’re my father, you’re hairier than me and yet we’re still related. Can Bakugan fly? In Kasmania they have their own language. I am a Yenidushi. Where do duvets come from? Why is that bunk above me? What stops me from flying? If I eat that clock, will I tick? What is ham? Can I have Chocoflakes for breakfast even though it’s not the weekend? If not, why not? What game shall we play?’
Where does it come from? I’m still asleep when this process begins for Alf. I wake up and there he is asking all of that and more. It’s like opening your eyes and having the internet be sick on your head. I want to join in with him. I want to play the game, but he’s too fast. It’s like playing tag with Usain Bolt. I’m outplayed and I feel old.
Some days when we get on the bike, he says, ‘Let’s play Transformers, who do you want to be?’ And I say, ‘I’ll be Optimus Prime.’ And he says, ‘You can’t be Optimus Prime, you were Optimus Prime yesterday.’ Then I have to conceal from my eight-year-old son that I don’t know any other Transformers. At any time of day. Let alone at eight o’clock in the morning.
I was demoted a little while ago. We were playing Power Rangers when we left the house on the bike. Alfie was in charge of casting, he always is, and I was given the role of Red Ranger. I am on the front of the bike so it felt right. Now Red Ranger is something of a leader amongst the Rangers, I am confidently informed. I liked my position. When we reached the top of the first hill, a little voice from behind me said, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m going to have to make you Blue Ranger. I don’t think Red Ranger would sweat that much.’
That’s how my day began. With a demotion on the basis that Red Ranger doesn’t breathe as heavily as I do. That is tremendously disappointing before breakfast. And then, with my Ranger status only recently degraded, I was informed from the rear seat that we were being attacked by vulture droids. Again! It’s happened twice this month. I’ve written to my MP about it. The vulture droids are out of control in Wandsworth. Alf’s ability to immerse himself in the game and dream up enemies and solutions to their dire schemes is masterful. Vulture droids are nasty little sods too. With all the sincerity of Captain Kirk I heard from the bridge, ‘We’re being attacked by vulture droids, Blue Ranger, what shall we do?’ Alf’s stopped pedalling by now as he’s far too involved in repelling various malevolent space beasties to also use his legs. So I heave the two of us up yet another incline, trying not to pant in case there’s a Ranger rank below Blue, and wonder how I can match the intensity of the narrative. I don’t want to let him down. ‘I know,’ I say with a determined and confident Blue Rangerish air, ‘I’ll sound the sonic ping.’ I use my thumb to bend back the plastic clapper and release it the full four millimetres to ping the tiny metal bell on my handlebar. ‘Ping.’ It rings out with all the sonorous power of a mouse fart. I feel absolutely pathetic. It was all I had … the sonic ping.
It was a full five minutes before we reached a set of traffic lights I was willing to stop at. The game seemed to have lost some of its edge since the vulture droids incident. I turned around to see Alfie, perched on the bike behind me. With a blank, exasperated face he simply asked, ‘The sonic ping? Really?’ You’ve never seen a child look more deflated. It’s like I’d bought him an ice cream, showed it to him, held it in front of his mouth and then flung it into the bushes.
I take advantage of the kids as well. I don’t mean to, but I do, all the time. Most parents will know this already. It’s a universal scientific truth that your children will do anything for you, and I mean anything. As long as you say, ‘I’ll time you.’ It’s not a good thing to know. With great power comes great responsibility and we have abused that power. It’s dreadful and I do it all the time. It begins innocently enough. You say, ‘Put your shoes on.’ They say, ‘No.’ You say, ‘I’ll time you.’ And they do it quickly, in silence and without distraction. In that instant you realize you don’t have children any more. Not if you don’t want to. No, you have house slaves. My kids will do anything if I time them. It’s exploitation of the highest order. If I’m feeling particularly lazy or tired, that’s when it comes into its own. For example, if the remote control for the telly is at the other end of the sofa from where I’ve flopped down, I’d think very little of bellowing through the rest of the house, ‘Alf! Get the remote for your dad, would you?’ If there’s no reply or some resistance, I add the crucial catalytic converter, ‘I’ll time you!’ and lo and behold my son is Dash from The Incredibles. Whooooosh! And the remote is in my hand. As if that wasn’t exploitative enough, he then stands there, panting and with eyes wide open and asks, ‘Well, how fast?’ That’s not a question I can answer as I don’t wear a watch. Such is my betrayal. He will bring me a book from two storeys up if I time him. The situation is out of control. Last week the two of them reroofed the house. It’s not good.
