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.

There comes a moment.

A moment when you realise your child is starting to develop formidable independent cognitive powers.

Or to put it more plainly.

He’s learning to think for himself. In his own way.

I view this as the moment when you know you can’t get away with the same old crap anymore.

For me it happened at the weekend. We were at Belfast Pride and he asked me why all the people in the parade were laughing.

Without missing a beat I replied: ‘Because they’re all so happy that you’ve come to see them son.’

It’s a stock response. The sort of answer I’ve been using in various forms for a couple of years.

It saves me having to think, you see.

But this time it was different.

This time my son looked at me hard and answered back.

‘But that doesn’t make any sense daddy.’

Huh? 

I was left with the feeling that I’d just been rumbled.

My parenting strategy of mindless constant praise was now in tatters.

But it gets worse.

My son asks questions all the time. I mean….All. The. Time.

My way of protecting myself from this barrage has been to answer nearly all of them the same way.

‘Yeah’.

It’s served me pretty well up to now.

It’s another of the main planks of my parenting skills.

Now it lies in splinters.

The last few times I’ve done it he replies ‘Daddy when you say yeah it means you’re not listening to me.’

He’s 4. And he’s onto me.

With this development comes a scary level of manipulative skill.

This morning he was upstairs with mummy.

She was getting him dressed for the crèche.

I was hiding downstairs watching He-Man and hoping they’d forget I exist. Just for half an hour.

Then I heard him say something.

‘Mummy, do you love me so much that you’ll stay with me all day?’

I winced when I heard it, relieved that I’d dodged the bullet with that question.

I’m watching my son develop his own little personality. It’s both wonderful and a bit scary.

But at the heart of it all he’s still a little boy.

As I was giving him breakfast he asked me if we could have a barbecue tonight.

‘Of course we can son. What do you want? Hotdogs?’

‘No! Barbecued bogies!’

Life is full of choices.

Picture the scene. My son is at nursery and I’ve spent the morning writing. I’ve earned an hour to myself. So what do I do?

And that’s the choice. Is it off to the coffee shop for a cappuccino and slice of cake? Or is it a trip to the gym? (Yes I know it’s the coffee and cake but play along, otherwise this will be a very short post).

The truth is I’m getting to that age where things are starting to happen to my body.

There’s hair growing out of my ears. My previously flat stomach now swells like a balloon being filled with water.

My days of being able to eat lard sandwiches without worrying about the consequences are long gone.

And that’s why I’ve joined the gym.

The first thing to consider is the attire. My old white cotton t-shirt just doesn’t fit anymore (both literally and stylistically).

This brings me to the horror that is Lycra. Tops which seem to attach themselves to my body as if they are an extra layer of skin, revealing my stomach like a bowling ball and threatening to cut off air circulation to my lungs.

Shorts seem to have been replaced by leggings. Leggings for men? Meggings?

When I go to the gym I want to keep a low profile. Not to attract any attention. Thoughtfully the people who make the clothes have attempted to assist this by making all the gear fluorescent orange, pink or bright yellow.

So now I’m nervously finding my bearings in the gym.

There’s a group of large, muscular men in the corner lifting heavy weights and grunting encouragement at each other.

The stench of males confusing strength with being able to lift heavy weights is in the air.

I tentatively try to lift one of the bars. I can’t get it off the ground. I decide to take some weight off it. I realise there are no weights on the bar.

Perhaps weight-lifting isn’t for me. I head for the studio.

It’s spin class. There are 30 bikes. That’s 29 women. And me.

Nothing strange about that at all.

That’s 29 fit women sweating profusely in tight clothes. And me.

Totally normal. Move on, move on.

The instructor arrives. Lean, muscular and loud. She keeps yelling ‘Wooooo!’ Her legs move in the pedals like machines. You could grind coal between her thighs.

I’m turning up the resistance on the bike. Climbing out of the saddle and beginning to work. There’s sweat stinging my eyes and a river running down my spine.

