My vote for the most misery-inducing words on Twitter — even beating “future Prime Minister Liz Truss” — is “some personal news”. That is how some deeply annoying people prefer to announce their latest career project, whether it is their new commissioning gig, Netflix series, radio show, podcast and so on.
It is hard not to read the news of other people’s brilliant careers and contrast it with my own productivity which, now that the children have broken up for the summer holidays, makes Boris Johnson’s departure from No 10 feel positively hasty. It is not that I am short of ambition — I have a range of projects, that I am currently not working on. The reason is because alongside trying to have a career I am also trying to be a good husband and father.
The definition of what it is to be a good father has changed since I was a boy. My own dad, a first generation working-class Pakistani migrant, believed his fatherly duties began and ended with ensuring there was food on the table. It was my mother who was the present and available parent, but even then I did not benefit from so much of what is now considered as the basics of decent parenting.
My parents never played with their children and my mother never read to me — in fairness, she had a good excuse what with not being able to read English. I didn’t feel like I missed out at the time because that was what I knew but I am sure that all of this has affected how I raise my own children. My wife has a job and career of her own so we try share our parenting duties far more than my own parents ever did.
I have few memories of my late father being anything other than a stern autocrat, and as a reaction to that I make sure I give my children all that I did not get from my own dad — I like to tell silly jokes and I also tell my children that I love them.
My own father was barely a presence in my childhood and I don’t want that for my children so I try hard to be present in their lives — but this comes at a price. I have to accept that, while others might be working on their screenplay until late into the night, my work days, when I am doing drop-off and pick-ups, have to end when I collect the kids from school.
I have to accept that others might be polishing their book treatments at the same time as I am reading to my son or listening to my daughter talking about what she is up to at school.
It is not always easy watching others tweet about their great new jobs but the truth is that being a decent dad means accepting that you can’t have it all — and recognising fatherhood as the most meaningful personal project of them all.
In other news...
I have been following the Conservative Party leadership contest with the same horrified fascination that normal people derive from watching Love Island. The new leader is going to be either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss: at first glance this seems to be good news for those keen on greater diversity in public life — Britain will be getting either its first non-white prime minister or its third female PM. Their educational backgrounds, however, reveal a different picture: Sunak and Truss went to Oxford and even studied the same degree (PPE).
I didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge so I have a complicated relationship with the Oxbridge dominance of the British establishment. I hate that it exists — but I also slightly wish that I was part of it.
The new Prime Minister, like 28 previous PMs — including Boris Johnson — will be yet another educated at Oxford. It just goes to show how, even when things look like they are changing on the outside, below the surface they stay the same.
