2:13pm Daddy realises he’s lost his phone for what seems like the 15th time today.

2:14pm Starts to think deeply about the number of times he’s lost his phone and whether this is evidence of some form of irreversible cognitive and mental decline.

2:15pm Is thinking so deeply about this he forgets that the reason he’s thinking about it is because he’s lost his phone.

2:16pm Sits in his favourite chair content that his powers of thought are not in decline.

2:17pm Remembers that he’s lost his phone. Curses his mental complacency.

2:18m Begins a search of the house.

2:19pm Abandons search in exasperation. Casts accusatory glance at son.

2:20pm Mummy has been in her office working all day. Daddy bursts in enquiring ‘Where’s my phone, have you seen it?’ His tone of voice goes further, seeming to suggest ‘Everything I lose is because of this infernal obsession you have with keeping the house clean and moving my stuff.’ Mummy calmly explains that she’s been working all day and has not been near the phone. Suggests daddy tries calling the phone. Daddy grumbles a sort of unimpressed consent that this is a sensible idea and leaves the room.

2:25pm Starts to dial the mobile number from the landline.

2:26pm Goes back upstairs to ask mummy what his number is.

2:28pm Goes back to landline and dials number. Remembers that he has phone on silent and quietly curses the foolishness of the idea.

2:30pm Checks under the sink where the bleach and washing powder is kept. Phone is not there.

2:33pm Sits down defeated on sofa beside son who is watching CBeebies. Interrupts The Clangers to explain to son how daddy has been cursed with bad luck following an unfortunate encounter with a fortune teller on Blackpool promenade some years back.

2:36pm Son rudely breaks into daddy’s story short midway through to say ‘Daddy, what’s that in your pocket?’ Searches in pocket. Phone is there. He has 0 missed calls. 0 messages. 0 notifications.

2:37pm Shouts upstairs to mummy that son had hidden phone under the sofa.

2:43pm Son asks daddy if he can have a drink of water. Daddy asks if he can not hang on until the end of Fireman Sam.

2:45 Son says he’s really really thirsty.

2:46pm Shaking his head sadly daddy rises from sofa and goes to kitchen.

2:47pm Sets down phone to get glass of water.

2:48pm Returns to living room. Has missed end of Fireman Sam.

2:52pm Realises that he’s lost his phone again.

2:54pm Searches kitchen.

2:57pm Decides to look in drawers in kitchen unit despite voice in my head telling him ‘you haven’t been in those drawers today’.

2:58pm As he searches through drawers voice in head tells him ‘Jesus, I don’t think we’ve ever been in these drawers in our life.’

3pm Discovers DVD set of Godfather films. Daddy is delighted with this development as DVD had been assumed lost.

3:01pm Sits on floor and reads DVD sleeve. Decides must watch again ASAP.

3:03pm Removes every item from drawers and sets on floor.

3:05pm Start to pile items back into drawers. Daddy is not skilled at returning items in an ordered fashion.

3:06pm Voice in head says ‘You’ve made a fecking horlicks of that, those drawers won’t close now.’

3:07pm Daddy starts to close drawers. Begins to use brute force.

3:08pm Daddy concedes that drawer is stuck fast. Voice in head says ‘You’re on your own mate’.

3:09pm Daddy begins the process of removing drawers from unit and storing items in a more ordered fashion.

3:18pm Having finished task with kitchen unit daddy returns to join sofa to join son in time for Andy’s Wild Adventures.

3:21pm Remembers he still hasn’t found phone.

3:22pm Returns to kitchen.

3:24pm Finds phone on sideboard beside the sink. He has 0 missed calls. 0 messages. 0 notifications.

3:25pm Considers the productivity of his afternoon.

3:26pm Decides he has achieved enough to deserve a reward.

3:27pm With son happily watching TV daddy decides to slip into the other room to enjoy his newly rediscovered Godfather DVD.

3:28pm Turns on TV and DVD player. Blows dust off DVD case, handling it gently like a valuable antique.

3:29pm Opens DVD case. DVD is not inside.

After the disappointment of rain washing out the barbecue on our camping trip, my son asked if I could build him a wee campfire in the back garden. No problem! 

The clinic was able to take me at short notice. My broken tooth had been causing me increasing discomfort (see post about the Boys’ Night In for background).

I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’ve always viewed going to the dentist to be as much fun as……well, going to the dentist. 

My concerns were not allayed when I was in the waiting room and one of the dentists entered and asked the receptionist if she had a screwdriver.

