Geeks before their time

Dear Dave,

Glad to hear Daisy's over the chickenpox and Sam's recovered from the stomach bug.

It's obviously a shame that Sam's now covered in spots and Daisy's started throwing up but, honestly, you were probably expecting this eventuality. (I know I was.) Good luck. Another year or two and you'll be able to look back and laugh...

Would you believe that someone told me recently that parenting only gets harder as the children get older?

It really wasn't what I wanted to hear.

Apparently, the amount of physical labour required in caring for them goes down but the other stuff becomes more difficult. Sometimes they behave like adults and they can be dealt with as equals; other times, though, it has to be remembered that they're still children and they don't have the experience or sense to make good decisions themselves. Finding the balance is not so much treading a fine line, it's more like battling through a constantly shifting war zone.

On learning this, my only consolation was that I don't have to worry about it for a few years yet...

Then again, what do I know? When Fraser got stuck in one of his DS games last week, I told him I'd 'look the answer up on the computer'. I didn't go into any of the details and I spared him words such as 'online' and 'internet', so as not to overtax his young mind. I fully expected him to be thrilled when I obtained the information he required and to act like I'd produced it with the wave of a wand.

More fool me.

He took it all in his stride and barely remembered to say thank you. Then, three days later, he came out of school and said, "What do you think I looked up on Google Images today?"

I did a double-take for two reasons:

1. I hardly dared imagine what he'd managed to find on Google Images.
2. I didn't know my eight-year-old had heard of Google, let alone been let loose on it.

As it turned out, he'd merely been ogling Pokémon cards but I remained concerned. Even assuming the school has all kinds of blocks and filters set up to protect pupils from unsuitable material (and that's a BIG assumption), we don't have any in place at home. I realised I was suddenly in a world of parental locks and warnings about dodgy chatrooms - a world that I hadn't expected to encounter for several more years.

I felt the need to check I'd heard right. "You've been using Google at school?" I queried.

The children ignored me as always. Lewis turned to Fraser and said, "The last time I used Google, I looked up the National Museum of Flight."

My brain exploded. He's six.

Then the pair of them had an argument over whether it's easier to Google by going through Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Needless to say, I found this all deeply troubling in so many different ways...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Marie wanted to wear her Santa outfit to nursery today. Since March isn't a particularly traditional time of year for Santa outfits, I was somewhat reluctant. Nevertheless, she was adamant. For once, I decided to be a spontaneous, fun-loving parent and not worry about it. She skipped happily into the playroom and I shrugged off the confused looks from the staff.

It was only later I remembered that today is photo day...

Computer Guy

Dear Dave,

Thanks for asking how my new job at Malton House School is going.

I suppose the answer depends on how you want to look at it. As a low stress return to the world of work, it's been pretty good. I potter about tinkering with gadgets, I get to choose my hours, and a whole load of shifty teenagers have to call me 'sir'. On the other hand, I have to wear a tie and in the three weeks since I took on IT support duties, I've managed to get precisely two computers working properly. This is partly because I'm only managing ten hours a week but mainly because computers are infuriating and temperamental at the best of times, let alone when they've been left at the mercy of a whole load of shifty teenagers. At my current rate of achievement, stuff is going wrong faster than I can fix it, and that's on top of the huge backlog of malfunctioning technology that already exists. Employing any objective scale, things aren't proceeding well.

Happily, however, the two computers I've tuned up are the ones used by the headmaster and the school secretary, so objectivity doesn't come into it. Mr Fitzroy has done nothing but beam at me since I brought the internet and the joys of online taxidermy chatrooms to his office. Mrs Cavendish, meanwhile, is delighted that it no longer takes her machine fifteen minutes to boot up in the morning. She even makes me cups of tea. As long as I'm polite and look reasonably smart, it doesn't matter if I fix anything else, my position should remain secure.

Still, it's best to look busy...

The other day I ran a basic diagnostic test on the computers in the language lab. This consisted of turning them on and seeing what happened. Of the twenty present, seventeen started up, two did nothing and one laughed evilly before challenging me to a game of Pac-Man for my soul. A little fiddling with wires brought one of the dead machines back to life and the other responded well to being hit very hard while no one was looking. I removed the final one (which referred to itself as 'The Grim Bleeper') and swapped it with a more cooperative machine in the English department. (They're less likely to notice anything's wrong.)

While I was finishing off this task, I got an emergency call.

As I'm always wandering about, if any teacher has a technical issue that needs urgent attention, they use the internal phones to contact the school secretary, who then alerts me by walkie-talkie. This happens so rarely, she'd be as well calling me on my mobile but where would be the fun in that?

Fortunately, Mrs Cavendish is a big fan of crime drama and is getting scarily into the concept. "Computer Guy this is Dispatch. We have a 3-10 in progress in room 14. Please respond."

"10-4, Dispatch. I'm on my way."

The walkie-talkie is less secure than the phones. Anyone could be listening in - pupils, neighbours, parents, aliens or, heaven help us, education inspectors. To overcome this problem, I've devised a set of codes to deal with most eventualities:

1-01 - Computer acting strangely.
1-02 - Computer barely working.
1-03 - Computer dead.
1-04 - Computer dead. Foul play suspected.
1-05 - Computer dropped out of window. Bring dustpan and brush.
2-11 - Cup of tea available. Bring biscuits.
2-21 - Cup of tea spilt on a computer. Bring straw.
3-10 - Teacher embarrassing themselves with poor grasp of technology. Assistance required.
4-15 - School secretary bored and wanting to play with walkie-talkies.
666 - Terminator robots in the building.
999 - Headmaster about to touch something electronic.

