Either way I terminate the conversation

Either way, I terminate the conversation.”Dad,” says Seth, “what did he want? Why have you gone so white?” Have I? Is this how the easily shocked feel when pornography invades the living room? But they can always switch off the television or radio Just as I put down the receiver But there are differences For one thing, I cannot stop the caller renewing contact For another, the obscenity is personal, has my name on it. Just my luck; my first obscene phone call and it’s a fella! He repeats the question. He says his name is Dick.” “I don’t know any Dicks,” I reply I pick up the receiver “Hello,” I say “Hello, Clive,” he says He clearly knows me, but not that well it seems. He is about to take his mock GCSE exams, and I have developed a split personality; I resent being an agent of the school, in loco academia, but I have also begun to exhibit symptoms of Einstein’s syndrome by proxy.It being quiet upstairs, I settle down to watch Manchester United play Rapid Vienna Approaching half-time, the telephone rings “Answer it!” I shout “It’s a man,” Seth informs me “He wants to speak to you. Mark my words, the attack on `explicitness’ is just the beginning.”"So I can listen to Breathe?” says Seth “When you’ve finished your revision,” I reply. Unable to burn such types at the stake, they are using more underhand methods to defend the faith. Our leaders have gone one better; they have created an alternative Britain, a logoland in which phrases like `care in the community’, `flexible workforce’, `falling unemployment’, and `enterprise economy’ have a correspondence in reality.

“They fear things are falling apart, but refuse to accept responsibility for the approaching chaos. So they point an accusatory finger at a portfolio of godless beliefs, spawned in the permissive Sixties. `No wonder there is universal cynicism,’ they cry, when everybody else knows the true cause is that we are governed by a bunch of lying scumbags Wittgenstein said that language limited his world. “You have been taught to practise safe sex, perhaps you should start safe listening, too “You’re joking,” says Seth “Others aren’t,” I reply “Why is it their business?” he complains. “Why do they want to control what I hear and see?”"They’re frightened,” I say. Seth respects the written word, but tends to eschew the pleasures of bibliosexuality (that is, reading in bed), having heard that it can make you go blind.

“Dad,” he said the other day, “if you happen to be passing Our Price in the near future, could you buy me Breathe by Prodigy?” This is what passes for culture in Bedroom No 2. In effect, Fran was earthed, whereas I was a rootless cosmopolitan, ready to flee at the first hint of Cossacks without. I am, I suspect, the descendant of nomads.I look at my son and wonder what he would rescue should the knock come at midnight. A photo of his mum? His Discman? Not forgetting the Leaning Tower of Pisa that accommodates his CD collection It grows as quickly as Jack’s beanstalk. “Great,” I said, “make an offer.” She subsequently redecorated it; I merely picked the pictures. Fifteen years ago, when we were between homes, my wife contacted the bivouac and said she’d found a house in St Albans. “Don’t worry,” he says, “the tour’s over.”

Why this lack of interest? Why, when our kitchen faucet suffered a fatal haemorrhage, did I send a plumber to pick the replacement?
To tell the truth, I have never been much of a fixtures and fittings man.