THE terrible thoughts going through my head lately have been shameful - but I'll share them with you anyway...

I'd been talking to an even older dad than me who told me how life turns full circle when the children grow up.

"It's incredible," he said. "You become the children and they become the parents."

He and his wife had been for a night out and had come back in the early hours. His teenage son and daughter were sitting on the stairs when their giggly parents stumbled through the door: "What time do you call this?" said the son in all seriousness. "Have you any idea how worried we were that you'd been in a car crash?"

The dad, a little worse for wear, just smiled, started to sing a Sinatra song and attempted to put his arms round his daughter: "Oh, for God's sake, act your age," she said, pushing him away.

So this is the future. I was telling my wife all about what we have to look forward to and it started off these devilish thoughts on what life will be like when our four fledglings have flown the nest:

"Do you know what I'm going to do?" Mum said with an evil glint in her eye. "I'm going to ring their houses at three o'clock in the morning, just so they know what it's like being woken up at that time. And then I'm going to ring them every hour."

After that, the list of things we're going to do came easily:

* When we're invited round to their houses, we're going to jump all over their furniture and treat their settees like trampolines.

* We're going to spill drinks - especially red wine - at every mealtime and leave half-eaten sandwiches on the floor.

* We're going to pull faces and say "Urgh! Lovey-dovey stuff - that's totally gross" whenever they try to kiss or cuddle their partners.

* We're going to scribble with felt tip pens on their wallpaper.

* We're going to make sure we don't aim straight when we use the toilet. (Well, I am - I'm not sure my wife can go that far.)

*We're going to just drop our clothes where we take them off and expect them to be picked up.

* We're going to climb into their beds in the middle of the night, saying we've had a nightmare.

* We're going to get in with them for a cuddle in the morning and then start a fight over who's got the most covers.

*And when they take us for drives in the country, we're going to shout "Me in the front, me in the front" and then sulk if we have to sit in the back.

Yes, I know it's cruel and vindictive but we're really going to do it. What are you going to do?

THE THINGS THEY SAY...

SOME wonderful people have been encountered on the Dad At Large Roadshow over the years and a case in point is the delightful Joan Ludlow at St Peter's Church Ladies Wednesday Club in Redcar last week.

Joan, the speaker-finder, was charged with meeting me in the car park.

Unfortunately, I got a bit lost, arrived through the back door and was ten minutes into my talk when Joan burst in, bedraggled from standing in the pouring rain.

She'd been going up to all kinds of strange men in the half-light, asking:

"Excuse me, are you Dad At Large?"

"One asked me 'How much do you charge love?'" she announced to the meeting to howls of hilarity.

St Peter's churchyard has surely never seen anything quite like it...

WHEN Joan's daughter Barbara was only four, the little girl was shadowing her mum's every step.

She even went to the toilet with her, where she said: "Mum, when I'm a mummy, will I have feathers like you?"

LISA, a hairdresser in Newton Aycliffe, was doing an exercise in class when she was four.

The exercise was all about the jobs people do and the teacher asked: "Who's the man who sells meat?"

"The butcher!" came the enthusiastic reply.

"Who's the man who sells bread?"

"The baker!"

"Who's the man who sells newspapers?"

"Norman Echo!" shouted Lisa.

CARRIE, aged about four at the time, said to her Dad: "I've got an ear ache, can you have a look and see if you can see what's wrong."

Her dad, Paul Howarth, of Newton Aycliffe, peered in and assured her that he could see nothing untoward.

She insisted that he look in her ear again and check as it was "hurting really bad".

He looked again, and after asking the usual questions about poking things into her ear etc., she turned to him and said: "Dad, are you really sure there is nothing wrong - I think I've got diarrhoea."

Published: 28/03/2002