THE LAST STRAW: Tomorrow is Father's Day, as you probably know, a day in which we honour the role of a special but often forgotten group of people, writes Frank McNally.
Yes, I mean the men and women of the global greeting card industry, without whose tireless efforts to turn every human relationship into profit it would never occur to us there was such a thing as Father's Day, and we wouldn't be running around shops this afternoon looking for a shirt and tie that we know the old man is never going to wear anyway. People of the greeting cards industry, we salute you.
Surprisingly, although Father's Day still sounds like something the card manufacturers just invented to compensate for disappointing first-quarter results, and a weaker than projected Mother's Day, the event has been in the calendar for all of 95 years.
Personally, I didn't notice it for the first 92 or so. Then my kids started attending a crèche, where the inmates were encouraged to make greeting cards for every major occasion except Groundhog Day - and now the date is fixed in my calendar too.
I know the Father's Day cards I've received were really made by teachers, and the children's contribution was usually confined to painted handprints, yet the day my kids don't make me a card, dammit, I'll be disappointed. Then they'll feel guilty and buy me one instead. The greeting card industry is involved in the crèche racket somewhere, I just know.
The role of the male parent has changed a lot since 1908, when Father's Day was first marked (as an afterthought to Mother's Day, which also dates from that year). In general, it's probably fair to say that fathers are much closer to their offspring now than they were then. Partly this is due to advances in DNA technology and traceability in general; but in most cases, enhancement of the role has been voluntary.
On the debit side, there are still limitations to paternity that make Father's Day harder to take as seriously as the maternal equivalent. It's worth noting that in some countries, like Britain, the latter date is known as Mothering Sunday, but for all too obvious reasons nobody has ever considered organising a Fathering Sunday. Despite a century of progress, the verb "to father" has not expanded in the same way as the role, and whereas mothering is universally regarded as a good thing, fathering is still subject to a wide variety of controls, many of them legal.
Indeed, where the English language reinforces the idea of motherhood as a profound, all-embracing thing, this is sadly not true of paternity. We speak of "mother earth", "mother nature", the "mother of all battles", and so on. By contrast, fatherhood carries the implication of being something seasonal ("Father Christmas") or semi-detached ("Father Michael Cleary"). Even the phrase "old father time", suggests a figure standing in the background like an antique clock (a "grandfather" clock, in fact), impressive, perhaps valuable but not frequently consulted.
So we can see that language has not caught up with the modern reality of fatherhood, which demands a whole range of skills - from nappy-changing to attempted conversation with teenagers - which were not required in 1908, or indeed a lot later.
My own father was of a generation that still found it difficult to speak to their children, in his case because of a condition - common at the time - whereby he nearly always had a pipe in his mouth.
On the plus side, I think he managed to go through life without ever realising there was an event known as Father's Day, on which he was entitled to cards and presents. I hope so anyway, because I'm pretty sure he never got one from me. As it was, he never used his Christmas or birthday presents unless - this was always the key thing to remember - they were made entirely of tobacco. Even a new pipe would be put carefully aside and forgotten until he finally burned a hole in the old one.
Buying presents for fathers is always difficult. The one thing that definitely hasn't changed in 95 years is that you still can't say it with flowers. So my advice to children everywhere this weekend is not to bother with presents or expensive shop-bought cards at all.
Instead, just make your own card, using coloured paper or cardboard, or anything else you can find around the house. If you are very small, remember to ask your mother to help you with the scissors. And don't forget to include a painted handprint.
This may seem corny, especially if you're over 50, but don't worry, your father will be charmed anyway.