"Shoes on, coat on!"

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Every day and every time we leave the house, these are the words that my wife and I find ourselves saying, often in a raised voice and always - without fail - repeated at least six times;

"PUT...YOUR...SHOES...AND....COATS....ON!"

It's a simple ask. I'm not requesting that my children craft their own shoes from whatever they can find in the recycling bin, nor am I asking them to sew together a homemade parker. These are the very basic elements required for a trip outdoors in the cold, be it to school, the shops or wherever we're next due to taxi them.

Shoe dunnit?

However, for my children, locating aforementioned items and attaching them to their person is like assigning a body of work to Ethan Hunt! It's also, for them, the hardest thing they have ever been asked to do, every time.

The protestations are endless, as if shoes are an optional, luxury item - the feet equivalent of earrings - that require marathon levels of physical exertion to put on. As for coats, they manage to find new ways not to wear, or to half wear, their coats every day. One arm in, one out; tied around the waist; half hanging down the back; hood only, cape-style or on, but entirely open to the howling gale and torrential rain that greets them as they step out of the door.

Procrastination also reaches new records whenever the time comes to don shoes and coats. The toilet is suddenly and urgently needed; brushing of teeth is remembered; socks need to be found (an entirely separate blog post required here) or truly fascinating dirt has to be played with. Anything to put off the practice of covering ones feet and torso for the outdoors.

It's a battle that drains my soul on a daily basis as no matter how much time is left to get out of the front door, it is never enough. The protracted shoe/coat drama has made us late more times than I care to remember, and it's turned me into a liar too.

Truth: "So sorry we're late, William took 15 minutes to put one shoe on and Molly threw her coat on the pavement."

Inevitable lie: "Traffic!"

So I feel it's time for an experiment. Starting tomorrow I am no longer going to say the words; "shoes and coats on." I am not going to remind, nag, shout or otherwise lose my rag, and we will leave the house on time, whatever state of dress my children are in. If that means going to school in slippers, or facing the next winter storm in a t-shirt, so be it.

I'm taking a stand for all similarly anguished parents. The drama stops here.

Now, where did I put my coat?

The joy, and pain, of Junior ParkRun

There is something fundamentally wrong about setting an alarm on a Sunday morning. Like wearing your pyjamas to work or serving beans on toast for Christmas lunch, it's just not something that civilised folk should ever have to do. Yet I find myself awoken by the unwelcome chimes of our Echo Dot each and every Sabbath as my family and I undergo a painful weekly ritual, otherwise known as getting ourselves to Junior ParkRun.

Children and hangovers at Junior ParkRun

For those moon dwellers unfamiliar with the concept of Junior ParkRun, these are free, weekly, timed runs of two kilometres, for children. Taking place in parks across the country - and sometimes alongside adult ParkRun events - they embody all that is good about the sport of running. Organised, run and marshalled by thousands of selfless volunteers, Junior ParkRun events bring parents and children together to enjoy the uplifting experience of a mass participation race; running together as a family and as part of a large group of like-minded families; embracing the opportunity to be outdoors and instilling a love for exercise from an early age. It is entirely good and entirely worthy. The issue is that it starts at 9am on a Sunday.

In our house, Sunday mornings are a battle. For starters, no one wants to get up and the alarm is routinely ignored until the last possible moment. This is immediately followed by intense 'I don't want to go' debates with children who are glued to Saturday morning television, rushed breakfasts, lost running kit, disappearing car keys and the weekly search for barcodes. The day of rest, in short, kicks off with the most stressful 45 minutes of the week.

Somehow we find ourselves in the car and arrive at the park with around 30 seconds of breathing space before the warmup begins. A quick glance around the assembled parents, however, provides comforting reassurance that we have not faced this battle alone. Every degree of hangover is present and the mismatched kit, unkempt hair and washed out faces are evidence of a single unifying fact that is common to us all; we are here for them, not us.

I feel the same, although I usually always follow Junior ParkRun with my own Sunday long run, which means I turn up looking spectacularly overdressed for the two kilometre race that lies ahead. Running tights, trail shoes and a water bladder with a couple of energy gels protruding from it, makes me the most over prepared parent here. The puzzled looks from those still half-asleep folk in jeans and odd shoes only confirms the fact. Rest assured though, should any of the youngsters need a pick-me-up a kilometre in, I'll be on hand with an intense carbohydrate hit for them!

The pain of the wake up call and the fight to get to the start line is, of course, completely forgotten once the race itself gets underway. Running with your children is a joyous experience. Whether they're pushing for a new PB or just happy to get around, the fact that you are there with them, experiencing a competitive race together, is fantastically special. It never fails to bring my little family closer together and the finish line - with proud parents cuddling contented, rosy-cheeked children - is one of the happiest places on earth.

