THE DAD BEAT

Harry de Quetteville’s tales from the fatherhood front line

Our morning routine has changed. I have more or less taken up residence in the loft. Not, I hasten to add, because Beloved has banished me. Not yet. No, I creep around in the dust under the eaves like some senile bat because the boiler is on the blink. Literally. Little lights wink out, signalling a fault. Every day a different one. We may have taken down the Christmas tree, but another display continues, unseen, in the attic murk.

From my eyrie I tune into my family downstairs. It’s a different perspective. I feel like a BBC sound recorder in a David Attenborough documentary, concealed for six months in a Siberian hide, cramped and freezing. There’s the faraway “whu-ump” of the monsters sprinting into each other; then there’s Beloved, coaxing the boys to eat their cereal, brush their teeth, wipe their faces, put their coats on, pick up their school bags…

All it needs is a breathy voice-over: “Here in the wilds of south-east London, a mother brings her two young out into the world. To survive, they need one more thing… shoes.”