After a long day of adventures, fighting crime and saving the world, sometimes even Superman needs a little nap. 

It was my son who started it all by telling us there was something missing in his life.

‘Mummy and daddy, I’d like a little brother or sister. Or else a goldfish’, he declared as we readied him for bed last night.

We were queuing outside the pet shop before opening time this morning.

It seemed a simple enough task. Buy a couple of fish, a cheap tank, maybe a toy treasure chest. Done and dusted and back home in time to make Sunday lunch.

Never such innocence again.

Mummy insisted on accompanying us. She knows what I’m like with salespeople.

Left to my own devices and she’d most likely have been returning home to find I’d agreed to have our home transformed into a giant indoor tropical aquarium complete with sharks and killer whales.

We decided she should lead the delegation.

The fish shop had no natural light but an abundance of artificial coloured strobes, giving it the feeling of a really chilled out nightclub.

A large and serious man attended to us. We told him he wanted fish.

He frowned.

‘What sort of tank were you thinking of?’ he enquired.

‘Just whichever one is cheapest.’ I answered brightly.

His frown deepened.

I took a step back, fearing I had said the wrong thing.

He showed us a few tanks. I’ve slept in smaller bedrooms.

I pointed out a small one in a different aisle, a tank which was a quarter of the price of the ones he recommended. It had Dory out of the Disney film on the box. It seemed kid friendly.

His frown reached a new depth.

‘Well yes there is this one, but it’s plastic, if it gets a scratch on it that’s all you’ll be able to see.’

We assured him we would take that risk. But his true objection had not yet revealed itself.

‘You see, this is the problem. All the kids see the Dory film then they want the tank. The truth is its nothing to do with Dory. There’s just a few stickers in the box.’

This confused me a little. I was pretty certain that even my four-year-old wasn’t expecting that the real live Dory would be in the box.

I wasn’t sure quite what would have satisfied the sales assistant’s thirst for authenticity with this product. Maybe he would have only been appeased if the ghost of Walt Disney himself had been trapped in the tank.

Eventually we persuaded him to allow us to buy it. We were making progress.

‘So what sort of fish are you’se looking for?’

‘Just a couple of goldfish would be fine,’ I responded.

It was impossible for him to frown any deeper. So he began to shake his head instead.

Then he said something which completely astonished me.

‘You can’t buy goldfish. That’s illegal.’

Eh?

Excuse me?

‘Goldfish are outdoor fish, for ponds. You can’t buy them for indoor tanks.’

My head began to spin. Everything I knew as certain in this world was now at risk. Black was now white. Illegal to buy a goldfish? Peppa Pig has a goldfish in a tank. It’s called Goldie. Was I now being told that Peppa is nothing better than a common criminal?

He wasn’t finished.

‘You could go to some back alley pet shop and they’d sell you a goldfish today. But if it’s not looked after properly it will be dead in five or six weeks.’

That sounds fine, I was about to say, before my wife sharply nudged me.

She’s got that wonderful instinctive ability to know I’m about to say something stupid. It takes years of suffering to hone that talent.

But fishman was warming to his task. He looked at me solemnly.

‘How long do you think a goldfish can live for?’

‘Eh?’

‘Go on, how long?’

‘I don’t know. Six months? A year?’

‘Ha!’ He exclaimed, smiling for the first time today. Perhaps for the first time ever.

‘Forty years!’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Thirty to forty years if they’re looked after properly. And you don’t have the trauma of trying to explain to the little one why their fish has died after a few months.’

This was a good point. Although he seemed to have overlooked the trauma of having a fish which was likely to live longer than me.

Buying a goldfish had definitely become a lot more complicated since I was a kid. Back then you went to the Lammas Fair and brought home a couple of them in a plastic bag, no questions asked. And they were fine. Well they were fine for five or six weeks.

I have a hazy memory of keeping a goldfish in the toilet while we bought a proper bowl. But again this may be my mind playing tricks on me.

So we weren’t buying a goldfish today. Ok, move on. A fish is a fish.

But the hits (and the added cost) just kept coming.

It turned out we first needed an electric water filter (?), water conditioner (??) and bio-boost (???).

Ok, ok. Can we please now have a fish!?

Well, as it turns out, no.

