The heart-warming joy when your children disown you

The playground gatekeeper assumed I was a brazen child-snatcher happy to boast of my hobby

"At about three in the afternoon I got the three-line whip call to join them. “We’re in Hyde Park ….” My wife sounded suicidal" (Getty)

Half-term panic had set in. The kids were starting to get surly and aggressive. In desperation we got in the car and drove to London for a “day out”. It still depresses me that now I don’t live in London, I have become a naff visitor as opposed to a hip resident. This is the price you pay for bumpkin life.

My daughter visits London with only one thing in mind – Bubbleology. She is obsessed with these Taiwanese fruit juices with bubbles and tapioca and other strange and wonderful things in them. Anybody from her school who goes to the capital must return bearing a multitude of these drinks that they then dispense like pubescent dealers.

I peeled away from the family “fun” and headed into work for as long as I could wing it. At about three in the afternoon I got the three-line whip call to join them. “We’re in Hyde Park….” My wife sounded suicidal.

By the time I got to the park, I’d received a text telling me that they had moved on from wandering aimlessly around the boating pond. They were now in the Princes Diana Memorial Playground for Filipino Nannies.

I approached the locked gate.

“Do you have children?” barked the gatekeeper. “No, just browsing…” I replied jovially. Big mistake. I was told to remove myself from the area. I tried to explain that I was joking but the gatekeeper was not for turning. “My kids are in there,” I whimpered.

“You didn’t say that the first time.” She fixed me with a death stare. “I was just making a little joke.” I tried to look penitent but was eventually forced to pay a Filipino nanny to go and find my wife – the only mother in the place.

I should have known but I just can’t help myself. If I had just smiled and said that “yes, my kids are in there already”, I’d have been allowed in. The gatekeeper clearly assumed that I was some sort of brazen child-snatcher happy to boast of my hobby.

It’s not the first time that I’ve got into this sort of trouble. I once popped into the swimming gala at my kids’ old school. I sat next to a gang of mums and tried to work out which of the swim-capped children were mine. “Which one’s yours?” asked a mother. “Oh, none of them, I’m just here to watch.” The mother froze in horror and rapidly got together in a huddle with some other mums who all started to stare me out.

Back in Hyde Park, my wife was eventually found and came to the gate with my kids. I greeted them over the fence. The gatekeeper asked them whether they knew me? My kids didn’t miss a beat. “No… we don’t know this man.” My daughter turned away and looked frightened. “Mummy… it’s him again… the bad man….” My boy clung to my wife’s legs.

The gatekeeper moved towards a telephone and I gave up. I backed away and headed off towards a nearby pub as rapidly as I could without looking guilty. I was secretly quite proud of them. I have raised them well.