"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.

Go green for your prostate!

I am a self confessed tea addict. I have been for as long as I can remember and it will be a cold day in hell before I go more than about an hour and half without a brew. However, over the last six months the previously unthinkable has happened; as a result of my cancer I have ditched traditional tea in favour of green tea. And you should too, for the sake of your prostate.

Like Popeye giving up spinach in favour of carrots, Superman developing a taste for Kryptonite or Mary Berry deciding that baking's a bit shit afterall, switching away from black tea and its milky wonders, just wasn't something that I had ever considered possible. However, today - six months after ditching the PG - I can now only drink the green stuff, and I have no regrets whatsover. It's tastier, it's healthier and it's saving me a fortune in milk.

My indoctrination into the world of green tea began around three months before I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I was in the middle of a series of blood tests to measure levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in my blood. A raised PSA level can be an indicator of cancer, so I consequently read as much as I could on the subject to see how I could naturally lower my PSA level and improve my overall prostate health. This, it transpires, includes eating lots of tomatoes - ideally passata - pomegranates, olive oil, oily fish and green tea.

Go green, for your prostate!

I subsequently threw myself into this prostate diet and made my way through gallons of passata and a school or two of mackerel, neither of which particularly phased me. However, the thought of sacrificing my cup of tea for something I had only ever previously had in a chinese restaurant, filled me with dread. But the benefits were clear, green tea is packed with B vitamins and antioxidants with antibacterial, anti-viral and a whole host of other health benefits, most of which are missing from black tea. There has also been a great deal of research undertaken by white-jacketed boffins who know their way around tea bags and human organs and, although there is a fair bit of contradictory evidence as to the long term health benefits of green tea, most seem to conclude that it is better for you than black tea. Apparently it comes down to polyphenons, which can slow the progresion of prostate cancer and improve prostate health, and green tea has lots of them.

I was committed to making the change and endured a period of cold turkey in regards to traditional tea, eyeing Typhoo-drinkers with hatred and daydreaming about steaming mugs of hot tea with a dash of milk. However, my taste buds changed within a couple of weeks and I began to love my cups of green tea just as much as I had always loved the tea of old. What's more, it took half as long to make - bag in cup, pour on water, done - and eliminated the milk issue that had previously made me reluctant to accept tea from the over or under pourers in my office.

As for my prostate, it turns out that I had cancer anyway, so the tea switch was unnecessary in the end, but I'm nevertheless glad that I changed my cuppa and I'd urge you to do the same. There's not a great deal men can do to look after their prostates, but if drinking green tea, sticking a can of passata in your spag bol and the occasional mackerel sandwich can reduce your risk of a disease that kills more people in the UK than breast cancer, surely it's worth it.

Anyway, enough of all that, time to put the kettle on.

Why every parent secretly hates the sunshine

It’s the hottest early May Bank Holiday on record and as I write this I am sat outside in the garden, the children are playing blissfully on the climbing frame and I have an ice cold Coke at hand. All is well with the world, except it wasn’t about half an hour ago.

Unfortunately, the arrival of sunshine and of temperatures that send millions of Brits to A&E with undercooked sausage-related food poisoning, means that parents across the land are obligated to perform a ritual that sends blood pressure soaring; the stand-still-while-I-put-suncream-on-you nightmare.

Applying Factor 50 to your offspring is possibly one of the most stressful things you can do on a hot day. Right up there with dressing your children on a snow day, it’s one of those thankless tasks that parents have to endure. However, unlike clothes for the winter – which should ideally stay on for the duration of your child’s exposure to the cold – sun cream requires day-long attention, commencing with the drama of the initial application.

Headache in a bottle

Sun cream, for some reason, doesn’t rub into children’s skin. It’s like spraying them with chip fat, you liberally apply it all over their skin and then spend half an hour wiping it around their bodies before giving up and letting your children out into the sun looking like albinos. Then there’s the issue of staining. For some reason the manufacturers of sun cream have never managed to make a product that, once mistakenly dolloped on to your child’s favourite T-shirt, is easy to wash off. The result is that my children’s summer wardrobe is essentially a collection of oil stained rags.

