Dad You Suck: And other things my children tell me. Tim Dowling

are we going to do today?’ my wife asks.

      ‘I’m going to buy a new printer.’

      ‘I wish you’d buy me a printer,’ she says.

      ‘I’m going to get a printer for both of us,’ I say. ‘A wireless printer that will print everything from everywhere.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘I think so.’

      The printer I end up buying is black and twice the size of the old one. It looks like Darth Vader’s head. I carry it up to my office, where I spend a sweltering half-hour crawling around under my desk with wires. The configuration process is meant to be straightforward, but it’s not, and I have to back up and start again a few times. Then I go downstairs and repeat the process on my wife’s computer, which is a different make and requires a different installation procedure.

      Finally, with the afternoon gone, I find a picture of the dog on my wife’s computer and press Print. Nothing seems to happen, but when I go up to my office a picture of the dog is waiting in the printer tray, richly coloured and exquisitely detailed. It’s a miracle.

      ‘Look,’ I say, showing it to the oldest one.

      ‘Did you just print that?’ he says.

      ‘I printed it,’ I say, ‘from downstairs.’

      ‘Whoa,’ he says.

      The next day, I’m at my desk looking up the word ‘ineluctably’ to make sure I don’t really mean ‘inexorably’, when the printer beeps and grinds into life. Oh my God, I think. What have I done? I didn’t even touch anything! I watch as it sucks a sheet of paper into its belly and judders with such force that it rocks the spindly little table I’ve set it on.

      The piece of paper slides out and lands on the floor. I pick it up. It says, ‘HI DAD’ on it. It knows me, I think. It knows it’s mine.

      Late at night I creep up to my office to check my email before bed. I should know by now that emails of promise rarely hit one’s inbox after 11 p.m., but one can dream.

      While trying to delete some fresh junk mail I hit an unknown combination of keys with a fat thumb and the computer starts to read its screen to me.

      ‘Subject – mega deal on drill bits and power files,’ it says, in a loud robot voice.

      ‘Sorry?’ I say.

      ‘Reply to no reply at tool shop direct dot co dot UK.’

      ‘Shut up,’ I say, clicking the mouse repeatedly. I try to turn down the volume, but pressing the mute key only makes the screen scroll upwards.

      ‘So now you’ve changed what the buttons mean?’ I say.

      ‘Please read,’ it says. ‘A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.’

      ‘Oh my God,’ I say, kneading the keyboard with my fists. ‘Are you planning to say the entire internet?’ It ignores me and carries on. I go to bed, shutting my office door tightly behind me.

      The next morning the computer is still talking. I try to ignore it and get down to work, but the voice starts saying every letter I type. When I hit the space bar, it says, ‘Space’. After an hour of this, I do what I have to do.

      ‘Help!’ I scream.

      ‘What do you want?’ says the oldest one, who is drifting past the door in his pyjamas, laptop open under his chin.

      ‘Please consider the environment before printing this email,’ says the computer.

      ‘I can’t live like this,’ I say. ‘Make it stop.’

      ‘Command F5,’ says the boy, somehow managing to roll his eyes without peeling them from the screen.

      ‘Voiceover off,’ says the computer.

      ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘That was really beginning to …’ The boy is already gone.

      A morning like any other: I go up to my computer and jab the space bar to make it come to life. Only it doesn’t. I wait a while, trying to determine how much unsaved work lies beyond the black screen. Eventually impatience overrides caution and I turn the computer off and then back on again. Except it doesn’t come back on.

      I breathe in slowly. I tell myself it’s too early to panic over the possibility of catastrophe. I only really care about one thing on my present computer, the aforementioned unsaved work. For the sake of argument, let’s call it a nearly completed book. I do sort of need that. I turn the computer off and on again, but there is not much difference between the two.

      I’m not an idiot. I email the updated document to myself at intervals precisely in case this sort of thing happens. My priority is to find the most recent version and secure it on another computer.

      Except that the most recent email for some reason contains only the first quarter of the document. The newest complete version in my inbox is months old. It turns out I am an idiot after all. Now, I tell myself quietly, you may panic.

      I shriek for the middle one, forcing him from his bed. He comes downstairs, stares into space as I carefully explain the situation so far, taps the space bar, clicks the mouse, and tries a few odd keystroke combinations.

      ‘Dunno,’ he says finally.

      ‘What?’ I say.

      Three days and a dozen helpline calls later, no one in my family is speaking to me. My throat is sore from shouting. My knee and left fist hurt from hours spent pounding one with the other. My children have seen a side of me I have never wanted to show them: panicked, irrational, brimming over with uncontrolled fury. They’ve seen it before, to be fair; just not this many days in a row.

      My hard drive is in the possession of a man in Wandsworth who isn’t returning my calls, possibly because of the tone of my voice in all the messages I keep leaving. My wife rings from the M3, her idea of a safe distance.

      ‘Any luck?’ she asks.

      ‘No,’ I say, trying out a new tone of giddy resignation. ‘My life is ruined, but whatever. That’s cool.’

      ‘Gotta go,’ my wife says.

      ‘Me, too,’ I say. ‘I have another call.’

      It’s Darren from Data Solutions, ringing to let me know that my hard drive is unreadable, and quite possibly blank.

      ‘OK, Darren,’ I say. ‘That’s cool.’

      I hang up and start searching through all my inboxes and outboxes again, trying different keywords. A draft email I’ve never seen before suddenly pops up: a complete, unsent version of the document from five days before.

      ‘I found you,’ I say. Unfortunately I can’t think of anyone to ring who would, at this point, be pleased for me. Not even Darren.

      A week later, I walk into the kitchen to find the oldest one striding back and forth, phone to ear, panting in quiet fury. His bank card has been stolen, thieves have exceeded his overdraft and he’s been cut off mid-call, twice.

      ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ he says. ‘I already … yes, it … wait … can you hear me now?’ He stalks out of the room in search of better reception.

      ‘Remind you of anyone?’ my wife says.

      ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say.

      There is a bloodcurdling scream from next door and the oldest returns, his face dark purple.

      ‘Holy fucking shitting God!’ he shouts, lifting the phone high over his head. His behaviour is, I must admit, eerily familiar, particularly the way he adjusts his run-up to ensure that, when he finally hurls the phone, it lands softly on the sofa. Then he stomps back out.

      ‘Attractive, isn’t it?’ my wife says.

      I