A DAD'S LIFE:A sobering tale of parents, children and alcohol abuse
DAVID YELLAND was a young success. He became editor of the New York Postat 31 but he is best known in journalistic circles for his editorship of the Sunfrom 1998 to 2003. In that role, he says, he was well paid to be angry and stir up anger. It was about as high-profile a job as you can get, and it came with pressure attached.
Speaking on The Last Wordon Today FM, when asked how he coped with that pressure, Yelland replied: "Not very well." He drank. A lot. Interestingly, he explained that he wasn't a public drunk, he kept his serious consumption solitary, putting it away in the backroom at home. Why? He says he is an alcoholic. He had to.
Now Yelland is in the news because he has written a book for kids called The Truth About Leo. This is the story of Leo, aged 10, whose father, Tom, is a GP and and a secret drinker. Tom is struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, Leo's mother, two years earlier. To ease his pain he consumes vodka. Leo sees that his dad has changed, and he wants the old one back. He tries to hide the vodka. This nightly game of hide-and-seek portrays the tragedy of both characters – the father's desire to block out the world, the son's desire for his father to become aware that he needs him.
Yelland says that Tom is the father he would have become had he not entered rehab in 2005, a year before his ex-wife died of breast cancer. In 2005 he faced the horrific realisation that he was to become a single parent and that, if he was to have a chance of being a father to his son, then aged six, he would have to knock the booze on the head. He managed that and has stayed off it, stating now that his relationship with his son is the most important thing in his life.
The Truth About Leois a salutary story, ultimately one of redemption and hope, and extremely well written, according to most of its reviewers. Things turn out well, which might be the least realistic part of any book written on this subject.
We all have people we whisper about, expressing concern behind the relevant party’s back at their drinking habits. If we’re being honest, coming from the culture we do, most of us could hold up our hands to events at some stage in our lives that we wish had not taken place that were directly attributable to excess consumption. I have many.
Much of the time we laugh these memories off. Back in our 20s such nights, such behaviours, were par for the course: proving you could drink from noon until noon was a rite of passage. Of course, you knew you would throw off such reckless abandon when kids came along. You wouldn’t have the time or the energy reserves for such debauchery any more. You would think that would be true, but more and more it appears not to be.
Even now, years into the rearing game, my attitude is that when an opportunity for a night out (with the promise of a lie-in the following day) comes up, it should be grabbed and abused. Hang the consequences. The physical and mental pain of those consequences intensifies each time as the steady march towards 40 continues, but the engrained belief that this is how I should spend those “free” moments will not abate.
And I’m not alone. Some of you reading this may have the sense to treat yourselves gently, but many of you will have the same hangdog expression I wear on a Sunday morning following a stupid Saturday.
What I attempt to block from my mind is that the kids are watching and their eyes are keen. Okay, we don’t throw the stuff down in front of them, we’re not mumbling into martinis over breakfast, but they’re not stupid. They see the correlation between our excitement at running out the door for a night out and our downcast, bludgeoned eyes the next day. We are telling them booze is what you run out the door for, and feeling like the living dead afterwards is perfectly acceptable.
Even now, I have no idea how I will, with a straight face, enforce a no-alcohol rule when they hit their teens, but it’s a hypocritical policy I’m readying myself to adopt.
I have huge respect for what David Yelland has achieved, and I look forward to reading his book. My wish is that maybe a similar book could be written for the average drinking family.