York! York! York!

On New Year’s Eve, we went to York for a day out. The boys were delighted to be on a train, hammering on the windows and shouting with delight every time we went through a tunnel or saw a sheep. For our next family outing, I’m booking return tickets to Carlisle. No need to get off.

After a short silence, Joshua slung out a question that caught me off guard.

“Daddy?”

“Yep?”

“If a man marries another man, does he turn into a frog?”

“Hmm… um, no.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t worry about it now, son. Hey, look at that sheep!”

Perhaps I’ll print off the slides next time we have equality and diversity training at work? I don’t want you to think Joshua holds any discriminatory views, though. For context, a few days previously, he’d told me he wanted to marry his guinea pig. I just think we (Louise) might need to have an introductory conversation with him about the ways of the world at some point.

We arrived at York station at 10 am where a group of teenage girls disembarked, glugging large bottles of WKD and shouting “York! York! York!” 

“Do you think they are going to have a better day than us?” I asked Louise.

“No, definitely not,” Louise said, struggling for signal on her phone to find directions to the National Railway Museum.

I didn’t answer my own question.

The museum was actually very good. Lots of trains. Jacob is going through a big transport phase, so he was in his element, tearing around, shouting, “Look, another train!” for most of the morning. I sent a video of this to my mum, but she didn’t realise we were at a museum and thought I was allowing him to charge around a real train station, perilously close to the tracks. Good to know she has faith in my parenting abilities. 

In the gift shop afterward, Jacob was intent on buying a toy fire engine, which Louise vetoed.

“You can get something, but it must be a train,” she said.

I thought this was a bit harsh and overruled the decision while she shook her head. Louise thinks (quite rightly) that I will do anything for an easy life, but surely out of all the parenting battles, this was an avoidable one? That said, he already has more fire engines than any child should ever reasonably need, so perhaps she had a point.

If Jacob doesn’t have a nap around midday, he loses his mind and the day descends into chaos so, against his will, we strapped him in his buggy and walked around the city. Just as he’d stopped protesting and his eyes were drooping, it started to rain, but I heroically suggested that Louise and Joshua take shelter in Zizzi’s and I would return with a well-rested toddler in half an hour.

I considered the merits of doing some laps around Boots but gladly the rain eased up and I had a pleasant stroll, taking in York Minster and the Shambles. As we passed the Jorvik Centre, I had a flashback to a Year 5 school trip where I showed off to my friend by clambering out of our cart and flicking a Viking’s ear. I had a wild youth. Speaking of which, I also saw the girls who’d been at the station earlier. They were no longer chanting “York! York! York!” Instead, they were sat on a kerb, smoking, and expressing their frustrations about not being allowed into a bar. I decided against suggesting the Jorvik centre to them.

When Jacob awoke, we returned to Zizzi’s and, with the customary January health kick incoming, I signed off in style by gauging on a pizza fit for two men and drinking beer with reckless abandon (two small bottles of Peroni.)

We had planned to walk around the city walls before catching the train home but, after his pizza and chips high, Joshua was starting to slump, and decided that he now wanted a nap. The last four years of my life have been dictated almost entirely by naps that are never my own.

We headed to Museum Gardens where Louise took a buggy shift while I entertained Jacob. He was in good spirits and keen to clamber around on the Roman ruins because the grass, he informed me, had turned into lava. Children love lava, don’t they? It was good fun until he approached quite a large rock and insisted on climbing it without assistance. When I tried to hold his hand, he shouted.

“No! Don’t touch me ever AGAIN!!!”

A woman shot me a quizzical look and briskly walked off.

After 15 minutes, Louise and Joshua returned. He was not asleep. He was kicking his legs and singing a song about his guinea pig. 

With an hour to kill before the next train, we went for a stroll down the riverfront. Perhaps feeling the effects of her large glass of wine, Louise started a high-energy tickling game with Jacob, but he was having none of it.

“No, mummy! Don’t touch me ever AGAIN!!!”

Nice to know it’s not just me but, as catchphrases go, it’s not the best, is it?

As we waited for the train, I felt like it had been a successful New Year’s Eve, which is rarely the case for me. A particular lowlight came when I was 17 and going to an eagerly anticipated party, feeling quietly confident of a midnight kiss with a girl I had been wooing via MSN messenger. Unfortunately, on arriving at the bar with my mate, the bouncer took our fake IDs and asked us to confirm our dates of birth, to which my mate replied, “I don’t know.” As a result, we saw in the new year silently playing Mario Kart at my parents’ house while a guy who had a car made his move on the girl I liked. Anyway, I’m not bitter. Totally over it. 

Back in the present, as soon as I sat down, I was hit by a wave of exhaustion and made the ambitious decision to close my eyes.

“Daddy! Wake up!” Joshua said, then climbed on the table and stood up, knocking a beaker of water onto Louise. As she tried to wipe her lap with a tissue, Jacob escaped her grasp and darted down the carriage, shouting.

I jogged after him but was too slow. He had somehow managed to get his arm stuck in the vestibule doors.

“Arm stuck, Daddy!”

I pushed the button to no avail and as I tried to remove his arm, he screamed, once more, “No! Don’t touch me ever AGAIN!!!” I eventually managed to prise the doors open to free him and fortunately he didn’t appear to have sustained any injuries. The doors, however, were jammed halfway and making an odd whirring noise. I picked him up to whisk him away from the scene, to which he started crying and trying to whack me with his toy fire engine.  

I might rethink that day trip to Carlisle.

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