A 3-10 is a high priority, so I hurried along to room 14 to discover Mr Blakelock and his biology class with the blinds drawn, watching a documentary about the mating habits of baboons on a large TV/DVD combi that had been wheeled to the front.

"You got it working then?" I said, speaking over the sounds of excited primates.

Mr Blakelock shook his head. "No, I can't make the disc play. None of the buttons do anything."

"Where's the remote?"

"Can't find it. It's not in the usual place."

I started poking at the telly. "OK, some joker has turned the panel lock on." I rooted around in my backpack for a universal control and some codes. "Give me a minute." After a couple of attempts, I managed to get the TV to respond and show me a menu. A little more faffing and we were in business. I tried the DVD but, confusingly, Jeremy Kyle came on, complete with participants screaming about DNA results and a small fight. "Oh, sorry, I thought I had it there." I made to press some more buttons.

"Stop! That's it," said Mr Blakelock. "That's where we got to yesterday."

"Er... Really?"

"Yes, thanks. You've been a great help."

I shrugged. "Oh, OK, I'll leave you to it then. You should be able to use the buttons on the TV now until the remote turns up..."

I was barely out the door before I had an unprecedented second emergency call of the day. It was a 999. I scurried to the headmaster's office as fast as I could.

* * *

"You have some experience with programming, I believe?" said Mr Fitzroy. He didn't look up from his screen but the stuffed animals arrayed around the room stared hard at me in his stead.

"Yee-es..." I said cautiously. Technically he was correct, but my programming skills are very rusty. I was also nervous why he was asking.

"Good. Good. Perhaps you can help me with this then?" He waved a packet of biscuits at me.

"Perhaps..." I was pretty certain I could help him with those, although I couldn't entirely see their relevance.

"Excellent." He pushed his chair back from his desk and motioned me to the computer. "Mr Everett was unable to procure Custard Creams for the refreshment table in the staff room this week and opted to buy HobNobs as an alternative. The difference in price needs to be taken into account when calculating the amount each member of staff owes to the kitty. Mrs Reynolds has also brought it to my attention that she doesn't like HobNobs and Mr Jacobs has made it known that he will be drinking tea rather than coffee until such time as the Custard Creams are reinstated. If you could make the necessary amendments to the programme to reflect these changes, that would be most helpful."

I sighed. This was why I'd negotiated my own private supply of biscuits as part of my pay deal. "OK, I'll take a look," I said.

"Mr McIntyre is normally responsible but he's not answering his phone. It's possible he may be in the cellar again."

"Ah, yes, about the cellar..." I began but then got immediately distracted by the grid of numbers and words on the screen. "This isn't a programme."

"No?"

"No. It's a spreadsheet."

The headmaster's brow furrowed. "Does that present any problems?"

"Well... I guess you can embed formulae and bits of code into the fields so that the entries are dependent on each other, making it like..." I trailed off as I realised the headmaster was already staring out of the window. "Er, never mind... This appears to be where the price of the biscuits goes. I'll just alter it, change what people are having, click on re-calculate and... Oh..."

The computer suddenly started to hum loudly, as if in deep concentration, and whole columns of words and numbers flickered and changed and then flickered some more. This process went on for some time. I began to suspect that the screen I was looking at was only one small part of something much more complex.

"Does this spreadsheet do anything else besides work out what the staff need to pay for their elevenses?" I asked.

The headmaster broke away from warily eyeing a lawnmower that was standing unattended in the middle of the lawns. "Oh, it has many uses. The accounts, the procurement schedule for consumables, that sort of thing."

I scrolled around a little. There were entries for almost everything - school attendance, gross income, parking space allocation, what colour of socks to wear, when to listen to Radio 4 and which pupil to blame in the event of a fire. One box was titled 'First to be sacked when the money runs outs'. I watched as my name flickered up briefly and was then replaced by 'The entire chemistry faculty'.

I stepped away from the computer, deeply afraid to touch it any further. "I think that's sorted it," I said, trying to sound convincing. "You might want to get Mr McIntyre to check over it anyway. I've, er... just remembered I promised to help Mr Gardner with his printer." This was stretching the truth slightly, since I hadn't actually made a firm commitment to any time-frame on the promise, but I was keen to get away and forget everything I'd seen.

"I wasn't aware there were any printers in room 7."

"I thought he was in room 10."

"Ah, perhaps that's the case," said the headmaster. "Let me consult the timetable."

I was expecting him to pull out a dog-eared weekly planner from a drawer. To my horror, he scrolled to another part of the spreadsheet.

"My mistake," he said. "He is in room 10. You'd best hurry along and I..." He peered in consternation at the screen. "I suppose I shall have to inform the second year that they no longer have woodwork at this time on a Tuesday and should change immediately for hockey practice..."