It's also all over within 20 minutes, so you're all back in the car before you know it, smugly content that you have started the day with a healthy dose of exercise and - if you're like us - contemplating breakfast number two.

No one ever regrets getting up for Junior ParkRun. So fight the Sunday morning battle, it's worth it.

A parent's guide to World Cup addiction...

We've finally reached the knockout stages. It's been two weeks of intensive group matches, three games a day, goals by the bucket load and a wallchart that has become the centre of our seven-year-old's world.

"Daddy, what were the scores?"

"Daddy, who scored?"

"Daddy, can I check the group standings on your phone?"

"Daddy, will every England game finish 6-1?"

In the space of a fortnight our football-loving son has turned into a World Cup obsessive. At school, we hear, there are arguments over who will be Jesse Lingard at playtime - although apparently no one wants to be Gary Cahill - and at home his England T-shirt is now 14-days unwashed. He's collecting Pringles cans for a free pop-up goal, he's judging national teams' supporters by the quality of their fancy dress and he's beginning to sound a lot like me when watching the live games.

Gazza and his boobs

This will be his first World Cup, the one he vaguely remembers when he has children of his own and he will speak to them of Trippier, Kane, Alli and co in the same way as I talk about Lineker, Platt and Barnes today. It's just a pity he doesn't have an England team song to recall with the modern day equivalent of Waddle and Hoddle swaying infront of a microphone pretending they can sing.

And while today's players are arguably more inspirational for their professionalism and regimented approach to training and playing, I can't help but feel that today's kids are missing out on a Gascoigne. Football for the vast majority of children in the UK will never be any more than a bit of fun, they won't make it to the Premier League and to international glory, but they will make it to the playground and the park with their friends, enjoying the fun of a spontaneous kickaround. But where's the fun in today's England team? Who's sporting the comedy fake breasts and throwing cake in the Captain's face? Answer, no one. And if they were, the chances are that the press would have a field day, social media would go into meltdown and the boobied player would be dropped faster than you could say "terrible example to the kids."

Anyway, in our house, it really is just a bit of fun and, although the filling in of the aforementioned wallchart within 30 seconds of the final whistle of every game is beginning to get a little draining, we're enjoying seeing the world's greatest footballers flounce about and crash out.

Roll on Colombia on Tuesday.

COMING SOON: How to deal with your child's crushing disappointment at England's World Cup exit.

Why you and the kids should run off to the circus!

I hadn't been to the circus since I was in single figures myself and my abiding memory of that visit to the big top, on the Clifton Downs in Bristol, was...well...non-existent. I knew that I had been - my parents had told me - but the experience had clearly made such a startling impression on me that I have wiped all trace of it from my memory.

When my kids therefore produced a flyer for the local circus from their school bags last Friday evening, I glanced over it with the kind of enthusiasm I usually reserve for motor insurance renewal notices. However, their little faces were full of hope and excitement, the glossy flyer promised spectacular entertainment and family fun, and they had recently seen The Greatest Showman so were fully expecting Hugh Jackman and the Bearded Lady to have descended upon our little Hampshire town.

The price, meanwhile, was sceptically reasonable; £7 each with the school bag flyer discount was akin to a trip the cinema, and the promise of 'spectacular entertainment' was surely preferable to the promise of mid-film boredom and spilt popcorn. So, against character and experience, I found myself agreeing to take the little scamps on Saturday afternoon.

Man in ring: Just one of the Circus Wonderland highlights...

The circus that had deposited itself across a large swathe of our local park was calling itself 'Circus Wonderland' which, at first glance, sent my sceptical radar into overdrive. Usually, whenever anything calls itself a 'wonderland' the reality is that you are simply left wondering where your money has gone as you traipse disappointingly around 40 year-old displays and out-of-order rides on the promenade of an over-rated seaside town. This Wonderland, however, did not disappoint.

Having parted with our £21, we found our seats - of which there were plenty still vacant at show time - and settled back as a variety of stylishly clad circus folk walked around selling programmes, whirly lights on sticks and other such fun-fayre-esque tat. Unflinchingly batting off the "I want one" demands of my youngest, we waited patiently for the show to begin.

As the curtain went up and our entertainers made their way into the ring it was at that point that I realised that the people who had just sold us our popcorn (yes, no escape) and touted their tat in our direction, were also the people who would now be throwing themselves around this tent for our amusement. However, despite my apprehension at the two-job workload of our circus talent, it was soon clear that these folk could multi-task. First up was popcorn-seller and hula-hoop/spinning-things queen, Grace, who proceeded to spin multiple hula hoops before upping the ante and moving on to tubes, platforms and flaming torches. My five-year-old daughter, who can just about manage two rotations with a single hula-hoop, was utterly enthralled.

