I am writing this missive in Portugal, but by the time you read it I will be in my garage in Crawley, trying to knock my new tour show into shape while my children enjoy the remainder of their summer holidays, my wife panics about whether they have all the right things for the new academic year, and I wonder what the point of all this is.
I have had a wonderful two weeks with my family. Don’t get me wrong: there have been challenges. At the mini golf, the boys’ behaviour was so embarrassing that I threatened to book a flight to Gatwick the very next day. They were respectful enough to pretend to believe that their father, a man who once took them to the Christmas panto a day after the day the tickets were booked for, had the logistical nous to do such a thing.
Nevertheless, it has been very enjoyable, and I now find myself pondering the fact that I won’t see them very much over the next few months. I’m going on tour, and when I’m home I will have writing deadlines to meet. Please do not mistake this for a plea of “woe is me, the life of a tortured artist is much harder than you might think”: I am fully aware that I am lucky in the extreme, and I enjoy my job hugely. However, I was recently flicking through Facebook, hoping to distract myself, when I came across a story about Rick Moranis that does the rounds every so often. I say story; it’s just the fact that, following the tragic death of his wife, he walked away from his stellar acting career and became a full-time dad. A few years ago, he explained that he had no regrets.
Couple that with some stat I half remember from a recent conversation, that you spend over 60% of the time you are ever going to spend with your child before they are 10 and I have begun to freak out about work-life balance. I love my job, and I have laboured under the belief that I am doing what’s right for my family; but the fact I do love it means I can’t help questioning my motives. Going out to perform heart surgery feels noble, but “Daddy has to go out and tell people his unformed thoughts about stuff” doesn’t feel quite as selfless.
Every fourth tweet I receive is a joke about how I am always on TV; and last week my wife made a comment about how the house will be much calmer when I’m back on the road, which suggests that I am away so often she has concluded I am detrimental to her life.
So I have decided to take a step back. I am not going to do a Rick Moranis, as I think my constant presence could be damaging to the development of my children; but I am going to do other stuff for a bit. I am going to know what my kids’ teachers are called, without hesitation. I am going to try to fool my wife into thinking I might be beneficial to the family. I am going to aim to be, just for once, the first parent the kids come to when they hurt themselves, ideally without having caused the accident myself.
One of two things will happen. Next week, I might be writing about my happy and fulfilling new role as a “house husband”, or about the marital issues caused by my increased presence at home. What is most likely is that I’ll realise that I only made this decision because I was on holiday, and I’ll get home and try to pretend it never happened. A bit like that time I came back from Faliraki thinking I looked good in a trilby.