* * *

It was lunch-time before I figured out that Mr Gardner's printer needed to be switched off and on again three times and then have a random sequence of buttons pressed on its control panel in order to make it function properly. Luckily, since Marie had gone to visit a friend after nursery, I didn't have to rush home. I collected my coat and took a leisurely stroll through the building on my way to the main doors. It had been a relatively successful morning but I was starting to fret how I was possibly going to get the school's countless machines working without a horde of conscripts to help me.

Just then, I passed a classroom full of pupils with laptops. Every single one of them was concentrating hard, despite no teacher being present. This, in itself, was deeply suspicious.

I stuck my head round the door. "What's going on in here?"

"Computer club, sir," muttered one of the shifty teenagers.

All at once, I began to grin...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Joining the Dark Side

Dear Dave,

Mr Fitzroy appeared to have entirely forgotten our previous encounter.

This was good.

I sat in his study at Malton House, my teenage nephew Ned's rather odd private school, and tried not to feel uncomfortable. It was a struggle, however - the chair was too hard, the room was too hot, I was wearing a suit, and a large number of stuffed animals were staring at me from high shelves. I couldn't help noticing that the baby crocodile on top of one of the bookcases still had sandwich crumbs glued to its teeth. Someone appeared to have tried to disguise the problem by posing the creature with its claws wrapped round one end of a bright pink toothbrush and with the other end near its mouth. The overall effect was to make it look like a novelty toy. I had a strange desire to put sunglasses on it and, as I squirmed on my seat waiting for the headmaster to speak, I sincerely hoped the little reptile wouldn't detect my movement and start waggling about singing Don't Worry, Be Happy. I ran my finger round my collar nervously.

"So..." said Mr Fitzroy eventually, drawing my attention back to him.

I jumped at the sight of his single enormous eye and spilt my tea.

* * *

It was all Ned's fault (in some passing, tangential fashion). As you'll recall, I'm tutoring him with his science and maths in an effort to improve his grades and avoid his parents sending him to an even odder educational establishment where early morning cross-country running is a compulsory part of the curriculum and that is situated just down the road from Brigadoon.

A couple of days before my trip to Malton House, Ned had done his practice maths exam and I'd been quite interested to hear how it had gone:

"Hi!" I said, letting him in for his usual mooch at our house after school.

"Ngh," he grunted in reply and made as if to go and play my Xbox.

I blocked his path. "How'd it go?" I was eager to know if all our hard work had paid off.

He shrugged and tried to get past. I stopped him. "You're going to have to try a little harder than that. How'd it go?"

"I dunno. All the computers crashed. We're going to have to do it again next week."

I was so surprised, I let him by. "What computers?"

* * *

"Do you require a cloth?" asked Mr Fitzroy.

"No, no," I said, wiping myself down with a hanky. It was black tea on a dark suit, so I was OK.

"Very well." He put down his tools and pulled at the enormous magnifying glass in front of him, swivelling it on its stand and moving it out of the way. When I'd first entered the room and spotted him working on something tiny with a fine-tipped brush, I'd imagined he was painting miniature soldiers. I could have related to that. But no, he was polishing a collection of beetles.

"So..." he said again and carefully took their case back over to hang on the wall. "You think you may be able to help us with our information technology arrangements?"

"Yes, my nephew tells me you don't have any IT support staff."

"Mr Harris, the computing teacher, is in charge of procurement, installation and maintenance."

"As well as teaching? He has to keep all the computers running in his lunch hour?"

"Not all of them," chuckled the headmaster. "The lab technician keeps an eye on the machines in the science block."

I wasn't convinced this improved matters much. "How many computers does Malton House have exactly?"

"Exactly?" The headmaster sat down again, poured me some more tea and turned his attention to stirring his own cup. "That would require some investigation. As with pupil numbers and lawnmowers, it's hard to keep track of such things. Nonetheless, we pride ourselves in embracing the modern age. I imagine we have several hundred personal computing devices around the school."

"You've got two people looking after hundreds of computers?"

The headmaster nodded, seemingly pleased that I'd noticed the high level of resources he'd devoted to the issue. "Then there's the Megatron 5000 in the cellar, of course."

"Of... course..."

"Yes, that's Mr McIntyre's pet project. Couldn't run the boilers without it..."

* * *

"You didn't mention anything about computers," I said as I followed Ned through to the glorified cupboard I use as a place to work and hide.

"We had to do the exam on laptops," he said, switching on the Xbox and settling down in the only chair.

I loitered by the door. "That doesn't sound like a good idea."

"Would have been OK if we'd got to type the answers."

"You had to do the exam on a computer but you weren't allowed to type?"

Ned stared at the screen intently as the game loaded up and he started to shoot things. "Uh-huh."

"Was it multiple choice?"

"Nah."

"Right. I don't understand. You're going to have to explain this in sentences of more than one grunt."

Ned let out a long sigh as if I'd asked him to do something as onerous as tidy his room or help with the washing up. Nonetheless, after a brief pause while he blasted some particularly resilient aliens, he did enlighten me further. "Head of maths signed up for some new course that's being tested out. We all had to do the exam on laptops. The questions were on the screen with a picture of a keyboard underneath and we had to click on that to write the answers."

"That must have been fun for putting in formulae and fractions."

Ned shook his head. "Not really."

