Dad at the gate

As I have to deal with school drop-offs and pick-ups four days a week I find that I have to contend with rather too many mothers with nothing better to do than chatter at the school gate. While I’m attempting a military operation, so that I can get home and do a day’s work, my efficiency and train of thought are constantly at risk of interruption by house wives who have an irrepressible need for human company and conversation. Is it that they are women and I am a man, or am I unusual in being able to pass my day without wasting words? Whatever the answer , I find myself in a ‘lose lose’ situation, as I either ignore them entirely or I acknowledge them with the patience of a greyhound leaving the starting gate. Occasionally I am embarrassingly grumpy too, but I just cannot help myself.

But here is the thing, the more unapproachable, elusive, unsociable I make myself, the more I seem to attract. There is evidently an inverse law in action. Then I discover, from my own wife, that “various mothers have a bit of a ‘thing’ for me”, she says with a tone of pride! It seems that the combination of seeing a man dealing with his kids and not giving them the time of day is some kind of turn-on. It has, apparently, become something of a competition for these mothers to see if they can elicit a response from me, as if it were a badge of honour. To make things worse, some of them are not unattractive. They are, so I am told, ‘yummy mummies’; the kind of women who make me feel twitchy and uncomfortable, for reasons I cannot possibly go into. Needless to say, my wife finds this hilarious because she knows damn well that I’m trying to suppress carnal desires but daren’t admit it – either to myself or to her. Being the dutiful husband and father can be like that, don’t you find?

By Gerard Cheshire