Who's The Daddy: Being with the ‘it’ crowd just isn’t the same anymore

Strong and independent grown-up daughters? Check. Every minute spent away from work is now your own? Check. Your hand isn’t constantly in your pocket, bankrolling whatever short-lived fad your kids are into this week? Also check.

Of course, there’s a downside to everything. Regular readers may recall daughter #1 went around South America with a buddy for three months just a few weeks after her 19th birthday (great for her, absolutely terrifying for us) and daughter #2 effectively left home a few months after her 16th birthday to go to LIPA Sixth Form in Liverpool and is now at “Big LIPA” doing a drama degree.

Yeah, it’s pretty quiet around here. Having said that, daughter #2 paid us a flying 24-hour visit last week, ostensibly for a dental check up (in and out in three minutes, all fine) but parents with grown and flown kids will take anything they can get.

When you’ve had a taste of freedom, and all the other adulting stuff you’re suddenly expected to do in your late teens and early 20s, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, as wonderful as being handed a plate with your lovely dinner on it that someone else has made.

Daughter #2’s brief but welcome stop off was a prelude to her weekend which sounds like a prize on a game show that Ant and Dec might present. Two nights in London, Harry Styles (with special guests Wet Leg) at Wembley Stadium and two West End shows, accompanied by one of her best friends in the whole world.

When you’re in your early 50s your idea of a great weekend is a little different. Two consecutive nights of eight hours of unbroken sleep, maybe lunch or dinner out somewhere nice and taking the dog out on a longer walk than usual. Actually, that sounds pretty good.

A weekend at Glastonbury surrounded by shrieking, drug-addled teenagers was positively life-affirming in 1992 but would feel like the darkest Black Mirror episode imaginable in 2023. And yes, that includes Loch Henry, starring “Rose Westie”.

Like Grandpa Simpson put it back in the day: “I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’, and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you.”

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