"What about working?" I said. I couldn't believe anyone had come up with a system quite so daft. "Did you have to put in all the working like that as well?"

"They didn't want working. We had to do it in our heads until someone asked for some paper halfway through."

I banged my head off the wall. "That's crazy."

"At least the batteries in the laptop I had didn't run out."

"I'm not sure I want to hear the rest of this..."

"Then five minutes from the end, the computers started beeping to let us know that time was running out."

"Oh for goodness sake." I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. "How many of you were there in the room?"

"'Bout a hundred. And all the computers started the beeping at different times. It was loud, what with the people fighting over the four power sockets as well. Then time was up, we all pressed the button to send our answers and the server crashed. Everything got wiped."

"But... But..." It wasn't the worst designed computer system I'd ever heard of but, considering it hadn't actually killed anyone, it was running remarkably close. "Why? Why would anyone think that was a sensible way to do things?"

"Dunno. Mr Castleford said it was a test of our computer literacy. We've got to do it again next week."

I went back to banging my head off the wall - a little harder than before. "Let's hope they get someone who's computer literate to organise things this time."

Ned finally looked up from the game. "I thought you said you used to do stuff with computers..."

* * *

I'm not too sure how I went from phoning up with an offer of assistance in re-running Ned's exam to sitting an interview for a part-time technical support position (although I think it may have all started going wrong when I began talking about network redundancy to a man who refers to laptops as portable computing devices). One misunderstanding led to another and then there I was, sweating in a suit, talking up my suitability for a job I didn't even want.

"Does the Megatron run MVS?" I asked, bluffing. As far as I was concerned, a Megatron 5000 was a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner.

Fortunately, as far as the headmaster was concerned, it might as well have been. "I'd, well..." he began uncertainly, then recovered quickly, not wishing to look ignorant. "I'd have to look into that... but it's quite possible. Yes. Mr McIntyre regularly requests funds for the latest..." He fished for the correct term.

"Attachments?" I suggested.

"Quite. Xpods and such like."

I made a mental note to investigate whatever Mr McIntyre was really up to in the cellar but outwardly I smiled sagely. "Excellent. I have plenty of experience with MVS."

The headmaster nodded and perused my CV. As I'd hoped, he completely blanked my years of being a housedad. The concept was clearly beyond the natural order of existence as he understood it. Instead, he focused on my previous life in IT. "Yes, you seem very qualified. Very qualified indeed. But could you explain to me why we need someone to look after the computers? It's not as if it's necessary to task anyone with regular oversight of the televisions and microscopes. They simply work."

I stifled a giggle at the idea of computers simply working and tried to come up with an example of the regular attention they require that the headmaster would understand. "Erm... Who installs the anti-virus software on the school's machines?"

"Do we require such software?"

I couldn't help pulling a face. "Let me put it this way, does your computer do anything strange?" I sipped at my tea, trying to hide my expression.

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers against his cup in thought. "It used to make clucking noises whenever I touched a key..."

He trailed off as I choked on my tea. "That is strange," I muttered weakly, when I'd recovered.

"Ah, no, the odd thing is that it stopped doing it a few days ago without so much as a by your leave."

"It wasn't supposed to make those noises," I said, breathing deeply to retain my composure. "It probably had a virus."

"Really? Now it just makes a nasty juddering sound every so often and I can't seem to find any of the letters I wrote before last week."

I stoically drank more tea and toyed with the idea of asking if he'd made backups. In the end, I decided against it...

* * *

"Are you really going to do this?" asked Sarah earlier that morning as I stood in front of the mirror, trying to remember how to tie a tie.

"I'm not sure," I conceded. Working at Malton House wasn't exactly a dream of mine. Still, it was something to try and it was unlikely to be high stress. More than that, it was liable to make anywhere else I applied seem sane and desirable.

"You said you were going to spend some time planning your future." She handed me a different tie, one without teddy bears on it.

I shrugged. "This way I can get paid to do it while sitting around mindlessly installing software updates."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Anything to do with computers always takes twice as long as you expect. Is it going to be worth it?"

"Nope," I sighed, finally perfecting the knot, "but I should probably give it a shot to get back into the swing of things."

"Well, it's up to you," she said sceptically and then kissed me. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

I went to wake the kids. They all laughed at the sight of me in a suit.

* * *

Then headmaster offered me money.

Not good money exactly but money nonetheless. Earning anything after so many years of unpaid housedadhood was very enticing. Then I estimated how many hours I could feasibly work while Marie was in nursery (not many), how much I'd have to pay in national insurance and travel expenses (more than a bit), the amount of tax credits I'd lose (a lot) and the scale of work I was liable to be landed with (vast). A few quick mental calculations delivered a reward/effort ratio that was so small it fell out of my ear and disappeared through a crack in the floor.

Nevertheless, I needed to take the job at least long enough to get Ned through his exam. It was worth angling for some extra incentives.

"Beyond my wages and normal benefits, I'll require a bus pass, a personal supply of biscuits and permission to take equipment home with me to work on it."

Mr Fitzroy took a chocolate finger from a plate on his desk. "I'm sure that could be arranged."

"Excellent. For instance, does the school have a video projector?"

"I believe we have several. I don't think they're used very often - many of the teachers find them rather complicated." He snapped the chocolate finger in two and popped one half in his mouth.

