Everybody Needs Some Time On Their Own
Or do they?
This is the latest chapter of my book The Flagging Dad, which I’m serialising on Thursdays.
Louise and I have started a new arrangement where one morning or afternoon per week, we are free to do as we please. No spouse, no children, no chores. On my first go, I tried to do some writing but, with inspiration not forthcoming, found myself mindlessly scrolling the internet.
‘Daddy, can we play?’ Joshua asked.
‘Not now, son. Daddy’s busy,’ I said, studying Ben Affleck’s Personal Life section on Wikipedia. Before I knew it, my time had ebbed away and, unfulfilled, I was tagged back into being an active husband and father.
On my second attempt, I knew the key to making the most of my brief holiday from domestic life was to get out of the house, and decided to drive down to the canal and go for a jog. I got in the car, turned the radio on considerably louder than Louise likes, took a large gulp of Lucozade and felt invigorated. The good times, though, did not last.
I reversed straight into the wall outside our house.
From the moment I inexplicably drove a quad bike into a bollard on a teenage holiday in Malia, I knew I was destined to be a bad driver, and I have, over the years, proven myself spectacularly right. Through the rear-view mirror, I looked at the pile of stones and debris on the drive, panicked and fled the scene.
After driving a mile down the road, heart pounding, I saw sense and drove back to check the extent of the damage. Thankfully, the scratch was not too bad, a mere addition to a collection of previous scrapes from the time I drove into a static bus.
I rebuilt the wall to a passable standard before setting off again and finally made it to the canal where I pounded along the path in scything rain while fretting over the car, the wall, and Louise’s likely reaction.
Perhaps I should lower my ambitions next time and just take a long bath?
With or without children, getting out of the house at least once a day is essential, isn’t it? If it gets past lunchtime and we haven’t left, the tension is palpable. I often feel I am one more, ‘What’s that? Why?’ away from standing in the back garden and screaming into the sky.
Or getting in the car and ploughing into a wall.
Over the past few months, we have pushed the pram along every street within a two-mile radius of our home (no ginnel surprises me anymore) and clocked every park, pond, field and woods in North Leeds multiple times. There isn’t a blade of grass I have left untouched at Golden Acre Park where I feel I know the swans on a personal level.
On pulling into the car park a couple of days ago, Joshua started shouting.
‘No! Not this park again! So boring, Daddy!’
I deceived him by parking in the hotel across the road and heading in a different entrance. It worked this once, but I fear he will soon be on to me.
At weekends, we liven things up with daytrips to new places. There are plenty of interesting family-friendly places within an hour’s drive of Leeds if you just Google it. Who knew?
A new favourite is Piglets Adventure Farm near York, although our trip was not entirely plain sailing. When we arrived, it was lashing it down, so we took refuge in a giant tent where Jacob whacked Louise’s coffee onto the floor then, in the melee that followed, Joshua darted outside, out of sight. Gladly, Jacob did not burn himself and, after being that guy - the man shouting a child’s name while jogging - we found Joshua sitting in a tractor.
Despite my low-level resentment that Louise had not bought a new coffee but kept asking for sips of mine, the day improved markedly, and we had fun on a fairy trail, then, in a bizarre and slightly too loud activity, fired a swede out of a vegetable cannon.
Joshua had been eyeing up the piglet train all day and, being reckless, rule-breaking parents, we permitted him to go on it despite it being for age three and above. Seconds after the train departed its station, he decided he HATED it, and what followed was a heart-breaking five minutes as we watched him bawling his eyes out in his piglet cart, powerless to help. Gladly, after plying him with two Soreen bars, he was fine.
Louise and I, though, were not fine. Absolutely riddled with guilt.
As is the case with daytrips, by the time we left, everyone was done in. If both children sleep at the same time, car journeys can provide a pleasant bit of respite and a chance to decompress. This is, however, a big if, and on this occasion the stars did not align; Jacob decided to start bawling seconds after Joshua nodded off, which woke him up and irked him no end.
‘Stop crying, baby! Now!’
Louise, who was driving, assured me the answer was to put the song ‘Say Hello to the Sun’. On repeat. In my opinion she disproportionately rates the calming impact of the song but she vehemently disagrees with my argument that the white noise of football crowds on 5Live is an effective baby soother.
I am sure there is a way you can repeat a song on loop on Spotify, but I have not yet figured out how to do it, so every time the song was reaching its conclusion, Louise snapped, ‘Andy!’ and I glumly pressed the back button while the children howled and thrashed in the back. It felt like that scene in True Romance, where the relaxing music is in stark contrast to the chaos unfolding around it.
Joshua nodded off after twenty minutes and 9.5 plays of ‘Say Hello to the Sun’ but Jacob was having none of it and sat, saucer-eyed, occasionally making weird roaring noises. In what seemed like a calculated move, he eventually fell asleep when we were 200 metres away from our house, so we started doing some laps around the local area.
‘All things considered, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’ Louise said as we passed my favourite ginnel. ‘Where shall we go next Sunday?’
‘Next Sunday, you say? You’ll have to count me out, I’m afraid. I’ve pencilled in a long bath.’
*
You can read the next chapter here: Stag Do - by Andy Carter - The Flagging Dad
Thanks for reading this installment of The Flagging Dad! Please do like, share, or comment about your own experiences or anything else you fancy. You might have noticed my last post didn’t allow comments for a while - please be aware this was because I pressed the wrong button and not because I was being antisocial!
Finally, if you’re feeling especially generous, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee below.
Cheers!
I do enjoy reading about Other Parents' Experiences. You're providing a real service here. One of the highlights of my weekend, my birthday actually, was going to the beach, where we sat near a family with three little kids. They were trying to have a picnic. My husband and son wandered off. I watched as the mom become more and more tight-lipped and the demands and squalling reached fever-pitch... and I enjoyed every minute of it.
You perfectly recreate the ‘ambience’ of parenting Andy. And yes to getting out the house, ideally in one piece though.