Sk8 Dad And Tea

“Do you know,” I say, limping across the kitchen, “That when I was your age I’d been making my own way to school on my own for years?”

The girls smile, politely

“Eight, I was. Or maybe even seven. Yes, I’m sure it was seven. And then I used to go out and call for my friends after school, and my mother would tell me to be home in time for tea, and that was it. None of this ‘play-date’ stuff. None of this being ferried around in cars all the time. And none of this being slapped from head to toe with factor-99 suncream the minute the sun came out. You just got burnt, and then you got calamine lotion. Honestly, I don’t know what the world’s coming to, these days. You can’t do anything without people making a big fuss about it and going on all the time about ‘health & safety.’”

I look at them gravely “We are turning into a nation of wimps,” I say.

My wife offers me a cup of tea. Or rather, she says that it would be very nice, and much appreciated, if I were to make a cup of tea for the two of us. I dutifully obey. Sometimes I think they don’t take me altogether seriously, any of them. Sometimes I get the sense from the way that they all look at each other that they’re in on some sort of private joke that I’m not party to. I even have my suspicions about the dog.

Still, they were very kind to me not long before – and not long after my 47th birthday – when I had the unfortunate mishap involving the skateboard. They came to visit me in the hospital every day; and because I couldn’t actually move my legs unaided they went down to the canteen, past the jolly drug dealer in the next bed who’d been involved in the stabbing incident, and they fetched me bars of chocolate and cans of fizzy drink. And they waited patiently outside the curtain while the nice lady doctor with the rubber gloves came to inspect me for internal damage.

Mind you, they were just as kind to me before, when I had the previous unfortunate mishap involving the skateboard, when the doctors had to stick my chin back together with superglue and sticky tape. And the time before that, after which I had to run in the school Fathers’ race with my leg in a plaster cast. All the times, come to think of it.

“Look here,” I say, spooning out the leaves into the teapot, “I just think we all need to take a few more risks in life, that’s all. After all, it never did me any harm.”

Warwick Cairns lives in Windsor, Berkshire, and is the author of About The Size Of It, a serious, but seriously funny book about measuring things.

and How To Live Dangerously