"Ideal... I mean, I could take one away and experiment on the simplest ways to hook it up and operate it. Oh, and I'll need my own computer to use, something with a Blu-ray player and high-end graphics card. You know, just to make sure I can test whatever, erm... attachments the school might need."

"Very well. I will get Mr Harris to put you in touch with our supplier." He offered the plate to me. "Chocolate finger?"

* * *

Ned was slouching around by the main door as I found my way out.

"Did you get it?" he asked, hunched over, his hands in his pockets.

"Provided my references and security check are fine. I said I'd come in on Saturday and set up things for your exam. Want to help?"

"Nah."

"Tough. You got me into this. You might as well suffer too."

He perked up as a thought struck him. "Do I get paid?"

"As if... but I'll bring my Xbox along. If we get done in time, we can project the picture onto the end wall of the examination hall and play Call of Duty in huge. It'll be like our own personal IMAX."

This sold the idea to him but I couldn't stick around - I had to rush to get back in time to collect Marie from nursery. We made arrangements to meet up on Saturday and then I jogged off down the school's long driveway, waving goodbye over my shoulder.

As I departed the grounds, I encountered a small band of boys coming the other way. They nearly jumped out of their skins on seeing me but then relaxed when they didn't recognise me as a member of staff. In itself, this was enough to convince me they weren't supposed to have left the school. The feeling was reinforced, however, by their guilty looks and the large, heavy object under a black tarpaulin that they were carrying between them. I couldn't tell what it was but I hazarded a guess...

"Nice lawnmower," I said and hurried on past.

"Thanks," one of them called after me. Then his friends all slapped him round the head and told him to shut up.

I decided it was best not to look back and I ran for the bus instead.

That place is so weird. What have I got myself into now?

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Nobody expects the Spanish I/O error

Dear Dave,

Some things didn't really change when I became a housedad. Bringing up kids is very like running an IT project - for some reason, I'm always behind schedule.

With IT projects, the difficulty is that there are always unexpected snags. Typical issues range from a logical inconsistency in the specification (i.e. you've been asked to do the impossible) to a discovery that the highly paid contractor brought in to handle the tough stuff was bluffing all along and has spent six months playing Minesweeper. If you're really unlucky, the project will simply open up a vortex in the very fabric of nature that sucks in time and money and dumps them out beyond the galactic rim. (That's never good).

Obviously, it's possible to figure some leeway into the production timetable but, if you don't know what the problem is going to be, it's difficult to know how much time to allow for solving it. Maybe it will only require someone nipping to Curry's for a cable. Maybe it will send the whole project back to the drawing board. Who knows? Probably best to allow twice as long as you're really hoping, though.

Of course, putting vast amounts of blank space in the schedule 'just in case' gives a bad impression, so it doesn't usually happen. Then, halfway through the project, someone leaves the team or the customer suddenly needs the product in a hurry and management has to cut corners in order to get the job done. The easiest thing to do is remove from the schedule the time and manpower set aside for contingencies. Voila! The whole project is back on track... as long as nothing goes wrong. Management may argue that this is the kind of emergency that all the padding in the schedule was for, but the truth is that these are management problems that should have had padding of their very own. In reality, what's gone is all the time required to cope when it turns out that the software you've bought in from another company doesn't do all the things the salesman said it would, doesn't work at all or has manuals that are written entirely in Danish (apart from the bits in Braille).

Somehow, management is surprised when the project over-runs...

Maybe it's an unwinnable battle. If, by some quirk of fate, a project did ever come in early, the customers would simply start trying to think of 'little' bits to add on. These would almost certainly involve starting again from scratch and the project would end up over-running anyway.

Similarly, with children, being late can be inevitable. If, on a good day, it takes ten minutes to get everyone's shoes on and get them out of the house for school, there are going to be other days where it takes twenty. Setting aside twenty minutes is asking for trouble, though. You don't want to be waiting outside the school for ten minutes in the rain. Equally, you don't want to be hanging around at home for ten minutes - the kids will complain loudly about being bored, take their shoes off again and then lose them. They will arrive very late for school, wearing their slippers. Yep, leaving too much time for a task can make you later than leaving too little. You'd be better off allowing fifteen minutes on a regular basis and simply accepting the fact that you're going to be five minutes late on any day that one of the children gets distracted and tips his milk into his ear rather than his mouth.

That said, with a little knowledge and planning, it's possible to avoid being horrendously late all the time. Bearing this in mind, here are a few tasks that I've found unexpectedly hard in the past. You've probably encountered most of them yourself already but they may not have seemed like that big a deal. Please remember, however, that the time taken to solve these issues is proportional to the square of the number of children you have. Thus, now you have two, you need to allow four times as much space in the schedule for:

• Getting them to wear appropriate clothing. I tell my kids that it’s raining and they’ll need to put their raincoats on.
  
  Without looking out a window, they say, ‘No, it’s not.’
  
  I argue for a bit, they don’t put their raincoats on and we step out of the door. They immediately start screaming that it’s raining and run around in a panic like they’re the Wicked Witch of the West and someone’s just dumped a bucket of water on them.
  
  I say, ‘It’s almost stopped. You’ll be fine.’
  
