Do-gooders neglect their children. Just look at my dad – and me

A few years ago, a family friend described my father as being a bit like Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House, by which he meant that he neglected his own family in favour of helping others. By way of proof, he cited the famous occasion when my father abandoned all of us on Christmas Day to spend time with some elderly widows in the local cemetery, pouring cups of tea into the graves of their dear departed husbands.

He had a point. My father wasn’t a deadbeat dad in the conventional sense of the word, but he was a workaholic. The only time I can remember him playing football with me was on my birthday — a huge treat. The rest of the time he was either at work or ensconced in his office at the top of the house. As a result, I became reliant on other people’s dads, like Max Herman, whose son Lucas was in my class. He used to take us ice-skating every Saturday at the Michael Sobell Leisure Centre just off the Holloway Road. I remember thinking at the time that it was odd of Lucas’s dad to want to spend so much time with his son. I now realise that it was my father who was odd.

Before the friend pointed out my dad’s similarity to Mrs Jellyby, I hadn’t made the connection between the neglect and the good works, but it was obviously true. If my father had been a banker, he probably wouldn’t have been able to justify spending so little time with his wife and children. But because he was a social entrepreneur — helping to set up the Open University, for instance — he didn’t feel guilty about it.