I’ve now just about reached that delightful stage in life where you’re no longer exposed to the horrors of other people’s children. This is because my friends’ offspring are mostly either safely away at university or virtually invisible in some far-off room staring at a screen, appearing only briefly to grunt some cursory greeting as they collect their food or drink before retiring once more to their virtual teenworld.
But just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, I’ve discovered that it isn’t, actually, because my friends have started to replace their vanishing children with something much, much worse: their stupid bloody annoying dogs.
Like children, dogs are the litmus test for all your friends’ worst weaknesses. You think your friends are normal and sensible, with the same values as you — which is why they’re your friends. But when you see them with their children or their dogs, it cruelly, in some cases almost fatally, exposes the irredeemably vast gulf that exists between their way of doing things and yours.
This happened, I remember, with our once bestest of best friends Bob and Livia (names changed to protect the guilty). Being left-wing bohemians, Bob and Livia didn’t believe in fascistic stuff like bedtimes or indeed regular mealtimes. We very much did. Though today I’m about as laissez-faire a dad as you could ever meet, in the early days I was so strict that the Fawn used to call me Dr Mengele. Probably I’d read in some book that routines are important, so I cleaved to them religiously.
And it worked. From impressively early on, our kids were sleeping through the night, leaving the evenings free when we went to stay in the country with Bob and Livia to enjoy some much needed downtime, smoking dope and listening to Portishead and Tricky.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in