  They argue for a bit and demand their raincoats. Eventually, I give up and they go in and put their raincoats on.
  
  The rain stops, the sun comes out and they complain it’s too hot in their raincoats.
  
  They refuse to take them off.
  
  When we eventually arrive at our destination, people wonder why we’re wet, late and sweaty. I just shake my head and sigh…
• Getting them to do stuff for themselves. Marie kicks up a huge fuss about drying her own hands. She's currently lying on the hall floor yelling for help because a small part of her lower arm is still wet. She's actually holding the towel in her other hand but wants me to go through and combine the towel and arm with some gentle rubbing action. Suffice to say, she'll be yelling a while longer - probably for several minutes after the water has evaporated of its own accord.
• Getting gloves on a toddler. Their fingers go everywhere apart from the right place.
• Getting them to stop doing stuff for themselves. Of course, if we're in a big hurry and I pro-actively decide to dry Marie's hands for her, she'll absolutely insist on doing it on her own... Really... really... slowly...
• Going to the shops to buy milk. Between getting them dressed, toileted (including the washing and drying of hands) and actually persuading them to leave the house, going to buy milk can take longer to organise than a trip to Paris without children.
• Going to Paris with children. Like going to buy milk but with added luggage.
• Keeping gloves on a toddler. It doesn't matter that it's freezing and you've just spent five minutes getting the things on, the kid wants to see her fingers...
• Feeding them five portions of fruit and veg a day. It's not so much getting them to eat it, it's supplying it:
  
  
  Why I have to go to the shops so often: 5 family members x 5 portions per day x 2 days = 50 portions. We also require around 8 pints of milk and a loaf and a half of bread. Hang on a minute while I just nip to Tesco again...
• Cheering up a toddler whose hands are cold. If you can just get them to calm down for a minute, you might be able to get those gloves back on. (Briefly).
• Working out when they're ill. When my kids were small, it was easy to tell how ill they were from the number and amount of toxic substances oozing out of them. These days there's usually less to go on. They'll complain of aches and pains, cough a couple of times and then sneeze. Questioning them uncovers that they've been feeling 'not that great' for 'a bit'. Taking their temperature reveals that one ear has a mild fever and the other is dead. (Repeated attempts cause the symptoms to swap randomly between ears. Shaking the electronic thermometer produces a rattling sound).
  
  Since I've now spent nearly eight years clearing up toxic substances despite having had various strains of plague myself, I'm low on sympathy for minor cases of the snuffles. Still, I don't want them going rapidly downhill the second they leave the house. I can do without being summoned to school halfway through the morning to explain why I sent in my highly contagious child. (Teachers are scary).
  
  Coming to a decision always takes forever.
• Explaining the difference between live-action TV drama, cartoons, documentary footage, the news, CGI and real life. As for theatre, well: 'Yes, those are real people pretending to be the real people who normally pretend to be the pretend people in Lazy Town but if that one falls off the ladder it will really hurt. And, yes, it is just a story, but vegetables really are good for you.'
• Avoiding drowning in Fimbles. Soft toys. Everywhere. Stuck now. Can't... make... it... to... the... door...
• Being understanding. This takes a surprising amount of effort. What I really want to say is, 'I told you you'd get cold hands.'

There we go. Hopefully, with this knowledge, you should be able to leave enough time (but not too much) to achieve most goals. I wouldn't count on it, though. The kids are bound to find some new way to slow you down.

At least you can take consolation from the fact that you're not in charge of the software for the government's ID card scheme. I hear that's created a vortex that's spitting stuff out. They're having to deal with giant space spiders, unicorns and sudden downpours of odd socks.

Whatever happens, we're never going to be as late as them.

Probably.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

The List

Dear Dave,

Any news yet? I take it Squiggly has decided to stay put for a while longer. How overdue does she/he have to be before the midwives break out the dynamite? I seem to remember that Fraser was nine days late and, the more time dragged on, the less likely it seemed that he would ever be born. It was crazy but life went into limbo as we waited impatiently for him to do the only sensible thing and come out quietly with his legs up. He wasn't having any of it, however. When he finally deigned to appear, he was facing the wrong way and had to be dragged out by the head. (A pattern of life we seem to repeat in some form on an almost daily basis).

Marie was even more awkward. She was determined to stick her toes out first just to test the temperature. Nothing would persuade her otherwise and she had to be yanked out through the emergency exit. Stubborn drama queen? My little girl? Never...

Lewis, at least, turned up on time and without much palaver. If anything, he was a little too laid-back and easy-going. He might have been born even more smoothly if he'd bothered to fight his way out of his protective bubble. But no. He wanted to be born in his own private water-bed. He likes his comfort, that one.

Anyway, good luck and best wishes to Liz. Remember to make the midwives do whatever she wants and try your best to get her whatever she asks for (unless it's sharp and pointy and she wants you to stand close by).

Things are sort of going OK here. Sarah had her redundancy 'hearing' at LBO yesterday - the one where she had to explain to the two managers who fired her why they were wrong. This was, obviously, never going to go well but we were pinning our hopes on the third member of the Inquisition who was supposed to be an impartial manager from another department. No one told Sarah who it was going to be until the day, however. She phoned me straight away when she found out. It was Gerald, my old boss from when I worked in the IT department. This was not good news.

