Learner Dad: I don’t enjoy sitting down for toy time or board games with my kids

Picture: iStock 

It was our son’s birthday recently. I find birthdays stressful because the house fills up with plastic toys from well-meaning friends and relations. Normally I go all hippy on them and start complaining about the effect of cheap toys on the environment. I think this is part eco-concern and part jealousy because I only ever got one toy at a time in the early '70s. But mainly it’s because once the toy has been dropped off by a well-meaning relation, I’ll be the one who has to show my kids how to play with it.

I t probably rules me out of Parent of the Year, but I don’t enjoy sitting down for toy time or board games with my kids. I have chubby fingers, failing sight and I flunked every single aptitude test that involved shapes, so making stuff is a complete head-wreck. (And, anyway, my wife likes making stuff, so I don’t want to interfere with her fun.) As for board games, they go on too long for everyone. The kids like Monopoly for three rounds of pass go, and then we all drift off our separate ways. It’s probably just as well – the property market is tilted against young people, I don’t want my kids growing up thinking they’ll be able to buy a house.

Anyway, we’re working our way through the toys my son got for his birthday. I’d managed to avoid playing with this tricky looking mini-Lego thing, which was a real result . But there was no place to hide when he asked if I’d play Bingo with him last night. I said yes, and out came the little Bingo set he got from my wife’s friend.

I’ve never enjoyed a game so much in my life. There is no playing in Bingo really, it’s just a nice zen rhythm of someone calling out a number and t hen checking if you have it on a card. It was just me and my son for a few spins of the barrel until his sister came over and showed an interest. This is because she wanted to know why I said Two Fat Ladies in a cartoon north of England accent every time a ball dropped out, even though it wasn’t 88. (It’s the only call out I know.) A quick click on the internet brought up mecca bingo.com and the full list of B ingo-caller rhyming slang, for every number between one and 90.

That’s when the fun started. My son and I played on, with him on barrel-rolling duties. His sister played bingo caller in her own cartoon north of England accent, slang first, then the number. Man alive – 5. Brighton Line – 59. Two Little Ducks – 22. Some of the slang is lame – we all reckoned Two Dozen for 24 was well below the standard set by Tickety Boo – 62.  It was charming, like one of those black-and-white Ealing comedies you’d watch on a Sunday afternoon because you were too hungover to get up and find the remote control.

Our bingo game didn’t actually last that long. Nothing does with kids unless it involves making slime with cornflour and spreading it all over the kitchen table. (Man, I hate Science Week.) Eventually, my son peeled off to make a Lego bird with his mother, and B ingo isn’t much crack when it’s just you and an eight-year-old pretending to be Les Dawson. But it will be back the next time we get a rain-soaked weekend, which is never that far off in Ireland. Actually, I must remember to bring the Bingo set on our staycation in July, we could have done with it last year in West Cork during Storm Ellen.

I don’t want to say I’ve gone soft on loads of plastic for the kids because that will just encourage people to drop their old stuff at my house. (Seriously, get a skip.) But thanks to Bingo, we’ve finally found a game for all the family.