Children are so amazing; not just my children, all children. A new child is like a brand new Rubik’s Cube just waiting to get fucked up. So briefly they are perfect and simple and then over time they are twisted and turned by the passing hands of each encounter into an unsolvable, messy puzzle. With enough time, therapy and money you might get one or two sides back to how they were, but with each piece you move, another seems to get further from where it should be – for the most part it’s a gaudy jumble of colours with no memory or understanding of how it all got there.
I heard two stories about children and greatly enjoyed them both. One concerns a theologian, a priest who had devoted his entire life to the study of his particular religious text. Each day he immersed himself in the Bible to become closer to God and to make sense of the world around him. Then one day he met a little girl and she asked him a question. She said, ‘Why should I ask God to make me good when I want to be naughty?’ And the priest said … nothing. Not a word. Because there was nothing to say. She’d understood the nature of free will. In a way that an entire life of biblical study had never revealed to him. So do you know what he did? He left the priesthood. I like that. She’d defeated him with her mind because she was a child and they’re good at that stuff. When you think how many children have had their lives ruined, their childhoods taken away by someone in the church, it’s delightful to consider that she got one of them back. Sure, it’s only one priest right now, only one child with one question, but you wa
it until that information spreads. You wait until the power of that level of philosophical enquiry falls into the hands of other children. Wait until it falls into the hands of a child who out of nowhere and for seemingly no reason is willing to punch the air and demand, ‘Who’s with me?’ Why, they could bring down the entire church. Probably quite quickly if I timed them.
The other story came from the wonderful Ken Robinson TED talk on education. It’s the story of a little girl doodling in a maths lesson. Her teacher was annoyed because she wasn’t getting on with the subject in question. She went over and asked, ‘What are you drawing there?’ The little girl looked up and said, ‘I’m drawing God.’ The teacher replied, ‘You can’t draw God. No one knows what God looks like.’ So the little girl paused for only the briefest of moments and as if the answer were the most obvious thing in the world she nodded and said, ‘Well, I haven’t finished it yet.’ Isn’t that perfect? The pure beautiful wisdom of the child’s mind. Because before we mess with it, a child can have God any way she wants. Any size, any colour, any shape. No politics, no bigotry, no rules, laws or judgements. No bullshit imposed upon it. God any way you like Him. Ha! Brilliant.
Atheist or not, I think that’s inspiring. I’m Godfather to several children. I’m Godfather rather than ‘secular sponsor’, because I never want to be the biggest cock in the room. My friend’s Christian and she said, ‘Will you be Godfather to our daughter?’ I said, ‘I’d be absolutely delighted, of course. I’d be over the moon.’ Obviously I can’t offer a great deal in religious or theological guidance as such, but as a comedian I do know some cracking good knob gags so I hope that might balance it out a bit. I suppose I’m offering myself up as Oddfather rather than Godfather really. I explained that it is very important to me not to lie in church. I don’t think people should lie in church. I’ll debate theology endlessly with anyone who wishes to discuss it and many who don’t. I’ll argue and sometimes become quite indignant in defence of reason but I don’t think you should lie in church. The atheist would argue that ‘they’ do it all the time, but ‘they’ are free to. It’s ‘their’ church. It’s ‘their’ place. To be honest, I wish ‘they’d’ stay in there more often. I believe the principle is important – you shouldn’t lie in church. Unless you’re getting married, in which case do anything to secure that dream venue.