"What do you know about him?" Sarah asked.

I grimaced, glad that she couldn't see my face. "Dinosaurs find him old-fashioned and he can't really see the point of women."

"Oh..."

"Yeah, I'm sure they'd have pensioned him off years ago if he hadn't rigged up half the code so that only he knows how it works. Not that even he really knows, half the time."

"I need you to be more encouraging here," she said.

"Sorry..." I didn't know what else to say.

There was a silence punctuated by swamp sounds. "What's that squelching noise in the background?" asked Sarah.

"Marie." I glanced over from my seat at the kitchen table to where the girl was stomping around in slime, her trouser legs rolled up as high as they would go. "I've got her doing foot painting."

"Is that wise?" said Sarah, somewhat agitated by this news.

"Almost certainly not, but she's really getting into it. I think we're going to need some more pink paint."

"I like pink!" shouted Marie, gleefully, and jumped up and down.

I wiped a fleck of paint from my glasses. Then I had an idea. "Yeah, er, what would happen if, for some reason, Gerald couldn't make it?"

"I don't know. It might say in the formal notification they sent me..." There was a rustle of paper as she searched around. "Yes, it has a get-out clause. 'If the named arbiter cannot attend the consultation meeting, then his or her deputy will attend as replacement. In this eventuality, all duties relating to the meeting will henceforth transfer to the replacement.' Which, I presume, means it's up to the deputy to make decisions and do the paperwork. Do you think Gerald will want to delegate?"

"Nope, he wouldn't dream of passing up the chance to look official and exert some power. Who's his deputy, though?"

"I'll check the org chart..." There was another pause. "Looks like someone called Morag Chandler."

This was much more promising. "She'd be good. She's fair, doesn't tolerate nonsense and bites the heads off fools. She'll be more than up for a fight with Steve and Scott. You want her."

"And how am I supposed to arrange that?" asked Sarah.

"Leave it to me," I said.

This didn't come across in the manly and reassuring way I'd hoped. "What? What are you going to do?" Sarah sounded anxious.

"Woh, calm down," I said. "I just think I can get Rob to keep Gerald out of the way for a few hours, that's all. I'm not going to turn up and send the kids in with water balloons and dung bombs."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, not unless they actually fire you, anyway. Keep on with your preparation for the meeting and I'll see what I can do. Speak to you later. Love you."

"Love you, too. Just don't do anything silly, OK?"

"OK. Bye."

I hung up and then immediately phoned Rob, my friend who still works in the IT department at LBO.

"I need you to do me a favour," I said, once we'd exchanged pleasantries.

"Sure. What is it?"

"I need you to distract Gerald for the rest of the day. I need you to use the List."

"You what?" he spluttered but then lowered his voice. "Why?"

I explained about the hearing whilst trying to keep Marie on the paper and away from the clean laundry.

"I don't know," muttered Rob, when I was done. "There's not much still on there. It's been eight years and I've had a few close scrapes since you left. What if something happens and I..."

"Come on. You must be able to do something. I gave you the List in the first place."

"It's not like you wrote it," he said.

"Well, I added to it. Have you added anything to it? Look, I really need your help. What do I have to do here? You want me to lose to you at Mario Kart or something?"

"Not really. I tell you what, you could be best man at my wedding. How about that?"

I sighed. "I'd rather just sit next to the buffet and get mildly drunk while enjoying not having the kids around, if that's all right?" A terrible thought crossed my mind. "You're not inviting the kids, are you?"

"I might do, at this rate," he said, sounding peeved. "Aren't you supposed to say, 'Congratulations'?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Congratulations! Now, about the List..."

"Only if you agree to wear a kilt and stand at the front holding the rings."

"I have to wear a kilt!? Have you seen my knees?"

"Hang on a minute while I pencil your children onto the guest list."

"OK, OK, I'll do it," I said, caving in. "I can't believe you're holding me to ransom over this. I am so giving you crystal sherry glasses as a gift."

"That's OK. You're getting novelty cuff links as a thank you present."

"Cheers... Now, the List!?"

The List takes the form of a battered and yellowed notebook and has had a mythical status within the technical division of LBO since back in a time when making an automatic calculation involved turning a crank handle. It has been passed secretly down through generations of prospectless techies, hidden from management and any that show aspirations to be promoted to the dark side. Sometimes it has disappeared from view for years, only to be rediscovered in moments of greatest need. It has come to the rescue of many a hapless engineer and some say, that if the List is ever used up, then it will be the beginning of the end - hot desking will become mandatory and internet access will be denied, new development will cease and all that will be left is bug-fixing...

Once upon a time, the List was in the care of my mentor. He gave it to me when he left the company. I, in turn, gave it to Rob when I left. It records all the subtle technical faults in the system that senior management is entirely unaware of but that would strike fear into their hearts if they were ever informed. By suddenly 'discovering' one of the problems on the List, an engineer can distract attention from a different disaster that's much more their fault. Of course, there is a price to be paid - all the problems are difficult, dull or time-consuming to fix. The List is never to be used lightly. It saved me on one occasion, however. When a race over my cubicle assault course led to myself, several co-workers and a vending machine falling out a window, the List ensured we got away with only our minor injuries and several weeks of database migration. It was a close thing.

