Mum's birthday

I'm not going to risk making any generalisations about men or women in this post but instead I am going to talk about me and my dad. One of the things we have in common is a desire to be useful but a slight feeling of helplessness when we're visiting other people's houses and also, perhaps, a fear of getting in the way and being a bit irritating.

I cope with this by trying to find something to do which is both simple and clearly helpful, like wiping up. OK, the pile of dried up cutlery and crockery will require putting away at the end but I have figured that is less of an obstacle to conversation that asking where everything goes.

My dad copes by reading the paper. This is not a criticism or a dig: I know exactly where he's coming from. But mention there's a barbecue and the man is first to his feet.

When I was eight, we moved to Hong Kong. My dad had lived in London all his life - apart from being evacuated during the war (another child stole his apple on the train, which I find heartbreaking) - and he didn't visit the seaside until he was twelve. Suddenly we were in an ex-pat community, with a whole new lifestyle. He and my mum adapted incredibly to this new comparative luxury, never taking it all too seriously. I remember we used to barbecue on the beach and he and his friends would mock-seriously discuss techniques of "wafting".

Forty years later and he manages the barbecue with the skill and authority of a surgeon, calling for the tools of the trade, as required, monitoring the temperature of the coals and deftly moving the food around accordingly.

It was my mum's birthday today and all of the kids except Charlie were here, so he was catering for eight of us, sausages, burgers, chicken, the works, only relinquishing his command of the pit and retiring for a well-earned beer when the amateurs moved in with their marshmallows on the end of sticks.