Who's the man?

‘The man, or it could be ‘the woman’, represents officialdom. Sometimes he will be in uniform, sometimes not. Sometimes, unbeknown to the children, he doesn’t exist at all.

But I have found the simple act of conjuring up this authoritative and foreboding figure has usually been enough to encourage my boys to fall into line in the park, at a museum, in the cinema queue, anywhere, in fact, outside the confines of their own home.

“Behave - the man is coming,” I’d bark, through gritted teeth, when they started fighting in the soft ball children’s play park.

In the supermarket, when they were larking about, trying to put forbidden foods in the trolley, I’d boom: “Stop that right now, the man is watching you. Look, look, he’s watching.”

“The man is going to be really cross with you if you don’t stop what you’re doing this minute, he’s just round the corner and I think he’s coming this way,” I’d threaten if they so much as touched, or even looked like they might be thinking of touching, any breakable object which didn’t belong to us.

At times, when they were younger, and they felt his looming presence, they would ask: “Who is this man anyway? And why is he always following us? How does he always know where we are and what we’re doing?”

And so, this all-knowing, all-seeing figure ended up having almost mythical status in our family life over the years.

So it is little wonder that 19-year-old Patrick, who has been working as a car park attendant at a local tourist attraction before heading back to university this week, looked so thrilled when he came home to tell me his big news.

“Guess what, Mum?” he said, beaming, making  his dramatic pronouncement:  “I am now ‘the man’.”

A young mum, whose son had dropped his ice lolly wrapper and refused to pick it up, had pointed to Patrick in his high-vis jacket: “You must put that in the bin or the man will be cross,” she said.

Patrick, who had lived in awe, and occasionally terror, of ‘the man’ for so many years, was thrilled.

It seems like just the day before yesterday he was that little boy, hanging onto my every word, wary of being pulled up in public for misbehaving. Now, suddenly, he is ‘the man’.

So what tactic can I resort to when he falls out of line now?

PATRICK needed some bits and pieces for the new student house he is moving into this term, after living in halls last year.

Since he’s managed to lose the new pots, pans, cutlery and plates that I bought him last September, they’ve all had to be replaced. His new room has a double bed, so we had to buy new bedding.

I said I’d also buy him a few store cupboard groceries and some household bits, including  toilet roll, to get him started.

“I am not bringing toilet roll,” he said, as if it was an object of ridicule. He has never, of course, had to buy toilet roll before, since this was provided in halls. 

“I’m sure other people will have that sorted,” he said, turning his nose up at the offending articles. “But if everyone thinks like you, no-one will,” I tried to point out.

There are ten students sharing this house. If they are all like Patrick, they may have to rush out to the nearest shop pretty sharpish.

WHEN my six and eight-year-old nephew and niece came to stay recently, they loved having older cousins to play with. 

So they woke my boys up at about 6am, jumping on top of their beds, then pestered them all day to play games and do things with them.

My sister-in-law was delighted: “It’s great having the older boys to entertain them,” she said. The older boys weren’t so pleased.

“I have so much sympathy for you now,” said my eldest, William, when they’d gone. “How on earth did you cope with that for all those years?” Respect, at last.