Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me

Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me
Tim Dowling

Written with self-excoriating candour and the driest humour, comes a book about being a dad from one of our best loved journalists.“For me the hardest task of fatherhood was always the oppressive obligation to lead by example. My sons have been present on countless occasions when I have, as we say in my homeland, completely lost my shit. During these stressful moments I have often wished to turn to them as a judge might to a jury and say, “Please strike the next few minutes from the record”, but many of those instances are chronicled in these pages. It’s not because I’m any less ashamed now; it’s because if I left them out there wouldn’t be enough for a book.Perhaps this is my life’s true purpose: maybe I’m here to teach my sons that self-esteem comes and goes – it can get rolled right out of you at short notice – but that you still can get by in life without any, as long as you don’t want to be a contestant on The Apprentice. That, at least, is my experience. And for what it’s worth, my example.”

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COPYRIGHT (#u3f909afe-96f8-53bb-be69-2d1d68c0739b)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © Tim Dowling 2017

Cover photograph © Plainpicture/Blend Images/Kidstock

Portions of this book have appeared in Tim Dowling’s Weekend column in the Guardian between 2007 and 2015

Tim Dowling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007527717

Ebook edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780007527700

Version: 2018-07-23

DEDICATION (#u3f909afe-96f8-53bb-be69-2d1d68c0739b)

To my sons, Barnaby, Johnnie and Will

– if you’re reading this, call me.

CONTENTS

Cover (#u87a2d686-b294-523b-a603-aa26927025ed)

Title Page (#ua8c71c01-8757-5e4c-94d5-023673abc767)

Copyright (#u30e648a7-3d53-5838-848f-9c74e0004cc2)

Dedication (#uc3e27af5-2e0f-5ffd-941c-c8fae316958c)

Introduction (#u96475bc4-5d75-506d-a170-0c62b6d4232a)

Chapter One (#u32a56003-02fb-59ec-acfb-8fc48340b654)

Chapter Two (#uf908f23b-5da1-5a07-a99e-5628ee0c05f4)

Chapter Three (#ub384ced0-c9af-5e2e-8e1c-9c94c02962b3)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Conclusion (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Tim Dowling (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#u3f909afe-96f8-53bb-be69-2d1d68c0739b)

I am sitting at a boardroom table in the offices of a PR company, interviewing an ex-Apprentice contestant called Raef. Though he was booted off the show in week nine, after Alan Sugar dismissed him as ‘a lot of hot air’, Raef remains possessed of an unshakeable self-belief. I find this irritating, and I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not Raef’s fault he believes in himself. It’s probably something to do with the way he was raised.

Raef is in the middle of a digressive burst of false modesty, which, I think to myself, is probably the only kind of modesty he has ever known. As he speaks I flip through my reporter’s notepad, looking for a question I may have scribbled down earlier and forgotten about, a question searching and incisive enough to pierce Raef’s shiny carapace of confidence. Instead, I find a page on which one of my children has written ‘DAD YOU SUCK’ in large block capitals, using a marker pen.

When I get home an hour later, there is a new Personal Power newsletter in my email inbox. I’ve been receiving these regular motivational updates from an internet life coach ever since I signed up for an online course while writing a newspaper feature about life coaching. This was months ago, but I don’t know how to make the emails stop. These days I rarely read beyond the subject line, which usually says something like, ‘Hi Tim – Self-Confidence Is A Magic Key’ or, ‘Hi Tim – Happiness Is All Around You If You Look’.

This latest newsletter is headed, ‘Hi Tim – How Would It Feel If You Knew Why You Were Here?’ and goes on to detail a prolonged exercise in soul-searching that is supposed to end with you receiving a short, secret phrase that sums up your reason for being on earth. I think about my life’s true purpose for a bit, but I can’t come up with a secret phrase better than ‘DAD YOU SUCK’.