I’m visualising a steep mountain and I’m getting near the top. There’s pain all over my body. My calves and thighs are on fire. I start to lose control of my functions.

A large line of snot drops from my nose and attaches itself to the handlebars, swaying there for a few seconds between my nose and the bike like a tightrope before it snaps.

I’m not going to give up. I fight through the pain. I’m going to do this.

Finally, mercifully, the instructor tells us to relax. I sit up gasping and wailing. Then my head sinks down to rest on the bike.

And she says.

‘OK guys, that’s the warm up done. Let’s start some work now?’

Eh?

The rest of the class passes in a blur of pain and panic. I stumble out of the studio like a marathon runner who’s hit the wall.

I want to go home. I want to lie down. I want to die.

Unfortunately, in my prior enthusiasm, I’ve also signed up for a body pump class. Unseen hands are guiding me into another room.

I’ve got my own bench, and a bar with weights. Again I’m the only man.

Most of the woman have heavier weights on their bar than I’ve been advised to try. It’s my first time.

But my pathetic male pride kicks in. The bar doesn’t seem so heavy so I add on extra weight.

The instructor gets us to lie back and  soon I’m bench pressing the bar above my chest.

It’s fine at first. At first.

Then the pain begins. In my chest, my back, my biceps.

The bar gets heavier and heavier until it feels like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks are attached to either end.

My arms are shaking uncontrollably. I try to keep going but it’s no good. I have to sit up.

And right there, in the middle of the class with all the women merrily bench-pressing, I start to reduce the weights on my bar. That’s where male pride gets you.

But if I thought bench-presses were painful I’m horribly unprepared for the sheer naked cruelty of lunges and squats.

Up and down. Up and down. Up and down with the bar on the back of my neck until it feels like a million tiny silver swords are being stuck into my legs. There’s a fierce cramp crippling my hip.

The instructor sees that I’m struggling, starting to waver, and begins to talk directly to me. To motivate me. To wind me up.

‘Come on Jonny! Keep it going!’ Stick that butt out! Stick that butt out!’

‘Uggghh! Arrrrrgh! Uggghh! Ummmm!’ I respond, impressed at my own eloquence.

‘Nearly there Jonny! Keep it up! Think about getting that butt you’ve always wanted! Think about that perfect butt!’

In truth I don’t really think often about my own butt. I can’t see it and I’m flaky like that. My stomach worries me more because it’s right there in front of me.

Generally when I think about a perfect butt it belongs to someone else.

But it doesn’t seem like the right moment to mention this.

And then it’s over.

Some of the women console me and tell me I ‘did great’ but I can see the pity in their eyes.

The reality is, I’m thinking about cake.

I stumble, waddle and drag myself back to the changing room. Sweat is dropping off my body.

I’m thinking that I might need a crowbar and blowtorch to remove the Lycra.

Just what am I supposed to do with all this crap?

Please forgive me for posing the question quite so bluntly but I think you know exactly what I mean.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it when my wee man brings home his art and craft creations. I’d sooner hold one of his illegible scrawls in my hand than gaze upon the bloody majesty of Carravaggio’s Beheading of St John the Baptist any day. (Really?)

It’s just that, well, there’s just so damn much of it.

Between nursery school and daycare he seems to be working on a steady production line of colouring, drawing, building, painting, pasting and sticking.

Some days when I pick him up I need a sack to transport the weight of paper and cardboard back to my house. It never seems to end. Every day. ‘Look at what I made today daddy’.

And to be even more blunt, and at the risk of sounding like a terribly unsympathetic daddy, it’s all tat.

The truth is all kids can’t be good at all things. My son shows great aptitude for stories and words and his imagination is remarkable (wonder where he got that from?).

He’s frankly less interested in drawing and making things. That’s fine, I was exactly the same as a kid.

And it could just be something that develops later for him. His true artistic talents may simply be disguised.