Next up, once you’ve gone through the stress of applying the suncream, you have the pressure of wondering when you need to top it up. How long does it last? No one knows. Does sweat decrease its sunblocking capabilties? Probably. And what about the swimming pool? Surely once they’ve been swimming in the sea or in the hotel pool – with all the other children, meaning that by midday there’s an oil slick covering the pool that’s a danger to passing seabirds – I have to reapply? The bottle says no, but my parental instinct says yes.

Is it worth it? Why can’t someone invent a better solution to sunburn than suncream? We’re meant to enjoy the sunshine and be grateful for the nice weather but come on, let’s all be honest for a moment, 10 minutes is probably enough. Life is so much easier when it’s cloudy and overcast.

And if anyone is prone to disagree with me, let me say just one further word in relation to the suncream nightmare: sand.

Point made.

Why you should never watch Star Wars with a seven year-old...

As a child of the late seventies, I grew up with Star Wars. I collected the action figures, I role played epic  space battles with my brothers, I used sticks as lightsabres and I had the obligatory Star Wars duvet cover and lunch box set. The Star Wars universe captured my imagination and the magic of George Lucas’s creation has stayed with me throughout my life, reignited at regular intervals with the release of new films that allowed me to momentarily tune out of real life and escape into the fantastical world of the Star Wars universe anew. Well, that was the case until about a year ago anyway, when I introduced my son to Episode IV and everything changed.

Introducing your children to Star Wars is a rite of passage, or so I thought. For years I had wanted to indoctrinate my eldest into this new chapter of his film-viewing life, carefully choosing the right moment to do so. Prior to this point his movie experiences had been restricted to Pixar stories of talking cars and perennially lost fish; soft, cuddly and entirely good films that were a feast for the eyes, but bereft of any decent baddies or heroic human characters that he would want to emulate in the playground. At seven, and as he was beginning to tire of Woody and Buzz, I thought that the time was right to dig out the DVD of Episode IV, close the curtains, turn up the volume and open his eyes to a whole new galaxy, far, far away.

"I should have got a Land Cruiser!"

In my mind I had pictured this moment as being one where the boy sat quietly, absorbed in wonder as the saga unfolded before him and the names of Skywalker, Kenobi, Solo and Vader became implanted in his imagination as seeds of a lifelong love for the franchise. In reality, it was like watching a movie with a highly irritating waist-high robot. Question after question after question tumbled out of his mouth as he deconstructed every scene, picking holes in the characters, creatures, vehicles and spaceships, like a 70s TV detective disassembling the murder suspect’s seemingly watertight alibi. He was ruthless and unforgiving, caring not a jot for the sentiment of a movie that had meant so much to me and, worst of all, a lot of what he was saying made perfect sense.

“Why’s Luke’s speeder floating? What’s the point? Why doesn’t it just have wheels, it’s only a little bit off the ground?”

It was a valid point. Luke would have surely saved himself a few quid if he’d just got himself a Toyota Land Cruiser and made do.

“Why do the stormtroopers wear suits of armour all the time, even when they’re not in battle?”

Again, fair point. Do stromtroopers sit watching telly in full battle gear, or is there such a thing as casual wear for the Empire’s army of faithful soldiers? I’d never thought about that until now, it’s ridiculous.

“Why’s there no blood when you get hit by a laser?”

“How can R2D2 go upstairs?”

“Why’s Obi Wan Kenobi wearing a dressing gown?”

“Why’s Jabba The Hut so dangerous, he’s a big slug, you just have to run away?”

“What’s in the middle of the Death Star?”

And perhaps most unexpected of all…

“Where’s Chewbacca’s willy?”

I may well have watched the film a hundred times, but in one viewing - his first viewing - my son had seen things I had never seen before. Chewbacca is, by all accounts, naked - bar an over the shoulder number that seems to serve no purpose -  but despite being tackle-out 24/7, we never see the wookie’s undercarriage, a fact that my boy spotted within 10 minutes of Chewie’s first appearance.