Our new friend explained to us that he couldn’t allow us to take a fish home today. We had to set up our tank, treat our water for a week and have it tested first.

‘In seven days bring in a sample of the water and we’ll see then if we can sell you some fish.’

I looked around to see if Jeremy Beadle was hiding in a tank nearby, trying to launch an unlikely comeback.

My son had his little blond head buried in mummy’s shoulder.

I was now reversing my whole position. It actually would be easier to have another child than do this.

I certainly didn’t have to pass any water tests before I became a daddy.

Perhaps fishman saw how demoralised we had become because his face softened a little.

He said: ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings but my first concern is for the happiness of the fish’. (I swear I’m not making this up).

My feelings were a little hurt. But I didn’t let on.

And so we trudged home with an empty tank, bright pink stones, a little toy octopus, a filter, food, conditioner, bio-boost….but no fish.

I’ve got the tank set up. Empty. In truth it looks a little silly. Like there should be a little sign saying ‘Gone to the shop. Back in 5 mins.’

I imagine by the time we get round to having our water tested next week my son will have forgotten all about it and have decided he wants something else. Like a tattoo.

And if I fail the test I will feel like my ability to be a responsible adult has been invalidated.

And if I pass then I’m lumbered with a fish I don’t really want for the next 40 years.

There’s no good option. If only I’d taken the easy path and had another child.

Into the mist the mob peered.

As the strange shape it neared.

Some of them duly feared,

The hirsute image that appeared.

Then suddenly one cheered,

‘It’s the thing with the beard.’

Some of them jeered,

While the others they sneered,

To see something so weird.

And the boldest he leered,

‘That thing should be sheared’.

Now the creature’s eyes, they were bleared.

To be so hated and smeared,

Violated and queered.

Suddenly towards them it veered,

And the path quickly cleared.

And its courage it geared.

To say: ‘Do you not think me speared?

‘That you’re all so afeared,

‘Of what I’ve cultivated and reared,

‘And magnificently tiered?’

And away from the mob it steered.

But it stopped when it heared,

That they now applauded and cheered.

So towards them again it sheered.

And though their words, they had seared.

Their hearts were now cleared,

Towards the man with the beard.

The room was small. Softly lit. A smell of damp. Like wet cardboard.

The nurse arrived and sat opposite me. I could tell she was concerned. Concerned that I might be trouble.

It was the middle of the night. She was on the graveyard shift. She didn’t need the agitation.

She relaxed a bit, sensing probably that I was more afraid than angry.

She smiled and put her hand on top of mine for just a moment. The smallest gestures are often the ones which stay with you forever.

‘Well sonny,’ she began. A rolling Scottish lilt. Soft. ‘How did ye end up here?’

I shrugged, trying to avoid her gaze. A kind patient face which seemed to say ‘No matter what you tell me, I’ve heard ten times worse before’.

I didn’t speak so she went on.

‘What do you do for a living son?’

I gathered myself, trying desperately to find the person I had forgotten I was. I summoned some of my old pomposity, speaking more from habit than conviction.

‘I’m a journalist. I’m news editor at one of Northern Ireland’s biggest newspapers.’

Her smile hadn’t shifted and the eyes were steady and sympathetic. She leaned forward and patted me on the arm.

‘That’s nice sonny. That’s nice….’

It’s hard to say where the journey began which brought me here. I suppose like all stories it started at the beginning.

I remember from my schooldays always having a sense that something wasn’t right. The crushing constant anxiety and fear, the desperate debilitating sadness which was like a blanket over you, keeping you from moving or breathing.

The feeling of worthlessness. The persistent conviction that you’d be better off dead. The active thoughts of how you’d do it. The gnawing worries about what people would say when you’re gone.

They’ve all been with me for decades, like old friends that you just can’t shake off. And they all started back when I was still a teenager.

But mental illness didn’t exist then. Or if it did exist it was somewhere else, certainly not in rural north Antrim.

You didn’t talk to your family. You didn’t talk to your friends. You didn’t talk to a doctor. You just didn’t talk.

I became expert at developing my own coping mechanisms. Building a personality for the rest of the world to see. Pushing my worst feelings so deep inside myself that they could never escape.

And then you just got on with the next day. And the one after that.

After all it was probably just a bit of teenage angst, I told myself. Something that everybody had to go through.

