It is Wednesday evening, and I am about to leave home. Not for ever, but it feels like it. The band I'm in is embarking on a five-date mini-tour to promote our new CD. My wife is on her way back from Scotland. It seems a good time to take stock.
I find the middle one sitting at my wife's computer, typing furiously into one window while watching TV in another. The youngest one is sitting on the floor, killing people on his Xbox while barking orders into a headset. They both look about two years older than they were the last time I saw them, about 20 minutes earlier. It could be their school uniforms – with their jackets off and ties pulled loose, they look like harried office workers on a deadline.
"Is that homework?" I ask the middle one.
"Haven't got any," he says.
"Hang on," the youngest one says. "I got this guy."
"Are you a liar?" I say to the middle one.
"Nooooo!" he sings.
"Go left, go left, go left!" the middle one says. Something, or someone, explodes on his screen.
"Supper will be ready in half an hour," I say, turning towards the door.
"See you later, shitlord," the youngest says. It takes me a second to realise he isn't talking to me.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I pour myself a glass of wine and sit down next to the oldest one. Since he turned 18 three days previously, I have been in a rush to reframe all my dealings with him: I can no longer issue commands based on my legal right to control his destiny. I must treat him as an adult, and converse with him on a man-to-man basis. This leaves me at a temporary loss for words.
"So," I say finally, "have you started gambling yet?"
"No," he says. "I hadn't even thought of that. I should, though, shouldn't I?"
"No comment," I say.
An hour later, we're eating in front of the TV, watching the football. The children are also staring at screens.
"Why are we watching this match if Chelsea are playing on the other side?" I ask.
"Because I have a bet on this match," the oldest one says.
"So do I," the middle one says.
My wife chooses this inopportune moment to walk in the door. "I'm so tired," she says. "This house is disgusting."
"Goal!" the middle one shouts. I'm going to miss these times, I think.
Twenty-four hours later, I am on stage in a pub in Totnes, Devon. We are three songs in and the guitarist is busy switching instruments. The fiddle player is retuning a recalcitrant A-string, and I feel a need to fill the gap with speech.
"So," I say into the microphone, "do you people really have your own money?" This is a reference to the issuance of a local currency aimed at promoting the local economy; it is the only fact about Totnes I have at my fingertips.
My question is not answered, partly because the gig is sparsely attended, but also because we are playing in the corner of an L-shaped room, and I am consequently addressing my remarks to a heated pasty display case on the bar. One forlorn sausage roll is spinning slowly on the top tray. All the pasties that were in it that afternoon have been eaten, one of them by me. This comprises the latest and most immediate of my many regrets. As the silence following my question begins to ripen, it suddenly occurs to me that my son may have been referring to me when he said shitlord after all.
