Dad's world: Desert disaster

I COME from a long history of gamblers and alcoholics who would have taken the eye out of your head and come back for the eyelashes, on a bad day. (On a good day, they would have loved you to bits.) Naturally, when I leaned into my sweetheart’s ear on my wedding day and whispered, ‘For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, all the days of my life’, I of course didn’t mean a word of it — well, at least not the ‘for poorer’ bit.

So, when I took my three children to Eddie Rocket’s for dessert late last year and discovered that I had no money in my Laser account to pay for the bill, I panicked. I phoned my wife who was in China diligently working to bring us back an extra few bob to take the edge off the recession. “Oh, the money must have run out of the account,” she explained, to my horror, and I could feel her reproof for over-indulging the kids while she was away, which I had indeed done.

A few days later she returned home laden with gifts. A few days after that, I drove to Dublin to meet her for lunch. She was sitting under a tree — or a lamp-post — I don’t know which. All I could see was her beauty. I was in love.