Before I started university I went to see my doctor. My thoughts of suicide had been becoming more real. I had spent days crashed out in bed or the sofa virtually paralysed by a feeling of hopelessness which was taking control of me.

I was terrified. But not a single soul in the world knew what I was thinking.

Looking back I am astonished that I found the courage to go to the doctor. It was such a small place, everybody knew everybody’s business.

There was so much shared knowledge but so little understanding of anything of worth.

I must have been in a desperate state to have reached out.

I went into the surgery. The severe impatient eyes of the doctor as I walked in have never left me.

I tried to explain to him what I was feeling, how scared I was. But my voice seemed to be slowing down like a radio when the batteries start to go. I could hear what I was saying and it all sounded absurd.

The doctor essentially chastised me for coming. He asked me if it was true I was going to university. I said it was. He told me about all of the sick people in his waiting room. And here was I, with opportunities that most young people would never have, and I was talking this way.

I meekly nodded my head in agreement. He told me to pull myself together and get on with things.

I left the surgery. I was crushed. Humiliated.

It would be more than 20 years before I would dare to tell another human being on this earth what was going on in my head.

University passed in a blur of alcohol, depression and discovery.

Then I decided to become a journalist. I’d always loved to write and had a keen interest in politics and current affairs. It seemed a logical choice.

I progressed quickly. Soon I landed a job in a daily newspaper and rose quickly through the ranks. First a reporter, then a correspondent, then a news editor.

Colleagues assumed I was ambitious and assured. It may have come across that way but, as always, the truth was very different.

I never had any confidence in my own ability. Every day of my career was the day I believed I would be found out. The day when my incompetence and idiocy would finally be revealed to all.

But there was also a comfort in the monotonous routine of office employment. By throwing myself into my career I was able to cover up many of the insecurities which had plagued my life.

I had found something to which I belonged and I clung to it like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.

Some of my obsessive personality traits began to take hold. I worked long hours. In truth I did very little else.

It was at the office that I met my wife. We fell in love and got married. The fact that she worked in the same industry, and seemed to understand my obsession with work, made the transition to married life easier.

During these years the most terrifying parts of my own mind were still there, but I mostly ignored that. I still endured the darkness. The days when I was certain I could not go on.

The daily thoughts of suicide never left me but I learnt to ignore them. They became automatic, like breathing.

Also there were people who now depended on me. My wife. The people I managed at work. They all saw me as strong. I was the steady one. Never was somebody more ill-fitted to a role.

Plus there was another person who now depended on me. Our son was born. Our wonderful, astonishing, beautiful boy.

I tackled fatherhood as I did all tasks, by throwing myself into it obsessively. Covering my terror by immersing myself in all of the processes.

But I hadn’t slowed down at work. If anything I deepened my commitment to it. The working hours stretched even longer into the night.

At around the same time I decided to challenge myself. I set myself the task of writing a novel.

Looking back now this was a clear sign that my power to think logically had broken down. It was like I was intent on pushing myself into a state of exhaustion. Stretching my mind until there was simply nothing left to give.

My wife suffered from post natal depression and, of course, I was the strong one who stood beside her, supported her as she recovered.

She was and is a fantastic mother. But as she became more assured and confident, I could feel my ordered world starting to disintegrate.

The bucket had been filled too many times. Now the black water was starting to cascade around me dangerously.

My behaviour became erratic. I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating. I drank too much.

I had never smoked in my life but almost overnight I developed a 40 a day habit.

I went for long walks late at night, with no destination in mind and no expectation I would ever come home. Often I almost didn’t.

Other evenings I would just sit in my back garden into the small hours, drinking and smoking. Often I would burst into tears and sob for what seemed like hours.

But still I kept my behaviour and thoughts from everyone. My wife, my family, my colleagues.

I convinced myself that I didn’t love my family. Perhaps it would be easier for me to get through this alone.

The pressure was intense. But I still kept turning up for work on time. Making decisions, leading a team. Being the reliable one. How I kept going for so long is now a mystery to me.

But the cracks were too wide to be ignored any longer.

One Saturday night I suffered a huge panic attack. My hands began to shake uncontrollably. Finally, mercifully, after all these years, I told my wife what was happening to me.