More famously, LBO was years ahead of the game on Y2K because my old mentor needed to divert his superiors while he hunted around for the portion of fish and chips he'd lost in the internal workings of the primary mainframe. That incident has become legend.

I started suggesting entries from the List that Rob could use. "How about the Conduit Issue?"

This is one of the items on the List that is situation dependent. The password and access security on the LBO network is very tight. The data, however, travels totally unencrypted between buildings using cabling that runs only a few feet underground. This fact would obviously be a cause for concern whenever it was pointed out, but is liable to create much more panic amongst senior management if they look out the window and see a couple of shifty looking workmen poking around under a manhole cover. Rob keeps Virgin Media on speed-dial just in case of such a fortuitous circumstance being required.

"No time," replied Rob. "I'll never get a maintenance guy out here before this afternoon."

"You're right." I wracked my brains. "How about the NeverDay Accounts?"

In the early '80s, LBO introduced a thirty year savings plan. Not many people took it up and it quickly died a death. No one would remember it at all if it weren't for the five customers who signed up on the 29th February 1984. Due to an error in the code, their interest calculations have been somewhat inflated and they now own the company. On the plus side, there's another error which means, since 2014 isn't a leap year, the policies will never mature and the customers will never be paid. If the accountants ever find out, however, there'll be pandemonium enough to cover over almost any other catastrophe. (And, yeah, it could be fixed really easily but, unfortunately, that module of code got re-used and now forms part of almost every system in LBO. Testing nothing else got broken by the fix would take forever).

"NeverDay is overkill," said Rob. "I'm not taking the flak for uncovering that."

I could see his point. "OK, then, the Name Jumbler?"

When a customer's name is entered into the system it is stored surname first, followed by first names. Each of the elements is separated by a space. John Edward Smith becomes Smith John Edward. This makes it easy to list customers alphabetically by surname. When the system retrieves a name, it looks for spaces and re-arranges the name back to the right order. Letters would be sent to John E Smith. This works great almost all the time. However, the designer had obviously never met anyone with a hyphen-less double-barreled surname. John Edward Smith Jones gets stored as Smith Jones John Edward but comes back as Jones John Edward Smith. Every time. That's got to be annoying for all LBO's punctuation-phobic customers.

"That's maybe underkill," said Rob. "Gerald's not going to care. How many customers with hyphen-less double-barreled surnames do you think we have?"

"It's not the number; it's the importance," I said, becoming impatient. Sarah's meeting was fast approaching. Marie was also running out of paper. "There are a few high-profile special cases. See if Her Royal Highness, Princess Enid, Duchess of Anglesey, is still a policy holder."

"What? Hang on a minute. Have you got a policy number?"

"It's on the List."

"I'll need to get it out from behind the air-vent cover. I'll put you on hold..."

"Wait! No..." It was too late. I was subjected to fifteen minutes of Brahms and irritating reminders that my call was important.

Eventually, Rob came back on. "Right, got it."

"What were you doing?" I hissed.

"It was still in the air-vent in my old cubicle. I had to go buy doughnuts to lure people out of the room before I could get to it. I told them it was Rupert's birthday."

"Who's Rupert?" I asked.

"I dunno. I'm making this up as I go along."

"And no one queried?"

"Who queries free doughnuts?" said Rob.

"True. You might want to add that to the List as another potential security risk."

"Yeah, hadn't thought of it like that," he said. "Where's this policy number then? Oh, got it. Just hang on while I call it up... Right... OK, they put 'HRH' in as her title so that's fine but, oh, they tried making 'Duchess of Anglesey' her surname which means the system thinks her first name is 'of' and they left 'Princess' in there, which makes her initials... Oh, flip..."

"Yep, she gets letters addressed to 'HRH of APE Duchess'."

"Gerald will go ballistic," said Rob. "I still don't see how it's going to keep him out the way, though. He'll get someone else to sort it."

"No, he won't. Check out the name storage and retrieval modules - his name is all over them. He'll lock himself in his office and spend the rest of the week hacking up a solution."

"But there is no solution," argued Rob, forgetting to whisper. "All the data's compromised. Even if he changed the code, someone would have to go through about five million customer records to check which ones are knackered. Not that it'll be possible to tell with some of them without contacting the customer. It can't be fixed."

"His pride will make him try. Go tell him."

Rob subsided. "All right, all right. But your speech better be good."

"I'll start writing it now. Well, as soon as I've got the pink footprints off the telly. Things got a little out of hand while you had me on hold."

"Good luck with that."

"You, too."

I hung up and set myself to scrubbing a small child and various appliances. There was nothing else I could do.

Sarah phoned me a few hours later. The List had worked its magic. Gerald had been unexpectedly detained by a technical crisis and Morag had been unceremoniously ordered to the hearing. Apparently, she was fuming before she even arrived and was looking for a fight. Sarah's manager, Steve, was pretty quiet through the whole thing. (His wife, Deborah, still needs my help, so she's been advocating for Sarah ever since the redundancies were announced). Steve's manager, Scott, however, was as smug and annoying as ever and Morag told him where to go.

She even drew diagrams.

It's going to be another couple of weeks before final decisions are made but I think there's a good chance things should work out well.

I'd better start on that speech.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.