IS it only me who feels totally unappreciated? Even when I perform heroics, it doesn’t merit any real recognition...

It was the morning of our teenage son’s final A-level and he’d shown a typical lack of urgency by staying in bed until the last possible second.

His mum had been yelling at him for an hour to get up and then, as if it was our fault, we were in a mad panic to drive him to college on time. Why is it that us parents still run around like lunatics, feeling guilty, when our children plainly can’t be bothered?

The exam was at 9am. At 8.30am he was still looking for his glasses. Naturally, it was mum and dad who were doing most of the looking, but the all-important specs were nowhere to be seen.

At 8.40am, my wife took the decision that they’d have to leave for college without them. It was better that he took the exam short-sighted than not at all.

There was something which made me carry on searching after they’d driven off – that instinctive need a dad has to be a hero.

Our son’s bedroom is close to being impregnable, but I fought through the mess, delved down the side of his mattress, and found his glasses wedged on the frame of his bed.

I then had a big decision to make. Each morning, at 8.55am, I have to go on radio by telephone for a regular feature on BBC Tees called The Headline Challenge. Should I stay at home for the phone call or should I try to get the glasses to my son by 9am?

Of course, the exam took priority. This was my chance to be a hero. The Rocky theme tune started to play inside my head.

I leapt into the car, ignored the neighbour’s attempts to have a chat, and drove as quickly as the speed limit would allow to get from our village to the college in time.

A lollipop lady slowed me down – my blood pressure rose. A tractor got in the way – my blood pressure rose even higher. The clock in my car ticked closer and closer to 9am – my blood pressure went through the roof.

Despite it all, and having taken every shortcut I could think of, I screeched up outside the college at 8.55am.

My mobile phone went off just as I was running up the college steps. It was the producer of the Headline Challenge. Oh no!

I stumbled but, to my blessed relief, I saw my wife coming the other way. I threw the glasses at her and the world went into slow-motion as they sailed through the air.

She caught them, waved at me, and rushed back into the college just as the producer was putting me through to breakfast show presenter Alastair Brownlee.

Somehow, I gasped and wheezed my way through the broadcast and then slumped back into my car – exhausted before the day had even begun.

To say I was pretty damn proud of myself is an understatement and I freely admit that I was expecting some expressions of deep gratitude: “Thanks, Dad, you’re amazing.” “Dad, I’d have failed if it wasn’t for you.” “Dad, you really are the greatest.”

When I got home from work, my son came into the kitchen. “Hey – how did the exam go?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said and went upstairs.

A CLARIFICATION

THERE is something I need to make clear – I am not married to Mum At Large...

There I was, walking through the Cornmill shopping centre in Darlington last week, when a man I vaguely know from the gym shouted: “Have you got yer dog yet?”

I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“Sorry – what dog?” I asked.

“Yer wife wrote about it in her column this morning. She wants a dog,” he went on. “Are you gonna get one?”

“My wife doesn’t have a column,” I said.

And then it dawned on me that he was talking about Ruth Campbell, who writes Mum At Large, which alternates with Dad At Large.

I hadn’t got round to reading her latest column so I wasn’t aware she’d written about wanting a dog.

For the record, Ruth Campbell is very nice but we’re just good friends – honest.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

THANK you to Kathryn Fox, on Twitter, for telling me about her three-year-old son Ewan who demanded: “ I want jelly.”

“What’s the magic word?” asked his mum.

“Hocus pocus,” came the reply.