So I explained that as a friend and Godfather I would come to the church to watch my Goddaughter have tap water dribbled on her head and become a child of Christ, but I was clear that I wouldn’t make any commitment to shove her in the direction of a God who doesn’t much like little girls anyway. Unfortunately, the message didn’t get through to the beardy sandally man running the christening. I’m not using a lazy Christian stereotype when I say beardy sandally man. Honestly, he was both beardy and sandally. As was his wife. In fact, I’m doing him a favour by not mentioning the beige socks he wore inside the sandals. This was in a church that offers the Alpha Course. The Alpha Course is like circuit-training for Christians. You go in deep and come out the other side with your love of God and Jesus just as sure and strong as your certainty that there are no questions to answer with regard to homophobia, misogyny or morality. Trust me when I tell you that a fair few of the congregation at this christening were somewhat ‘out there’. One of them was either speaking in tongues or had the worst speech impediment since George VI shut his lips in a door on a particularly stressful day of speech-making. The Alpha Course did a huge advertising campaign a little while ago. It was all over the UK. It was a colossal and well-funded poster campaign asking, ‘Is there a God?’, then there were tick boxes beneath offering A. Yes. B. No or C. Probably. Someone at Wandsworth station had put a big tick in the ‘No’ box. I can’t imagine who it was … (I timed him – he did it in under 4 seconds. He’s a good lad).
The Godparents were taken to the front of the church and expected to answer questions. A microphone was put in front of my face and I was asked, ‘Do you renounce the devil?’ I replied that I tend not to renounce people I’ve never met. With the exception of Jeremy Clarkson, obviously. I think from the bit of paper we were handed that the answer was supposed to be, ‘Yes, I renounce the devil, I turn to Christ.’ And as we said it we were supposed to rotate through 180 degrees. Something any actor will tell you is best avoided. Speak, then move, or move, then speak; rarely should you attempt both at once, that’s how people get hurt. Laurence Olivier once moved and spoke at the same time and had to be carried off the stage at the RSC by a stagehand and Dame Sybil Thorndike. But our instructions were clear: face the back of the church and proclaim, ‘I renounce the devil, I turn to Christ,’ and lunge forward. From the diagram I think it’s safe to assume that Christ was in the front part of the church and the devil was skulking at the back. Why they let him in at all I don’t know. You’d think of all places that the devil might be on the not-welcome list at the door of most churches. There should be a verger or usher asking the question, ‘Are you with devil or with Christ? Devils on the left, agnostics by the font.’ It was all very awkward, I wasn’t sure what to say. Fortunately no one was looking at me because my wife’s head was spinning around and vomit was flying out of her mouth. It happens every time we go in a church. We must get it looked at.
My children had been whisked off upstairs to play with little Christian toys. Little Jesuses, or Jesi, I don’t know how you pluralize Jesus or indeed if you should at all. I was very uncomfortable with the whole situation. I didn’t want to let my friend down. She’s Christian, she’s delightful and I love her. I panicked and we left in an awkward and embarrassed hurry. Not what I’d wanted at all. I wanted to be there to support my friend but not to lie in church. Perhaps I was expecting too much. In any case it’s not my place of worship and I don’t get to demand what happens in there.
A while later Alfie and I were cycling past the same church and rather pleasingly he spotted it and said, ‘Oh, there’s that church with those funny people in.’ I thought about it. He was six at the time and I thought, well, now’s as good a time as any, he goes to a secular school. So I started the conversation. I said, ‘Yeah, that was a strange day, wasn’t it?’ He said, ‘Why strange?’ I said, ‘Well, it was strange for Daddy because I don’t believe in God.’ And Alf, who was just six and goes to a secular school, said, ‘You have to believe in God, Dad, or he’ll send another flood like he did to Noah.’ Wow! That conversation did not go as I’d planned. ‘Who’s with me?’ Hopefully no one.
