The Northern Echo:

EVERY dad knows it’s not easy to get a good night’s sleep. For the first year, the kids wake every couple of hours and you go through life in a kind of hazy, brain-dead state.
Until they get beyond the age of three, they have you up at the crack of dawn and you sit with a blanket round you, watching videos of Winnie The Pooh, or Thomas The Tank Engine, over and over again.
And then, when they hit 18, you lie awake at night, worrying about them until they’re back home safe.
So, there I was, listening to my wife’s rhythmical snoring, accompanied by the occasional whistle, as I waited for the sound of Jack, 20, coming home after a night out with his friends.
In the end, I gave up and headed for the spare room to continue my fatherly vigil. Finally, just after 2am, I heard the sound of a car pull up outside, followed by loud voices. Jack and his mates had returned by taxi from the night in town.
They never consider that the rest of the street is asleep, do they? They shout at each other as if they’re miles apart as they struggle to open the door, even though you’ve left it on the latch, then proceed to slam it shut.
The lights go on, the toilet flushes, and you hear them banging around as they go in search of your beer in the fridge. And still they shout at each other. And laugh. And put their music on.
I had to go to work the next morning so I got out of bed and went downstairs to tell them to keep the noise down. As I passed our bedroom, I could hear my wife, still sleeping soundly.
“Look, lads, I know you haven’t seen each other for a while, but could you tone it down as bit please,” I asked, very politely.
“Sorry, Dad,” said Jack, suddenly speaking in a whisper.
“Yeah, sorry,” the others all whispered in unison.
One of them went “shhhh” in a belated instruction to the others as I left the kitchen.
It was short-lived. By the time I got back to the spare room, the volume of their voices was back up, but at least the music stayed switched off.
I’d just nodded off when I was woken by heavy footsteps on the stairs and more loud voices.
“See ya in the morning,” I heard Jack say.
“Yeah, yeah, see ya,” came a slurred reply.
The next thing – in some kind of nightmarish blur – my door was being pushed open and, to my horror, one of Jack’s mates, known as Beej, was trying to get into bed with me.
Now, don’t get me wrong, Beej is a lovely lad. I like him a lot – but not that much.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted, fighting him off.
“Oh, God... sorry, Pete,” he mumbled. “I didn’t realise. Really sorry. God, really, sorry.”
Beej stumbled back downstairs.
I didn’t sleep a wink after that. I’d have got up and watched telly, but I couldn’t. Beej was on asleep on the settee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The things they say

AT a meeting of Castle Eden Women’s Institute, it was lovely to catch up with Beverley Glover, my former secretary from my days as editor of the Hartlepool Mail.
She recalled how, as a little girl in Seaton Carew, she’d been playing on her bike and stopped outside her house.
Her dad came out and she shouted with a concerned expression: “Dad, look what I’ve found on my bike wheel!”
Thinking there was something mechanically wrong, he took a close look, wiped the wheel with his finger, and asked: “What is it?”
“I went through some dog dirt!” came the reply.

CHRISTINE Turnbull, president of Castle Eden WI, recalled the time her sister Marion, four at the time, typically wouldn’t go to bed.
Their dad shouted: “If you don’t get up them stairs this minute, you’ll go up on the end of my boot!”
“Gee, Dad,” replied Marion, “thanks for the ride!"