Thereafter we were treated to some high-flying rope-based acrobatics, a spellbinding rollerskating brother and sister who spun each other around on a small circular platform, some incredible juggling and hat throwing from a sweaty, bare-chested Spanish chap - who had earlier been selling furry caterpillar things on sticks - and a clowning double-act that smashed plates, threw sweets, squirted water and cream-pied a member of the audience. In other words, this two-hour show managed to pack in all the elements you would expect to see at the circus, from daring roof-top acrobatics, to slapstick clowning, together with some fantastically over elaborate and amusing dancing, arm waving, whooping and self-congratulation.

Circus Wonderland proved to be two hours of brilliant, fast-paced, all-action, value-for-money entertainment. It was, as my TV-addict son expertly summed up; "like watching Britain's Got Talent without the judges." So, if you get the chance, pay a visit to your local circus and help to fill the inexplicably empty seats. Unlike the over-priced rip-off that is our local annual pantomime, this is worth every penny.

And if you think you can multi-task, wait until you see the candyfloss maker/trapeze guy!

"Daddy, can you draw a donkey?"

The passage of time has thankfully seen me refine and improve most of life’s crucial, need-to-master skills so that now – in the role of parent – I can pass this knowledge and experience on to my children. I can help them to read, to write, to add, subtract and divide, to cook, to catch, to appreciate the world around them, to build Lego, to ride their bikes and tie their shoelaces. However, there’s one area of my life where my skills have not progressed in any way since around the age of three; drawing.

I have never been able to draw. My hands are utterly incapable of translating the images in my head on to paper; my cars look like bricks, my trees like forks and my people like grotesquely mutilated genetic accidents. I have no sense of scale or proportion, my faces all look like Sloth from The Goonies and I struggle to remember what basic things look like. So, bizarrely, when my five-year-old daughter asked me whether I can draw a donkey this morning, I heard myself responding; “yes, of course I can,” before accepting a pen and a piece of paper and being greeted by a smiling and expectant face.

There is a 36-year difference between these two pictures!

Looking into the eyes of a little girl who would like nothing more than for her Dad to draw the best picture of a donkey ever, in the world, ever, is a beautiful and terrifying  thing. I didn’t want to disappoint, but I knew that I had about as much chance of successfully penning a donkey as I did of producing a much needed rabbit out of this particular hat. Nevertheless, I gave it a go and began work on my four-legged beast. Of course, we all know what donkeys look like – scruffy-looking miniature horse-like things – but translating that mental image into a physical picture was beyond me.  The result was staggeringly bad. I had managed to draw some kind of dog-horse hybrid and I could tell from my daughter’s lack of words that she was struggling to comprehend my inability to draw such a basic creature.

“Really, Daddy, really? That’s it?”

This was not my finest hour and it was made worse by the fact that, at five, my daughter is developing a real passion for art. She pours over her books on how to draw animals, covering sheet after sheet of paper with colourful flowers, family pictures, lions, giraffes, houses and trees. It’s wonderful to see and the walls of our house are slowly becoming covered with her pictures and portraits as she develops her skills with paints and pencils. Clearly, of course, this talent comes from her mother’s side of the family.

Of course, my own cack-handiness at drawing is not what any of this is actually about. My children are growing into young people who have their own skills, abilities and talents, ones that they will develop and hone over the years and which will serve them well in the future. Whether as artists, writers, footballers, singers, plumbers, hairdressers, racing drivers or musicians, their passions will drive their decision making in regards to school and careers, and I am fascinated to see where this takes them.

When I was their age I remember making my own comic books and magazines for my friends and I ended up working as a journalist, so as my daughter can already outdraw me at age five, perhaps she’s going to create a name for herself as a cartoonist, illustrator or artist.

Fast forward thirty years and, as she’s being interviewed by The Guardian following her latest exhibition of award-winning artwork I can see the pullquote now; “It all started when, aged five, I knew I could draw a better donkey than my Dad.” And if it did, I'll be the proudest incompetent artist on earth!

SATs at seven, a test too far!

At my son's school they call them quizzes and this week he and his seven-year-old peers are in full quizzing mode. They're facing comprehension quizzes, literacy quizzes and maths quizzes, without a sing off, music round or meat raffle in sight. This isn't quizzing in the pub sense of the word, this is SATs time; the state testing of seven-year-olds.

