Rhys Laverty

Gearing up for my fourth paternity leave, I knew the drill. For the older kids: batch-cooked meals, ready in the freezer. For the newborn: all the baby stuff down from the loft. For my wife: whatever the heck the heroic matriarch wanted. And for dad? A ready supply of films for those long solo night-shifts.  Paternity leave nighttime viewing has but one purpose: stay awake. Specifically, stay awake whilst sitting as still as possible so as not to disturb the sleeping newborn on your chest. As such, there’s no point making grand designs to watch the five-star, high-brow things that you’ve been meaning to watch for goodness knows how long simply because you feel you ought to. Theoretically, I will really enjoy the critically acclaimed Shogun on Disney+.

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, we are all visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. At this time of year, people and events that have gone before feel closer at hand – both the personal and the historical. One of the main ways we experience this is through our tradition of Christmas carols. A recent YouGov survey showed that 14 per cent of Britons usually attend a carol service. Not as high as one would hope, but attendance rates are rising: in 2023, Church of England Christmas services alone saw a 20 per cent leap in attendance. I sense 2025 is already continuing the trend. Yet many churches will be pointlessly squandering the opportunity by continuing a fad which both turns off newcomers and lets down regulars: modernised Christmas carols.

‘This is beginning to fall apart – I think it’s just age.’ Words spoken on the evening of my 32nd birthday. Thankfully, my wife wasn’t referring to my body or our marriage. Almost as tragic though, it was another band T-shirt, the fourth in as many weeks to finally give up the ghost. Big things, like turning 30 or becoming a dad, don’t really rattle me This is no small thing for me. From about 2007 onwards, I had a reliable default outfit: band T-shirt, black skinny jeans, black Converse All-Stars (high-top). Unlike many of my peers, I escaped the early years of marriage without a wardrobe purge by my wife, and so this get-up served me well until fairly recently. But, as Auden wrote, you cannot conquer time.

My wife and I have only ever dated by accident. After our third date a decade ago (well, what I thought was our third date) that she texted me asking, ‘So was that just dinner and theatre, or was it “dinner and theatre?”’ To this day, she insists that she had no idea what was going on (despite my sudden interest in her after two years of just being acquaintances, the Skype calls, the hand-painted postcards… actually, I’d better not start). A few years later, early on in our marriage, when we were still childless, young professional Londoners, we thought we’d wildly treat ourselves to dinner out on a Thursday.

Last year, we got rid of our television. Pretty much, anyway: it lives in the attic of our increasingly cramped two-bedroom maisonette. The TV only comes down for mummy and daddy’s Friday night date nights and for occasional family film time. Any time gained by putting the television on was almost invariably lost (and then some) by arguing about switching it off With three kids under five, we did not come to this momentous bit of Ludditery lightly. However, our three kids had never really had that much screen time anyway: YouTube, tablets, and phones are verboten, and we have never opened the entertainment sluice gate by just ‘sticking the telly on’ and subjecting them to what we unapologetically call ‘twaddle’. Our television wasn’t even connected to the aerial.

‘I don’t know how you do it with three.’ I am at a child’s birthday party, working out how many Wotsits it is acceptable for me, an adult, to take. It is 10.13 a.m. and these Wotsits will be my breakfast. Something had to give in the morning routine to get my son here on time, and as usual it was daddy’s breakfast. I say my son – this one is my older son. Back at home is his four year old sister, and his new, two-week old baby brother. It’s bad form to discuss Chinese expansionism while nibbling a Quaver ‘Pardon?’ I say. ‘Three kids, man,’ says the Other Dad, ‘we find one enough to handle’. I feign a chuckle, say that we’re doing pretty well for the first couple of weeks, and ask which of the children in the heaving birthday mass is his.