Bad Mad Dad

Warming Up

8108/21028

Five Soleroless days and as you can see it's taking its toll

But we've finally hit 1% of the target, exceeding £5000 just before bedtime tonight.

£500,000 may seem a long way away and you might still believe that I am not going to do it, but I believe it will happen. Without me having to die to get the sympathy vote. You have to remember, people are suspicious that I can achieve such an impossible task. Many more people will donate as I get nearer to the 28 days.

I dropped the kids off at school, but as I had the dog with me I couldn't go in with them. Usually I watch Ernie with his backpack and sticky morning face, creeping like snail, unwillingly into his classroom, but today I got a text as I stood by the fence and was distracted. When I looked up Ernie was nowhere to be seen. It seemed most likely that he'd gone into the classroom already, but Shakespeare got it bang on and he usually moves as slowly as possible to get to the door and it didn't seem like enough time had passed (though it was a long text).

I had to trust that he'd made it and I'd been right by the gate so would surely have noticed him sneak out or be abducted by one of the other parents. But still your brain goes into overdrive. He isn't really enjoying school at the moment, what if he'd come up with a very out of character plan to skive off. This is a kid who is scared to go up to his bedroom alone, so it seemed unlikely that he'd hide in a bush til the coast was clear and then head off alone into Hitchin to smash bottles with a slingshot or smoke cigarettes by the bins behind a pub. And we'd just had a conversation about why you never go anywhere with a stranger, so surely he wouldn't have left with anyone. I'd also told him that as usual I'd watch him til he went through the door. Would he have noticed that I had been distracted and put a plan into action on the spur of the moment.

It was all nonsense. Of course he was in the classroom. And I'd look mad if I went to check or emailed the school. Because I would be mad.

And yet I spent the walk home thinking about the repercussions of all of this if my fears were proven correct. Sure Ernie would likely be in a lot of trouble or worse, but in this paranoid fantasy that was not my main worry. Or at least not the one that I concentrated on. I was thinking of how Catie would respond when 3.15pm came round and we discovered that Ernie hadn't been in class all day and I had to admit that I'd been looking at my phone and that I hadn't then gone to check he was all right, because I was worried I'd look insane.

Logic kept telling me that Ernie was definitely all right, but throughout the day I did keep wondering. But by lunchtime even if I rang the school to check he was there, it would be much too late if he wasn't.

I was pretty sure I'd see him again, but haunted by imagining a world without him (something that you fairly constantly have to face up to as a parent) and whether I'd be able to live with myself if this frankly preposterous scenario in my broken imagination came to pass.

I knew it was all nonsense. But it was nonsense that ate away at me. So when I later saw Ernie sitting at the kitchen table I gave him a big hug of relief and looked at him as if to say, "Look if you successfully skived off school today and got back in in time to be picked up and nobody noticed then that's OK. You keep my secret and I'll keep yours."

And no one would ever know the torment I’d been through or the terrible parent that I had been.

RHLSTP with Ivo Graham is now up wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's a clip

And Luton - come and see me at the Hat Factory doing Can I Have My Ball Back? on Friday! Plenty of tickets!