Although if they are, I have to say, it’s a flipping good disguise.

The tricky moment is when he shows you a picture and you have to try and guess what it is.

‘Ah, that’s brilliant son. Is this me and is that you? Are we going for a walk? What? No? Ah, it’s one of your poos going down the toilet. Yes, I see that now.’

So here’s the conundrum. My house is coming down with all this stuff. I know I’m given to hyperbole but there will come a point soon when I may have to build an extension just to store all the art.

So should I throw them out? Well that would be logical but each time I try to do it I feel like I’m in that scene at the end of The Omen when Gregory Peck has the child Damian on the church altar holding a dagger aloft.

He tries to steel himself for what he knows he must do but the little pleading voice stops him. ‘Please daddy, don’t do it.’

Somehow throwing them away feels like amputating part of my own body. Like Niall of the Nine Hostages as he sailed for Ulster and hurled his bloody red hand.

So there we are. How to square this circle?

I was discussing this very point on Facebook recently when an old school friend, now a mother, told me what she did. She has created a computer database which has all the art her child has created recorded for easy access and virtual storage.

That’s brilliant, I thought. Like all the best ideas, so simple and obvious.

If you’re an organised person.

The truth is I’m the kind of guy who takes six months to get round to replacing a blown lightbulb. The database is a lovely idea and something to aspire towards, but much like financial stability, I know it’ll never happen.

There must be some deep psychological reason why we, as parents, are afraid to let go of these things. Why we keep the drawings, the first tooth, the lock of hair.

Yes, it’s lovely to have as a record but it must be more than that, some innate desire to slow the clock down. To hold onto these moments like a man overboard desperately grasping at a rope.

I’m off to pick up my son now. To enjoy time with him and to take possession of his latest masterpieces.

There isn’t any more room left on the front of the fridge. There just isn’t. New drawings are now covering old ones like layers of wallpaper over the years.

I think I’m going to have to call the builders.

I’ve been writing at home all morning so I decide to take a break.

I drive to the shops to buy some food for dinner and grab a coffee and cake.

I don’t remember ever being in this coffee shop before but my phone already knows the wifi and the password.

This means either I have been here before or my phone has been off having adventures with somebody else behind my back. The bastard.

The barista asks me if I want my coffee in a cup or a glass.

To me this is like asking if I’d rather have my coffee in a cup or a hollowed-out rhinoceros horn.

‘A cup,’ I reply.

Then she asks me if I want cream with my cake.

Well you have to have a bit of cream.

I’m half horrified and half delighted when she produces a bottle of squirty cream.

I didn’t realise this even still existed, assuming it had been banned back in the 80s alongside 4 star petrol and corporal punishment.

My mind races to a different time. A different age. Squirty cream. Angel Delight. Dream Topping. Cremola Foam. Fray Bentos pies. Supernoodles…..

I sit down, eager to reacquaint myself with the squirty cream. I have to be fast because it’s already starting to lose its shape and form. Becoming a thin white water.

But there’s a problem. The cream is in a black tub which is tiny. The spoon they’ve given me doesn’t fit into it.

I could try pouring it but the squirty cream is melting so quickly that I fear it will just slide straight off the edge of the plate onto my feet.

This only leaves the option of me licking the cream out of the little tub like some half-starved feral cat.

And I’m obviously not going to do that in a public place.

No, definitely not.

Not a chance.

Ho-hum.

I start to lick the cream out of the tub like some half-starved feral cat.

It tastes of…..nothing at all. Ah, happy memories.

I’m almost finished when I spot two smartly dressed women, professionals presumably, staring at me.

I seem to freeze there with my tongue flapping like a teddy bear’s ear.

The sound system is playing Stand By Me by Ben E King.

I give a half-hearted smile. The women look away.

Yes, sometimes it’s good to take a break. Get away from the blog.

Remind myself that there’s a world out there.

A world full of people. And I’m just like them.

Well, almost.