An Irishman's Diary

FATHERHOOD is a life-long education, as I was reminded recently by yet another domestic emergency of a kind that, before it happened, I couldn’t have imagined. It concerned my daughter who, in the past year, has become both a) a secondary school student and b) a teenager. Two conditions which, I’ve discovered, are not always complementary.

Her new, all-girls’ school is very regimented, with strict rules on attendance, punctuality, and dress-code. Fingernails are subject to occasional inspections, on suspicion of possessing varnish. And the students’ vertical extremes – hair and footwear – are required to be formal in appearance at all times.

I often feel sorry for my daughter as she struggles to adjust from the more relaxed environment of primary school. But on the morning in question, I was especially sympathetic, because it was raining and she was sleep-deprived.

So despite pressure from work deadlines, I drove her to school in heavy traffic and dropped her at the gate. There, I told her “Have fun!” (although I said this a little ironically, knowing that fun is not one of the 17 subjects they do in first year). And with that I headed for town and a WiFi cafe, already worrying about my deadline.

Shortly afterwards, I heard the first of a series of faint bleeps somewhere in the car, which could have been my phone, but which I instead decided was on the radio. In any case, the phone was out of reach, at the bottom of a bag in the back seat. So even when I then heard it ring a couple of times in quick succession – unusual before 8.30am – I wasn’t in position to answer.

It was only in the cafe later, having already ordered an Americano, that I dug the phone out. Whereupon I noticed – Oh my God! – 10 missed texts. And several missed phone-calls too.

Of course, my blood froze. At times like this, a parent goes into A&E triage mode. There was no time to read the texts. Instead I made an instant diagnosis of the problem’s origin. And seeing that most of the messages were from my daughter, while only the last few were my wife, I rang the former in panic.

There was no answer. But then, as I knew, she would be in school by now, unless something had happened. So, steeling myself, I scrolled through the messages. The first, sent at 8.14am, said simply: “Cum Back!!!” The second, also at 8.14am, read: “I forgot sumthing!” It wasn’t until the third message, sent at 8.16am, that the full horror of the situation dawned on me. “Im wearing uggs!” it said. “My shoes are in the car!”. From there on, the messages became a catalogue of anguish and despair.

8.21am: “I cant go into school without my proper shoes!” 8.23am: “Ring me!!!” 8.26am: “Walking down road. Answer your fone!!” The growing time lapses were explained when, at 8.29am, my wife joined the cries for help: “R forgot shoes”. And then 8.30am: “R in Uggs! Go back!” I knew by now that my daughter couldn’t be in school. It was scientifically impossible to be at school while wearing Uggs. Actually, I did have a vague recollection of being told that it happened once before, to another student, but that the girl in question was quickly arrested by the shoe police and hadn’t been heard of since.

So I rang my daughter again and this time she answered. There were tears being choked back at the other end, I could tell. And as I thought of her standing by the road, dripping, in her cloth wellingtons, I knew my deadline would have to wait. “Stay where you are, pet,” I said. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

I WELL understand why all-girls’ schools need dress rules. But as it happens, this wasn’t the only sartorial crisis my daughter had to deal with recently. At least in the other case, she wasn’t alone. In fact, the entire student body was affected. Because, as we learned, another of the changes from co-ed primary to all-girls secondary is that, in the latter, the annual visit to the school by a photographer is not announced in advance.

Presumably this is to prevent an epidemic of hairdressing, make-up, fake tans, and the other precautions that, forewarned, girls (and their mothers) might think necessary.

So instead the photographer arrived without warning, causing near hysteria. There was a mass stampede to the toilets, where the nearest mirror was located, and much grumbling afterwards. But the good news (apparently) is that the photographer offers an air-brushing service whereby, for an extra €5, any obvious blemishes in the portraits can be made disappear.

I have mixed feelings about this. As a journalist, I’m slightly troubled by the ethics of Photoshopping. As a male parent, however, I focus on the fiver and agree with the school that it’s the lesser of two evils.

Anyway, it’s all part of the steep learning curve of fatherhood.

Handing my Americano back the other day, I told the twentysomething behind the counter: “Sorry, I’ll have to skip that – family emergency”.

“Nothing serious, I hope?” he asked. “It’s my daughter,” I muttered distractedly, mid-text: “She went to school in Uggs”. But the man just stared back at me blankly, still too young to understand.