Who was it, I wonder, who put that idea into my beautiful six-year-old boy’s head? The thumbkey kid. Who the hell was it who thought it was OK to tell a child that if his daddy didn’t believe then God would punish everyone on Earth with death by drowning? And God so loved His creation that if one man with serious reservations in Wandsworth dared not to sign up for wholesale bullying and intolerance, then every single one of us must be killed. Murdered in a flood. Perhaps not the people in Scotland – it really is very hilly and they’re used to heavy rain but all the rest of us – killed by a vengeful and jealous God. Well, I say all the rest of us, I wouldn’t drown, I’ve got an ark. They’ve been giving them away with the Daily Mail; you get a cubit a week and collect the set to give ‘right thinking’ people a chance to survive when the ‘big rain’ comes to wash the streets clean.
I was appalled when Alfie said that to me. I wouldn’t let him watch the film of the great flood. It’s much too violent and horrific for a child. And yet there are toy arks for kids to play with and countless Christian nursery schools called ‘Noah’s Ark’ and the story is celebrated. Of course, we make the flood story OK for our kids by getting them to sing the ‘Hurrah Hurrah’ song. ‘Oh! The animals went in two by two. Hurrah! Hurrah!’ In what respect is ‘hurrah’ the right choice of word here, for this indiscriminate act of homicidal brutality? It isn’t. You wouldn’t stand on a beach in Thailand on Boxing Day asking who wants to commemorate the devastating tsunami with a couple of rounds of the ‘Hurrah Hurrah’ song. No, because it’
s not fucking appropriate, is it?
It happens six pages in. The flood. Six pages into the Bible. God had barely even begun and in one fell swoop, one petulant, jealous strop, he killed everything. I had misremembered the flood story. I’d thought it came about halfway through the Old Testament. God made man and then man made focus groups and then quangos, and then Injury Lawyers For You, and God just lost it. Fair enough. Who wouldn’t go ape-shit in the face of that disaster and bellow, ‘No, this is not what I intended. Today I will murder everything. Today I play Old Testament Grand Theft Auto and I’m on a spree, bitches!’ He killed everything apart from Noah, his wife, their children and two each of all the animals. All the people killed. All the animals killed. All the bugs, the plants, everything. Not the fish, though, they’d done nothing wrong. Though I think we’re getting our revenge on the fish now, aren’t we? If God doesn’t get ’em, we will. Jesus was an occasional fisherman and he could make a couple of fish and a few bread rolls go a very long way (he was a regular Jamie Oliver), he even walked on water, but we have satellite tracking and nets over a mile long and think nothing of throwing two-thirds of dead catch back into the sea. Booya! Take that, creator/devastator God.
The flood story focuses very firmly on those who survived in Noah’s ark. But picture for a moment the scene for everyone else. Children ripped from their mother’s arms by the force of the water. Black fetid water rising with the bodies of the judged bobbing, bloated, on the tide. Waves of horrific, ‘biblical’ proportions crashing through communities, ripping lovers apart and dashing the helpless limbs of terrified people and animals against rocks, trees and whatever still stood of the humble dwellings of the faithless. God killed everything. Monkey, buffalo, rhino, stoat, badger, lion, giraffe, the lot. All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. Dead. Especially the bloody bastard giraffe. God hates giraffes, He always has. He did the plans for them in imperial and then built them in metric. They were never supposed to be that tall. It’s always pissed Him off. That’s why He chose a flood. So that the giraffe would be last to go. The creature could watch with its big teary-looking eyes as all around the water creeps its way up his long, spotty, lolloping neck. Aware from the pleading bleats and mewls of those around him of the full horror of what awaits when the great flood closes over his head. ‘Take that, giraffe, you smug, gangly twat,’ sayeth the Lord. I’m paraphrasing from the original text obviously. Most of the really nasty stuff God muttered as he watched the carnival of kill is in the Dead Sea Scrolls; we’re not allowed to see it.
God Collar Page 23