The dentist was unknown to me but insisted on making small talk about the weather and holidays while she moved about behind me making a sinister noise which sounded disturbingly similar to sharpening a knife.

One of my front teeth had essentially disintegrated until all that was left was filling.

This is not uncommon in my mouth where the ratio of natural tooth to man-made formula has shifted dramatically to the latter in recent years. In essence I’m a dental cyborg.

The dentist patiently explained that she believed it could be filled rather than crowned but that a normal filling would be aesthetically offensive. In other words I would have a big black tooth at the front of my mouth. 

She said I could get a white filling but it would be more expensive. I asked about getting a gold one and she laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t joking. I went for the white one.

She continued with the usual process of injecting, drilling, poking, sighing, and forcing while her assistant seemed intent on forcing a plastic tube down my throat as if I was Ian Brady on hunger strike.

Half an hour later I was back out in the street and wandering around slightly dazed (a result of the price, not the dental work).

Unwisely I went straight for lunch at a local cafe, ordering a flat white, soup and sandwich. I had not taken into account that my mouth was still frozen up and most of the food ended up spread across my face and shirt. Several of the other diners shot quick glances at me and smiled sadly.

The anaesthetic was so effective that it had frozen the whole left side of my face, including the eye. This led to my mouth drooping and tears streaming out of my eye without me being able to control the actions.

The whole effect was that I didn’t just look like a stroke victim, I looked like a particularly unhappy stroke victim.

I’ve been to the dentist more times in the past couple of years than in my whole life. Years of not looking after my oral health has caught up with me with a series of fillings, extractions and root canal work. 

I ignored the warnings, I’m paying the price and the end result is not pretty to look at. It’s like my teeth are acting out their own miniature version of The Keith Richards Story. 

I’ve always been neutral about the virtues and drawbacks of computer games. I’ve never been particularly interested in them but neither do I believe they are responsible for some creeping immorality among younger generations.

Of course computer games were around when I was a kid but it was all a bit different then. I remember my older brother had a clunky BBC Micro computer which was about the size of our bath.

The games were on cassettes and used to take about 45 minutes to load (imagine telling this to a kid now). We would all sit huddled around the flickering screen waiting for the end of the interminable loading process only for a message to eventually flash onto the blank screen, ‘Loading failed’.

When the games did work they were basic and involved the frenzied bashing of keys with your fingers until they were red and sore. I remember the white arrows on the black keyboard wore off through repeated thumping.

But even then I had little patience for it. While my brothers seemed to be able to sit in the same place playing the same game until there was a circle of dust around them, I always thought there were more useful things to do. While they were playing Match Day or Tracksuit Manager I was often off playing in the mud and eating worms.

And now the great revolution of generations brings me to the point where my son is starting to show an interest in computer games and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I understand the value of them in terms of education and motor skills but there are parts of it which make me uncomfortable.

The effect on personality is remarkable. My sweet little boy who loves his daddy and cuddles is replaced by a growling, seething ball of frustration and rage. At one point I actually witnessed him punching the screen of my iPad when he was displeased.

His cherubic lark-like voice seems to change also. Replaced by rasping, husky streams of invective closer to the sound of the monster from The Exorcist film. Do not dare to interrupt.

‘Hi wee man, do you want a drink?’

‘GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!!!!’

Trying to tell him to calm down is futile and counter-productive. I spent several minutes this morning trying to have a conversation with him about how it was just a game and he didn’t need to get angry. Within moments he was roaring again and when I gently challenged him he exploded.

“I’M NOT ANGRY AT THE GAME, I’M ANGRY AT YOU!!!!!’

The games themselves seem inoffensive enough and usually involve an animal of some sort trying to avoid oncoming objects. But when the character inevitably ends up squashed against the screen it often leads to tears and a seeming feeling of genuine anguish.

I’m not going to stop my son playing the games, that would be pointless and cruel. I just want to make sure that he doesn’t spend too much time on them at the expense of experiencing many of the more wonderful things which I want to introduce him to. There’s a certain temptation in plonking him in front of the tablet for hours while I catch up on some Netflix binge-watching but I’d rather mix it up a bit and do things together. I think that’s better for him. It’s definitely better for me.

The key to having your own blog is instinctively knowing what people want to read about.

There are two main schools of thought on whether wearing socks with flip-flops or sandals should be considered trendy.

I think it should.

Everyone else in the world thinks it should not.