THE DAD BEAT

Harry de Quetteville’s tales from the fatherhood front line

When, I want to know, do they arrange it? Do they practise? Is it that moment I hear chuntering coming from their bedroom after lights out, but the lure of the gin is too strong to intervene? Must be.

For all the evidence is that it is an exquisitely planned and executed arrangement; a delicate, finely tuned mechanism – to produce, not Swiss watches, but perfectly timed, intricately synchronised meltdowns.

“You never actually own a massive ear-splitting tantrum,” they seem to say. “You merely pass it to the next generation.”

It’s the end of a long term. Clearly the boys, shattered by social and scholarly exertions, recognise they cannot possibly sustain the quality of fight, complaint and perceived injustice required to test their parents – to their own very high standards – every single moment of the day.

So quite rightly, quite wisely, they operate a shift system. Even as one of them bellows his soul out, probing the limits of the human ear drum with pitch and ferocity, the other will be relaxing –