Tonight:
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Being a mother is a one-way ticket to scrutiny. Are you there too much and thus pushy (as in, I am assertive, you are pushy, she is the mother from hell)? Or not there enough and thus a wickedly self-absorbed career hag?
Not an awful lot of attention is given to the fathers who help make us what we are. I thought of this on reading the obituary of Paul Weller's father, John, who didn't bat an eyelid when his son quit school with a mere two CSEs, gave up his day job to be his son's manager and stuck by him through the labyrinths of his pop career.
Weller père looked and sounded pretty much like stroppy Paul, a man "with the constitution of a rhino", according to his son, who "took 15 years to get over" The Jam's break-up (some of us never quite have).
By coincidence, the PR guru Matthew Freud, not widely known as a softie, wrote a moving piece about his polymath father Clement this week. In both cases two tough-nut men were suddenly rendered more yielding and human when we glimpsed them through their fathers' deaths.
One common thread links them: a readiness of good dads to believe in their sons' missions, with all the pratfalls and risks. Freud recalls that Clement "didn't treat us as 'the children'. He would find time for us individually".
Fathers are lucky, I think, in not being subjected to the prying opinions of others on what they do right and wrong.
The flipside is that we forget to say how important they are. The Freuds and the Wellers remind us of that.
• One of those "What recession?" moments. I was lured to Harrods recently to the opening of the designer children's boutique. For the first time since the credit crunch culled spontaneous extravagances, the lure of pristine Papa d'Anjo shirts and Caramel dresses was too great.
There's such an air of economic confidence to such beautiful children's clothes: collars and ruffles for the next generation of bankers and mini-me printed smocks for the next era fast set.
When women give in to temptation despite the crunch, they're more likely to splash out on their young than themselves. It explains why you find me in TK Maxx - and the children in finest hand-sewn glory.
• What a wondrous work is State of Play, the remade drama of an intrepid journalist unravelling political and corporate shenanigans - this time in Washington, in the film version. It has brought on a Damascene conversion to Russell Crowe, below, who holds the movie together as the great non-shaving hero of the piece.
Really, the appeal of the movie lies in a hymn of praise to the inky business of newspapers, with the hacks drinking Wild Turkey out of paper cups and an editor in permanent high dudgeon.
It's the most self-praising film about papers since The Front Page. And none the worse for that.
Reader views (1)
Yes, Fathers are very important when bringing up children.
But REAL fathers are not just the one that plant the seed, but also the ones who take financial as well as emotional responsibility for the kids.
The problem is that too many mothers breed off the wrong man - they don`t allow enough time to find out his true nature.
The results are plain to see, whether it be a bad absent father or a good but rejected one - the power is in the hands of the woman, and of course, the courts.
- Darius Midwinter, London UK, 28/04/2009 10:57
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