IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:Experienceteaches us that there are, in real life and in the family, no absolutes, writes Adam Brophy
TONY PARSONS wrote of Julie Burchill: "Hell hath no fury like a first wife run to fat." It didn't go unnoticed. She countered in her autobiography with a description of losing her virginity to him as being "nasty, brutish, short".
These two were famously scathing. They met on the music paper NMEin the late 1970s, employed to cover the Punk movement, something with which they became synonymous.
Younger than anyone else on the staff, hiding (according to Parsons anyway, but it's quite hard to believe) their naivety behind big, noisy exteriors, they became allies, friends and finally lovers. They married, had a kid and, after seven years together, split.
They didn't go away though. Although they had long since finished up with NME, both continued to spew vitriol throughout the 1980s and 1990s, seemingly inspired by their self-made caricatures.
I used to read Burchill's film reviews in the Sunday Timesin the 1990s with a certain awe that she continued to do the job when she hated everything she saw. Then along came Pulp Fiction, which she couldn't help but like, and the spell was broken.
Parsons ranted in the Mirrorand various lads' mags before getting a serious TV break as the working-class, loudmouth hero on the Late Review, a position he held for three years before a shake-up in the style of the show caused him to quit.
Burchill is still sniping from the tall grass, spiky and full of teen attitude. Parsons, however, has become rich from writing a series of sentimental novels, usually focused on the power of relationship, whether it be between parent and child or man and wife, and always with an upbeat, positive outlook winning through in the end.
I like that, because when it comes to writing about family it seems the happy-clappy Brady Bunch side of your psyche should triumph over the forces of cynicism and evil.
Good will out, blood is thicker than water, never take sides against the family, and other assorted cliches.
But it troubles me because the evidence that the Dark Side kicks ass is all around, yet we are supposed to believe that love conquers all in affairs of the family.
I feel like a hopeful convert staring at an altar. I want to believe, I really do, but all the evidence is stacked against this being the truth.
If I have a pet hate (there are many irritations but only a select few aspire to hate), it is absolutism. That's the way it is-ism. You'll find it a lot in middle-management, whereas the big guns tend to bodyswerve the absolutes.
You'll also find it in parents. We have to believe that our methods are working, that they are true to our core values, that we are raising children who can walk out into the world with their heads held high, safe in the knowledge that they have been brought up in a morally unambiguous hothouse of unimpeded direction.
We are certain in the paths we choose for our children. We are certain as we wander down every random tributary of our own, seeking any sign to assure us we're on the right one.
The manuals say that parenting is about consistency, about providing a secure, domestic environment where guidelines are enforced, consistently. But how many of us wake up every morning and wish for a different life?
Somewhere where you get to tell your boss what you think of him - physically, if you like - where your wife is a 21-year-old Brazilian lingerie model (and she isn't your wife), and your kids . . . well, they tend to be strangely absent from this kind of fantasy.
We live with variations on this theme running through our heads, and we still pronounce to other parents our utter confidence in the methods we adopt.
The more I experience of parenting, the more I feel it's like trading blows on the ropes. You have to duck and move.
It's painful and you're forever altering your perception, based on what's happening at a given moment - for you and your opponent/child/partner. The gameplan goes out the window, and the chances are that you're just as likely to be wrong as you are to be right.
So, while I'd like to buy into Parsons's wealth-generating philosophy, I think Burchill may be the more honest of the pair. Parsons's books, easy to read and often enjoyable, never seem to embrace the really nasty side of a protagonist, as if to do so would be to undermine the fabric of family.
But we all know that in the family is where we see the underbelly of every character. The family is where we learn that there are no absolutes.
abrophy@irish-times.ie