The shaking lasted for hours. I was taken to accident and emergency where they eventually managed to calm me.

I spoke to a counsellor that night. He listened and was sympathetic. He didn’t tell me to pull myself together or to stop wasting his time.

I was placed in a counselling programme and put on medication. Now that I had finally taken the problem outside of my own head I discovered there were people there who wanted to help me.

That night in hospital I thought about my visit to the doctor 20 years earlier. All the wasted years.

But the truth was I had let things go too far. Much too far. I was now very close to the point where there was no way back.

Two nights later I disappeared for several hours. I remember going for a drink and then walking. Walking. That was always my thing.

I had no thought of the next day, the next hour, the next minute. I had simply given up. I didn’t expect to go home that night.

At some point, very late, I checked my phone. There were over 60 missed calls and messages. My wife and family. Where was I? Pleading with me to contact them.

I remember staring at the phone. Reading a message from my wife. ‘Please come home. We love you.’

It reached something deep inside me. Something I had given up for dead. I was ashamed. I found my car and drove home.

My wife arranged for a doctor to see me that same night.

The doctor and I talked for a while. I told her I needed to be in the office in a couple of hours. She told me that would not be happening.

She started to say something to me. Something legal.

Then I realised what was happening. I was being told that she had the power to place me in a hospital. Being sectioned, I believe it is called.

But she didn’t want to do that. She wanted me to agree to go into hospital by my own force. Of my own will.

Months later I asked the same doctor how she came to this opinion. How did she know that something was wrong?

She told me that I had spent an hour with her that night but never looked at her once.

A second opinion was required. A mental health counsellor came to see me. She also agreed that I needed hospital treatment. That very night.

And so it was. That was how I came to be an inpatient. Ward 12 they called it euphemistically. The psychiatric ward. In my ignorance I thought of it as the lunatic asylum. The madhouse.

Even in the darkest moment humour can always be found if you look hard enough. My wife and I were walking into the hospital. Neither had spoken for some time. All the certainties of our comfortable lives had just been shattered.

I turned to her and said: ‘Well, this is a diabolical development.’

We did all that was left to do. We laughed. We were spent.

As so here I was. In this little damp room with the Scottish nurse. Calming me down. Taking my details.

I thought about my tiny infant son at home. Just four months old. I had failed as a father. Failed as a husband. Failed as a journalist. Failed as a man. Failed as a human being.

Now I was at the bottom.

The nurse assured me I would only be in for a few days. It was just a little rest I needed. A short break from things and then I could go home.

I was taken to another room. This one with a bed. I was told to relax. Try to get some sleep. My wife had gone to get some personal things and I was alone.

The bed was hard. I was utterly exhausted but never had sleep seemed so far away.

I lay there. Terrified. How could I find a way back to any sort of life from this? I watched the clock on the wall.

Soon a man came into the room. Softly he walked to the side of the bed. He shone a torch into my eyes. I was confused.

Then the awful realisation. He was checking to make sure I was still alive. I was on suicide watch.

I shivered and pulled the thin blanket closer around me, but it gave no warmth. I had to get used to it.

For now, this was my home.

* If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this blog or need immediate help call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000

I’m fond of caps.

Not the things you put in toy guns, upper case letters or even what you use to plug a bottle.

Caps, to me, belong on your head.

And while I’ve nothing against the baseball variety, the cap of choice in my life has always been flat.

I love to wear a flat cap. I love the look of it and how it feels on my head and how it tames my mushroom of wild, fuzzy hair.

I grew up watching working men and farmers who wore flat caps. Maybe that’s where it comes from.

There’s also probably a part of me that rails against convention, revelling in the supposed lack of style associated with the garment.

I have a selection. One for summer, one for Autumn and a heavier cap for the coldest days.

Indeed, an oft told anecdote in our house recalls the day when one of my favourite caps slipped off the bannister, where it usually resides, and fell down the stairs.

Instinctively I launched after it yelling in alarm in my broadest Ulster Scots drawl ‘Me caaaaappp!!’

My wife found this so funny that the phrase ‘Me caaaapp!!’ is still used as a comic term. It was one of the first things my son learnt to say.

The incident has been recited so many times that when I picture it in my mind it is now like a scene from a Hollywood movie with an epic soundtrack.

