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

He finds me looking intently at a leaflet titled ‘About Your Recovery’.

      ‘From alcohol?’ he asks.

      ‘No,’ I say. ‘From data loss.’

      ‘Oh,’ he says.

      ‘What do you mean, “from alcohol?”’ I say.

      The boy shrugs and walks off, pausing only to scrutinize the blinking light on the front of the router on his way out of the door.

      In the weeks since I lost all my data, my computer’s dead hard drive has been on a journey. It’s now in a clean room in Surrey, where people in hairnets and disposable overshoes are awaiting a decision from me. Along with my leaflet, I’ve received a two-page report estimating the likely percentage of my data that can be recovered: most, if not all, but possibly none. The enormous cost, on the other hand, is not an estimate; nor is it refundable, nor does it include VAT.

      My computer has been on a different journey. For an incredibly modest price, it has been fitted with a one-terabyte hard drive and returned to me, blank as new. A certain amount of data has migrated back: 12,000 old emails pinged into my inbox, and all my music purchases reappeared. But otherwise it’s empty. When I turn on my computer in the morning, I feel strangely unencumbered, and correspondingly susceptible to notions of promise. I begin to think that my old data should stay lost.

      My wife, meanwhile, is trying to convince me that recovery is something I should seriously consider, whatever the cost.

      ‘We’re still talking about my hard drive, right?’ I say, jamming an empty wine bottle nose-first into the recycling bin.

      ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What about all your old documents, things you’ve written?’

      ‘Don’t need it,’ I say. ‘Chances are I’d never look at it again anyway.’

      ‘It’s a legitimate business expense,’ she says, knowing how favourably disposed I am towards language that makes me sound like a businessman.

      ‘Who cares?’ I say. ‘I’m free!’

      Some days later, at an event in Sussex, a strange woman starts showing me pictures of her dog on her phone.

      ‘I have dogs,’ I say, whipping out my own phone in retaliation. As I scroll through to find the most charmingly composed picture of the pair, four years’ worth of memories flash before my eyes: red-eyed holiday snaps; accidental shots of the kitchen door; a blurry, vertiginous pap of Phil Tufnell taken by one of my children; photos of Halloween costumes, snake eggs, a snowman wearing 3D glasses, my new ladder, a patch of lawn ringed by the shoes of fellow party guests … Suddenly all this stuff – this digital information on which so many fragile memories are pinned, and which exists nowhere but on my old, cracked-screen phone – seems terribly important to me. My data is my memory, and I am as anchored as I am imprisoned by it.

      A week later I receive in the post a black box no bigger than a cigarette packet: the contents of my old hard drive. I plug it into my computer and have a look. As far as I can tell, everything is there: half-finished articles, old invoices, a jpeg of a Mondeo starter motor, the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits. It would be the work of seconds to transfer the lot to my new, giant hard drive. In the end, I decide to keep it all on the black box, in case I one day feel the need to chuck it into a canal.

      Lessons in primatology 1

      Over the course of a decade of writing about family life, I have from time to time experienced what military strategists might call blowback. It can be subtle: a slight but perceptible decline in my wife’s amusement at being portrayed as a harridan in the national press. One of my children may object to having his words reported in a way that he believes misrepresents him somehow, even after he’s spent the fiver.

      Obviously I regret causing offence or embarrassment – it’s not my primary motivation – but on those occasions when I accidentally overstep the mark, a larger problem presents itself: next week’s deadline. Having pissed my family off this Saturday, how do I write about them the following one? On those difficult occasions I simply opt for a temporary blurring of identities, a minor precaution which protects the sensibilities of all concerned, and rarely undermines the essential truth of what has transpired.

      So, for example, my life partner – let’s call him Sean – might arrive home of an evening with our three adopted ex-research chimps. It’s Friday, we’re both tired, and there is no food in the house.

      ‘One of us,’ Sean says glumly, ‘is going to have to go to Sainsbury’s.’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ I say sweetly, ‘I’ll go.’

      ‘Oh,’ Sean says, ‘I didn’t expect that.’

      Sean has failed to remember that today is our gay-wedding anniversary, and I have not reminded him. Sean is normally good on dates, because he writes things down, but for some reason he is never able to remember our anniversary. I think he resents the obligation to commemorate a day we both found fairly traumatic. Some years I also forget, but this morning my eye snagged on the date in the newspaper, and I knew it had some significance.

      All day I have been plotting how best to take advantage of this. At first I toyed with the idea of organizing some kind of surprise evening out, until I realized that anything that elaborate might make Sean feel terrible, when I wanted him to feel only mildly derelict. I thought of going out to buy some monstrously expensive present, but Sean is difficult to buy for, possessing both particular tastes and a charming inability to hide his disgust. In any case, I spent all afternoon googling myself and missed the shops.

      A trip to the supermarket suddenly seemed the perfect answer – a card, some cheap flowers and a bottle of champagne – just enough to say that I care, more than you.

      As I unpack the shopping, Sean catches me in the kitchen.

      ‘What are you doing behind there?’ he says. ‘What are you hiding?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘What is that? You bought flowers?’

      ‘Yes,’ I say, holding them up. ‘But then I thought you might think they were hideous.’

      ‘No, those are nice,’ he says. ‘I like them, thank you.’

      As he takes them from me and goes off in search of a vase, I realize this might be the time to come clean, but I find I am not man enough to relinquish the upper hand. I go upstairs and puzzle over what to write in the card. I want something simple and not overly romantic, maybe something amusing like ‘To a very civil partner’. In the end I just write ‘It’s OK that you forgot’, and stuff it in an envelope marked ‘Sean’.

      A little later, Sean comes in while I am cooking. ‘What’s this?’ he says, picking up the envelope. As he opens it I retrieve the bottle of champagne from the freezer.

      ‘Uh-oh,’ he says. ‘I forgot.’

      ‘I knew you would,’ I say, kissing him gently on the cheek. ‘You always do.’

      ‘You came in with flowers, and still I didn’t get it,’ he says. ‘That’s really bad.’ Our youngest chimp, Kurt, waddles into the room and makes the sign for ‘hungry’.

      ‘Dad fooled me,’ Sean tells him. ‘It was our anniversary, and I forgot.’

      ‘Again,’ I say. Kurt makes the sign for ‘whatever’, helps himself to a banana and leaves. I pour the champagne.

      ‘I notice you got only a half-bottle,’ Sean says.

      ‘I know you don’t really like it,’ I say. ‘It seemed a waste.’ Our middle chimp, Anton, comes in and signs, ‘Can I have some of that?’

      ‘You can have a sip of mine,’ Sean says. ‘I don’t really like it.’

      ‘Just a sip,’ I say. I worry about giving Anton alcohol, because he’s only ten and he can lift a car.