THESE are hard times to be a dad - even harder than usual. With my wife going back to work, the pressure has become unbearable.
She leaves at 8am, which means I have to get four kids breakfasted, washed, toothbrushed, dressed, and off to school amid chaotic scenes straight from the headless chicken factory.
"Can't find my tie... Anyone seen my homework?...There's no clean socks... Dad, it's raining, can you give us a lift?... Do I have to go, I don't feel well?...The toothpaste's run out..."
(Why is it that only dads are capable of getting one last squeeze out of the toothpaste?)
Even when the older ones have gone off to secondary school and I've walked the little 'un to the primary, I arrive home to a telephone message telling me one of them has forgotten something or other and they need it running up now.
By the time I leave for work myself, I'm already knackered. The rat race was hard enough before, but now I'm running faster just to stand still.
And Elvis, the latest addition to the family, doesn't help...
After the goldfish and rabbits - none of which lasted long for various tragic reasons - I thought we'd had our fill of pets.
But the memory of the previous disasters dimmed and Mum, who'd vowed we'd never have another animal because she always ended up looking after them, agreed that the kids could have a hamster.
So off we went to the pet shop and Elvis came home to take up residence in my daughter's bedroom right next door to ours.
The problem with hamsters is that they're nocturnal. When we're awake, they're asleep. And when we're meant to be sleeping, they're wide awake.
Elvis has an exercise wheel and I think he might be in training for the Olympics because he's a rat in a race all of his own. Once he gets going, he runs like the clappers for hours on end and the noise is unbelievable.
If I had the skill and inclination to link his wheel to the mains, he could keep the house supplied with electricity all on his own.
Night after night, I'm woken in the early hours by a whirring and a clacketing, convinced that a helicopter is landing on top of the house.
In sheer desperation, I got up the other night, my mind whizzing with evil thoughts about how to stop Elvis rocking round the clock. My first evil thought was to shine all the household torches into his cage and fool him into thinking it was daytime, but that would have cost a fortune in batteries.
Then I considered jamming his wheel with a ball of Blu-Tac but it occurred to me that he might eat it and I'd be guilty of hamster poisoning.
So I ended up fumbling around in the darkness, trying to wedge a pencil between the bars of the cage and the top of his exercise wheel to stop it rotating.
Ingenious, but my conscience got the better of me. I found myself lying in bed, worrying that I'd created a hamster wall of death: Elvis would keep on running, leg it to the top of his stationary wheel, fall on his head and suffer irreparable brain damage.
I had no choice but to remove the pencil and accept that, like Elvis, I'm in the rat race for the long haul.
But I'm relieved to say that I'm not the only one who has evil thoughts about riotous rodents.
Her name will never be revealed but I visited a friend last week whose kids also have a hamster which makes a racket through the night.
Her in-laws were due to visit and, to be frank, they drive her round the bend. So, in one of her darker moments, she devised a plot to put the hamster cage in the guest room in the sincere hope that it puts them off coming back in a hurry.
How evil is that?
THE THINGS THEY SAY
ON home turf at Hurworth Senior Citizen's Club, near Darlington, the other night, Molly Ingham recalled the time daughter Barbara was teaching at Timothy Hackworth School in Shildon and she was explaining to the little ones how to write a story.
"Miss, how do you spell ponsa?" asked a little boy.
"What do you mean?" asked the teacher.
"You said we had to start our story with once a ponsa time," replied the boy.
ANOTHER Hurworth senior citizen remembered her husband receiving a telephone call from their 18-year-old daughter, asking him to bring her home 20 Benson and Hedges.
When he got home, he handed over the cigarettes, saying: "There you go - C.O.D."
"Oh, thanks, Dad," replied the girl, showing no sign of paying him.
She'd apparently mistaken "Cash On Delivery" for "Cigarettes On Dad". He never did get his money.
THE THINGS WIVES SAY
"THE best thing about being married is having someone who puts out the rubbish." - TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson, shortly before announcing that her third marriage was over.
My wife reacted instantly with a look of incredulity: "She doesn't know how lucky she is - you never put the rubbish out," she said.
"Oh, yes I do," I replied, making sure I looked hurt.
"No you don't."
"Do."
"Don't."
I'd therefore like to take this opportunity to thank Ulrika from the bottom of my heart for starting a row in our house, and I suspect in countless other homes across the country.
Just because her own marriage is falling apart, it's no reason to cause problems for the rest of us, is it?
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