The images are in slow motion. The cap bounces down the stairs portentously while I’m leaping through the air like an action hero. My arm grasping. Trying desperately to reach…..

‘ME CAAAAAAPPP!!’

Anyway.

Moving on.

Naturally it was with some joy and no small measure of pride that I bought my son his first flat cap this year.

Oh what a pair of dandies we would make strolling up the street hand in hand, turning heads with our fetching headgear.

There’s something I should probably explain at this point. I’m trusted with every aspect of my son’s life and development. Except one. Fashion.

Mummy always picks the clothes. Always. I’m allowed to dress him but I do have a blind spot here. I tend to do silly things without thinking. Like tucking his trousers into his socks. Or his jumper into his underpants.

On more occasions than I can remember I’ve sent him off to crèche with his shoes on the wrong feet. The staff at his childcare facility now know to check his feet first thing every morning.

I think mummy’s residing fear is that I’ll send him off one day in a tweed waistcoat, sporting a monocle and smoking a pipe.

But this is only a cap.

I knew he enjoyed looking like daddy and I was keen to encourage it.

The truth is, I loved it.

Then one day I took him to nursery, both of us contentedly capped.

As we were waiting outside the classroom a little girl arrived, pointed at my son and started to laugh.

There was no malice in her gesture and my son wasn’t bothered at all, but it did sting me a little bit.

Then, at the start of the summer, misfortune arrived.

I was packing for a family holiday and I couldn’t find my cap. Or my son’s.

I spent the best part of an afternoon searching but they remained stubbornly elusive.

I hadn’t been on holiday without a summer cap in years. I tried on a few in the shops but could find nothing I liked.

I went through the holiday and most of the summer defiantly capless. As though in solidarity for a political prisoner.

My face and ears were incinerated at my son’s sports day.

I had to start brushing my hair.

It wasn’t a good time.

On one occasion, while out, I saw an old man wearing a flat cap which looked suspiciously identical to mine. My wife had to stop me from challenging him about its origins.

Then, this week, a breakthrough.

While searching for a pen in the top drawer of the kitchen unit I felt something soft stuffed towards the back. Something made of cloth.

I drew the fabric out curiously. It was my cap. With my son’s inside it.

I jumped up and yelled.

You guessed it.

‘ME CAAAPPP!!’

I ran straight to my son, ecstatically capped.

‘Look son! Daddy’s found our caps! D’ye want to try yours on?’

He was playing a game on my iPad. He didn’t even look up.

‘No thanks daddy.’

I was a little shaken. But no matter, he was busy.

I tried again this morning as I took him to crèche.

‘D’ye want to wear your cap today buddy?’

He shook his head and I left it. I could see what was happening.

I’m not trying to suggest my son has developed a fashion sense. I mean I could dress him as a pink dinosaur and he’d happily walk down the street that way.

It’s just that I understood he had developed a sense that the cap wasn’t…..what’s the word they use? Oh, yes. It wasn’t cool.

I had that same sting as on the day the little girl laughed at him.

Don’t worry about me. I’ll get over it.

It does bring home the point though of the conflict between the way we see our kids and the way they see themselves.

My son looks like me and I spend so much time with him that some people call him my Mini Me. But that’s the point. He isn’t. He’s a Mini Him.

Of course he still worships his daddy but the first tile has fallen off the mosaic. The first beginning of the realisation that daddy is not a ‘cool dude’.

How long before he realises that darts and snooker are not really the most fashionable pastimes? How long before he realises that there’s more to music than The Housemartins and Caravan of Love?

How long before he realises he’s got a nerd for a daddy?

We all want our children to be popular. We all want them to find their own way. We all know they go through phases like I do socks.

But this is all nothing more than a preamble.

The real issue is how did the caps end up stuffed down the back of a drawer?

I’ve already quizzed my wife about this. Her answers so far have been elusive and unsatisfactory.

I’ll keep at it though. It’s no more than me cap deserves.

 

Author’s note.

I finished writing this post in a shopping centre coffee shop. At its conclusion I stood up and marched out. Leaving my favourite cap behind.

Only hours later did I realise my negligence, forcing me to retrace my steps and ask various confused shop assistants if they had seen a slightly faded blue and white cap.

Eventually it was recovered in the coffee shop where I started the day. A barista handed it to me with obvious distaste, as if it was a rabid rat.

