I brush my teeth assiduously every morning and every night. Jenny is more lax and, as a result, the kids are also negligent. Jenny’s teeth are often stained from coffee.

Play with me, Daddy, tickle me.

My eleven-year-old daughter, Maeve, tickles me and runs away from me shrieking, urging me to chase her. I take after her, giant steps at a time. This is our snatch and grab and tickle game.

Jenny can never let anything go. There was the time Maeve was almost knocked down by a car driven by another child’s mother. This mother in question is always talking about how desperate the weather is. My kids call her ‘desperate weather’. It has a kind of depressing comedy. Inches away from an impact with Maeve, she tried to blame the ice and the desperate weather. I hadn’t dwelt on it, but I was really angry at the time. Jenny ranted to high heaven about the school, and the parents, and how they didn’t give a flying fuck about other people’s children. I endured as much of it as I was capable of, and then I stopped listening.

Sometimes things become too much for me, and I break out of the circle temporarily, and when this happens I could be justified for taking the opportunity to hurt her pretty face, although this is never my actual intention.

When I hit her, which isn’t often, I am careful not to go too deep around her cheekbones because her cheekbones are a great feature of hers. Delicacy abounds.

I often watch her in the kitchen as she plays cards or Scrabble with Maeve. Her hands rest on her cheekbones, slightly curled. Such long fingers. They talk while they play.

2. The Under-elevens

January 2017

I like to lead out the football team on a Sunday morning in the coldness of the winter months.

This particular Sunday, we are well braced, ready for the onslaught of a team from a place that no one has heard of. Lots of shouting and screaming and my team of psyched-up kids in a heap of frustration and bruises. I keep their spirits up by dishing out mini Mars Bars at half-time.

There is only so much chocolate can do.

Mikey and Joey try to score an extra Mars Bar each because I’m their dad. I stop them in their tracks.

I don’t mind the banter with Maurice, it is well-intentioned. That ad, he says to me, with your man sending a text when he’s on the road and the old crash bang wallop routine and it wouldn’t kill you to put it away – it hits home, don’t you think, Des? Its impact has to be rewarded. Not many ads these days do that to you.

I have a dream, Maurice.

What’s that, Des?