Diary of a Dad Aged 50¾

Welcome! Statistics show that for one reason or another, parents are having children older and this is certainly true in our case.

Meet the boys; Gino aged 13 and Jaden aged eight plus Jo (my long suffering but extremely patient wife—also 50¾!). Both boys are completely different and the difference shows day by day.

So, these articles will take a regular look at being an elder parent and the trails and tribulations of having children at that age... plus the fun of a... TEENAGER!

We live in a rural area about 30 miles from London which is well covered by public transport. Shops, cinemas, swimming pools etc. are all fairly close which means we can do things as a family, like go to the shops, have a coffee and walk the dog. For this meet, Dougal, a little white licking bundle of fluff that loves a lap and follows Jo or myself around the house! Jaden, Dougal can take or leave but Gino, for Dougal he is the one to avoid. The constant wind up, picking up, chasing him around the house, being too rough all those things where the words are ‘he’s not a toy, put him down!’

Let’s get to it…

It’s Sunday, and the issue? The clocks have changed by going back an hour. Now let’s start with this in principle. According to my good friend Mr. Google (other A.I. friends are available but they really are either losing your data or giving rubbish responses) this was done for:

1. Farmers to give extra light in the morning. Question one, apart from cattle farmers who else do you see on the fields at 6am in the middle of November? Now with my job I have travelled the lengths of the UK motorway system (that is a different entry for another time) and I have never seen a tractor on the move. In fact, the only thing evident is the poor frozen soaked scarecrow plus livestock so in this day of halogen bulbs, batteries, touches etc it is easily resolved.
2. Children’s safety when going to and from school. Now apart from those children living in areas so rural that they have to get up so early in the morning before they have gone to bed the night before, this doesn’t apply. Also, in lots of rural and even more non-rural the 4 x 4 people carriers also have headlights to drop the children off at the school gates some ½ mile from the front door of home.

The reason for highlighting the change in the hour is to personally thank the individual that came up with this idea for every parent affected by this. Here are the delightful knock-on effects:

1. No one gets the additional hour in the form of sleep, tell any child from birth to 15 (the approx. age of the deep pit of sleep) to stay in bed an extra hour and you’d be better off hiring a window cleaner for a submarine! All that happens is that the day with the extra hour starts with a cold glow of appreciation for being woken up early, when the night before you dreamt of that lay in!
2. All day long you are changing clocks, that you thought you had done first thing in the morning (my money is that it will be the car dashboard that’s the one!)
3. As you go through the day the question is asked what is the real time now? This leads to you having to stop doing what you’re doing to then calculate, adding no value as the current time is the current time and please just look at one of the many clocks I changed this morning.
4. After being up early, the normal early nip to the shops is met with other similar parents all there because they have also been woken early. You can see it in their eyes and forced family smiles.
5. The night before you change a couple of the clocks in the children’s bedroom, but they’re so confused, see point 1 above.
6. The dog’s body-clock goes more haywire than normal and starts asking for food from 3 pm, doing everything in his power to get your attention to feed him!

The question is then, as this happens every year, what is the answer?

There isn’t one, just a grim dose of reality that the one extra hour of lay in that you crave will not happen, unless you want to be cunning. This involves at least three weeks before arranging to pack them off on the Saturday night of the change to stay with family so you benefit. They will not and this is why you arrange it at least three weeks before, so no connection is made.

The great news is, you have almost twelve months to plan this – get it on next year’s calendar now. “Okay Google, put a diary entry in for 25 September next year, to arrange for the children to be away when the clocks change……”

Then the countdown starts for that lay in!