Unfortunately I had been in such a blind panic about the cap that I’d forgotten where I’d parked my car.

I spent 45 minutes wandering between rows of cars looking lost.

Two kindly old women, obviously fearing I had escaped from somewhere, stopped to ask me if I was alright.

Shortly before lunchtime I realised I was in the wrong car park.

Some days you feel like you should just have stayed in bed.

It’s half three on a balmy Thursday afternoon in August as I sit down to write this.

As so often before I’m forced to consider how well I’ve used my time today. How productive have I been?

I’m no mathematician but I think it breaks down roughly like this:

a) Time spent with son and family 6%

b) Time spent eating 4%

c) Time spent cleaning 0%

d) Time spent on afternoon nap 16% *

e) Time spent chasing wasps 74%

 

* For statistical accuracy it should be pointed out that the unusually low reading recorded for afternoon nap can be explained by the fact that it was interrupted by a wasp.

 

And this segues nicely into my main points. I love summer. I hate wasps.

It’s great to open the windows and the conservatory door, to feel that cooling breeze on the back of your neck as you work (work?! Ha ha).

The crab apples on my little tree have almost ripened. The first blackberries on the bush in the back garden are beginning to force their way through. There’s a pleasant lazy hint of Autumn on the breeze.

And there are 40 angry wasps in my house.

Wasps who seems to instinctively know that their lifespan is nearing its end and blame me for that unfortunate quirk of nature.

Of course nobody really likes wasps, but I have a special reason for my enmity. We have previous.

It was the day after my wedding. My wife and I were having a special honeymoon breakfast in a hotel high up the side of a mountain in southern Italy.

The panoramic views were magnificent. The world seemed a fine place as we sat there holding hands and smiling. There was no need for words.

And then the wasps struck.

I won’t recount the full episode but suffice to say it resulted in me losing my temper and hurling a mushroom omelette off the edge of a cliff yelling ‘Take the fecking thing if you want it that badly!’

So now you see. I’ve always carried a little bit of that day with me. It’s personal.

And there do seem to be an abundance of wasps around this summer. My wife’s recent birthday party in our back yard was continually disturbed by wasps seemingly intent on a revenge mission.

Eating outside is thus hazardous and if you open the windows to let the summer inside they arrive in swarms, thudding their dull little heads against the glass.

My neighbours across the road, if they happen to glance into my front window during the day, have every likelihood of seeing me jumping around, waving my arms manically and slapping the wall with a rolled up magazine.

I’ve decided if they ever ask me what I’m doing I’m going to tell them I’m a mime artist having a breakdown.

Yet despite it all I don’t really have any appetite for killing wasps and I’m trying to teach my son that all life is precious and should be respected.

I, however, failed spectacularly during a recent nursery school trip when I accompanied my son on the coach.

One of the young girls from his class screamed when she noticed a wasp on the coach window closest to her. A couple of the mummies reacted similarly.

And there was I, drunk with the exhilaration of the unusual position of being the alpha male, to come to the rescue.

Before I’d even thought about my actions I sprang to my feet and splattered the wasp between the window and my son’s schoolbag.

Then I turned and saw the faces of 30 children. Sixty innocent eyes staring at me. And their mummies too.

I improvised.

‘It’s OK kids, Willie the wasp is fine, just a little stunned. We’re actually good friends and this is a game we play.’

I tenderly carried him in a tissue and waved it out of the door of the coach to send him on his way.

Willie flew majestically into the air for a moment before plummeting hard onto the wet tarmac below. Dead.

I took my seat again.

‘Well kids, Willie’s gone off to play with his friends.’

The children looked at me doubtfully. My son just shook his head and looked out the window.

I haven’t been asked to go on any trips since.

I do try to usher the wasps which come into my house back out the window from but it never works.

My little boy has now started to get braver and often accompanies me as I’m trying to shoo them. He targets the wasps with his water pistol and has a higher degree of success than I do in getting them to go away.

I suppose we’ll never get on (me and the wasps I mean, not me and my son).

And at the very moment I type these words a wasp begins to buzz around my neck, as if he’s wanting to check what I’ve written (everyone’s a critic).

I’d better go and deal with him. If you don’t hear from me again you’ll know it didn’t end well.