Child is Uncle to the Man. No, wait...

 I live a quiet life. Literally, as my girlfriend often works nights, so I have to creep around the house all morning. I have learned to wash dishes stealthily. I can lip-read Joanna Gosling reading the news, though she has a mouth like a Riddler. My ablutions are quiet as the grave, and as uninviting. In a way, with our house full of nick-nacks, yellowing books, dusty lamps and superannuated tec, we're old before our time. I suppose children keep you young, or at least aware of things. Susan and I remain blissfully ignorant, bobbing along on the effluvia of the late 20th Century. I never even really saw the point of clubbing. I was out of touch at 17. 

But truly, there's nothing to make you feel old like being exposed to a six year old child. And I fear I could have worded that better. My brother Edward, his wife Katie, and their dervish son, Henry, visited earlier in the week. And I'm still knackered. Seriously knackered. And I did bugger all. They did the parenting - which is unceasing - and I did the uncle-ing, which is just being silly and winding the kid up until he explodes. Henry likes me. I'm the "funny man". I mostly like Henry, though when he asked me why my teeth were yellow and why was I so fat, there was a distinct chill in the room. Henry and I get on very well, because I can return him to his parents to do all the stuff that involves maintaining his existence, when I need a puffed sit down. 

Parenting has changed a lot in the last 40 odd years. On holidays when I was a child, mostly to rural Ireland, we children sat in a car in a pub car park, the window open a crack, while our parents and relatives got pissed in the pub. Occasionally someone with grey slacks and a red face would wobble out across the tarmac and feed crisps and bottled coke (or, exotically, red lemonade) through the car door window. It was exciting, we never had bottles of coke at home. The rest of the trip would have been spent in kitchens stuffed with impossibly old people who spoke a language I couldn't understand, and who would occasionally press a spindled pound note into my hand, something I was never to reveal to my mother on pain of death.

That's not as sinister as it sounds.    

Now everything is about children. The whole world is for them and parenting is very hands on. This is clearly better - I have no idea how I survived to adulthood. That's not a diss on my parents either - that was the culture then. We had rough hewn slides and swings in knee skinning concrete parks. We climbed trees. We threw things at each other. We had fights. That's what my generation had. But the generation before me had rickets and bomb-sites to play on, so it was a vast improvement. I expect the parents of Henry's generation will chide their kids for being completely encased in perspex balls and living in golden palaces. If you don't like it don't put them in there! "I've implanted a telephone directly into his skull so I can track him down for the rest of his life. I know - I spoil them. "

Sometimes I'm a bit sad I don't have any children. A big headed, hairy child I could turn into a mythology obsessed nerd would have been nice. But I'm not sure I'm strong enough, selfless enough. Watching these two manage the ape-child, constantly, with infinite reserves of patience and self sacrifice, I'm not sure I have it in me. It's incredibly impressive. They hold down jobs as well! I have no idea how people do this. Being an uncle is about my level. The Funny Man.