This incessant questioning continued throughout the film and subsequently through Episodes V and VI. However, despite turning into the grand inquisitor, he quickly developed a love for the films, ensuring that the questions continued long after the credits had rolled?

“If C3P0 is so clever, why can’t he walk better?”

“How do the houses in Cloud City stay up in the air?”

“How did the Ewoks build all their weapons so quickly?”

“Why does the Emperor want to kill everybody?”

“How does Darth Vader breathe and talk at the same time?”

It seems that while the children of today struggle to take things at face value, the magic of Star Wars can thankfully live on. Unfortunately, however, it also means that the magic of Star Wars merchandise lives on too and my penalty for introducing my seven-year-old to it all is that I’m now forever building Star Wars Lego with him. It’s a tough life. Now, where did we get to on the 7,541 piece Millenium Falcon?

The Joy of Beavers: Every dad's need-to-know guide...

It's unfortunate that the word 'beaver' is often associated with female genitalia. It's even more unfortunate, with this in mind, that the most junior section of the scouting movement in the UK is called Beavers. Explaining to other adults that you habitually spend your Monday evenings surrounded by hot and sweaty Beavers therefore often leads to awkward silences and a rapid change of subject.

Beavers, however, is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I am an Assistant Beaver Leader and I have been for the past two years, joining with my son - when he was six and I was considerably older. At first I became a parent helper, for the primary reason that it enabled my son to jump the waiting list, but I was also keen for him to join the scouting world. I had fond memories of my own experiences as a cub - mostly getting very dirty and throwing gooseberry yogurts at my mates - and helping seemed like a great way to share in it all with my son too, at least until he was old enough to be embarrassed by my presence.

My parent helper status soon changed to that of Assistant Beaver Leader and, when the colony's existing leadership team decided to move up to Cubs, I rapidly recruited two friends with similarly aged offspring and together we fast-tracked our way to leadership of the Monday night colony.

As you are reading this I am imagining that you are forming a picture of me as an Arkela-type figure with a proud history of Scouting and an intricate knowledge of Lord Baden Powell's ethos and beliefs. Either that, or you've got me down as a wannabe Bear Grylls, complete with an Evian bottle of my own urine. The truth, I'm afraid to say, is that neither I nor my new colleagues had a clue about scouting when we joined our little group. Indeed, you could say we were ging gang clueless. However, we were pleased to discover that the anorak and thermos image of scout leaders past is no longer true of the modern scouting movement. The ethos is simply around providing new learning experiences for youngsters in a fun and engaging environment, letting them try things that they may never have tried before and safely allowing them to push the boundaries of their comfort zones. 

For the adults, meanwhile - who are all unpaid volunteers - the experience provides something completely different. Leading a group of 18 six to eight-year-olds is as rewarding as it is challenging. Their attention spans are minute, so all your sessions have to effectively be broken into five or ten minute chunks, but their fascination and enthusiasm is infectious. Sit a group of five Beavers around a table and tell them you're going to allow them to light a candle with a match and you'll be rewarded with five of the broadest grins you'll ever see in your life. You're giving them freedom and responsibility that they may never have experienced before, at home or at school, and they soak it up like sponges.

Of course leading brings with it responsibility and a duty of care - together with a baffling amount of administration when it comes to awarding badges - but none of that side of leadership should ever put anyone off trying it for themselves. It is a genuine privilege to be charged with a group of young people for an hour a week and I think every dad out there should try their hand as a parent helper and see how they get on. 

Scouting is the UK's largest mixed youth organisation with 450,000 young people currently enjoying the new adventures that it brings. However, every colony, pack, group and district is run by volunteers and it is only through them, giving up their time, that your children can enjoy all the incredible things that Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Explorers can give them. So my rally cry to you all is to join me and the army of volunteers out there and discover just how rewarding modern day scouting actually is.

Dib dib.