Giving exams to children for whom tying shoelaces is still a struggle seems a bit too Big Brother for my liking. I understand the arguements for assessing national averages and the performance of primary schools, but what are the children getting out of this, and the teachers for that matter? Neither party wants to be doing SATs at such a young age. The kids would rather be learning in a structured environment, independently, in a group with their friends or one-on-one with the teacher or LSA. The teachers, meanwhile, don't need the added stress of getting their charges through tests - with results that will reflect well on them - when the challenge of dealing with 30 seven-year-olds is sufficient in itself to drive most to the nearest bottle of gin.

Why are we testing seven-year-olds?

We are also not a United Kingdom when it comes to SATs tests and England in fact stands alone as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't have them. A quick Google search into the subject also worryingly brought up the following:

1. SATs do not improve pupils' learning or raise standards (Cambridge Primary Review)
2. SATs can have a negative impact on children's learning (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information Centre)
3. SATs can have a negative impact on children's wellbeing (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information Centre)
4. SATs reduce pupil's access to a broad and balanced curriculum (OFSTED)
5. SATs are not a reliable way of measuring achievement (King's College, London)

So if all this is the case, if a survey of 10,000 parents in 2009 found that 85% disagreed with them and if over 4,000 schools boycotted them in 2010, why are SATs still taking place across England?

I fear that it's because we've become too hooked on National School League Tables to determine where we send our children to school and where we live. Parents choosing homes will scour the tables to compare schools' scores, while Estate Agents will do likewise in order to increase the asking price for homes that fall within the catchment areas of the high scorers. This, in turn, means that only families who can afford these homes can move into them, bringing their privileged children with them, who will of course go on to help the schools to maintain or improve their scores.

Is this right? Is it fair? Of course it's not.

And what about the seven-year-olds in all this, what happened to school being a place of both learning and fun? These precious primary years should be free of the pressure of testing, which will come all too quickly when the children move on to secondary school. Primary schools should be the places at which our children learn to love learning, where the teachers can nurture their potential and prepare them for the more academic learning that will follow in the years ahead. How can we expect children to develop a passion for story writing, science, drama, art, music or sport if they are not given a fair chance to experience these in a curriculum that is weighted towards those areas that are tested at seven?

I'd love to know whether children in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are doing better or worse as a result of not taking SATs at seven, although I think I know the answer to that one already. At least, if we are going to quiz our kids, we could be upskilling them now on the vital trivia knowledge they're going to need when they get to the age when they can join us in the Fox and Hounds on a Thursday evening.

#MHAW: It's good to talk...

It's Mental Health Awareness Week and Twitter is awash with a fantastic array of initiatives and awareness campaigns, as well as with some commendably open and honest personal accounts of individuals' battles with mental health. This is something that can affect any of us at any time and I am not afraid to admit that I have struggled - and am still struggling - with my own mental health in the wake of my cancer.

I was lucky, my cancer was caught early and my treatment has, by all accounts, hopefully cured me. However, this terrifyingly close encounter with my own mortality has left my emotions scrambled. I now - three months after surgery - have insomnia, often find myself feeling inexplicably low, unsure what should come next, where I should be focusing my energies and on the verge of tears at the most unexpected of times. I'm not sad though, I know how lucky I am and am incredibly thankful for the life-saving treatment and compassionate care I received. However, I still have the spectre of 'why?' bouncing around inside my skull.

'Why?' Is such a pointless and ultimately destructive question. It's sole purpose is to make us question things, more often than not about ourselves, our actions and the things we cannot control. Why did I develop prostate cancer, when the odds of doing so at my age are 10,000 to one? Why did I have to go through six tortuous months of tests before my diagnosis? Why did this happen to me when I have two young children to take care of? Why do I now have to live with the fear of my cancer returning?

The world's most destructive word?

But 'Why?' only ever leads to fear and that can be a difficult hole to dig yourself out of. The more you dwell on it, the deeper the hole gets and even when you try everything possible to take your mind off it, a glimpse of a cancer advert on the telly or the word 'cancer' in a newspaper is enough to send you back down the hole.

I know I need support to come to terms with what has happened to me over the last year and, with the support of my wife, I'm going to make sure I get it. I don't have the answers, but I'm hoping that those who do can help me to draw a line under this chapter of my life and get on with living the rest of it, as a husband, a dad and a cancer survivor.

My advice to you, if you're struggling to come to terms with your diagnosis, treatment or life after cancer, is to reach out too. There are some fantastic organisations out there that can provide counselling and psychological support, over the phone or in person.

As Bob Hoskins once said; it's good to talk.