London - My son and his dad are having a rare one-to-one chat.
“What exactly does QPR stand for then?” asks Henry, aged seven. I want to shout “Quite Possibly Relegated”, but that would be cruel; this is a significant moment in my little one’s life.
A tricky rite of passage is happening before my eyes and I have a feeling it’s all about to go horribly wrong. My husband pauses impatiently and sighs: “I’ve told you that many times before,” he says. “It stands for Queens Park Rangers.”
“And why exactly do I have to support them again?” asks Henry, who is doing his best to avoid this conversation. He’s wriggling from foot to foot nervously and pretending he has no idea what it’s about when, in reality, he knows all too well. He does the same thing when I ask him if he has cleaned his teeth.
Henry’s worried brain is computing a variety of different answers, none of which look good for Dad. Meanwhile, his father mistakenly believes their conversation is potentially life changing.
“QPR are the family team. We’ve always supported them,” he says with gravity. This is not strictly accurate: neither I nor our three girls have been interested in football since David Beckham stopped playing but Mr Candy takes football extremely seriously.
In fact, he will often quote Bill Shankly on the matter: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
But now there is a problem - because I can see Henry doesn’t want to support QPR. He just doesn’t know how to tell his dad that. I want to come to my son’s rescue, but I’m caught in the middle of a tug-of-war of emotions. Who do I support here?
This debate started as we tried to think of a way to help Henry fit in at his new school; he’s shy and the first couple of weeks have been a challenge. Mr Candy’s eyes lit up as he suggested Henry support a football team so he could join in with playground banter and kickabouts.
“I’ll sign him up with us,” he said enthusiastically. “He can be a Super Hoop.” Henry looked nervous, he didn’t want to be a Hoop. If he supported a team, he didn’t want to support one that was about to be pummelled 4-0 by Manchester United and had comedian Bill Bailey as its most famous supporter.
He couldn’t make life easier for himself at the school gates supporting a team whose blue-and-white strip was once famously worn by Andrew Ridgeley in a Wham! video.
But how do you tell a life-long QPR fan that? Especially if he is your dad? I could see my husband going misty-eyed over the possibility of Saturday afternoons at Loftus Road with his son, future memories playing in his mind like a cosy Bisto advert.
He was already thinking of getting Henry the hat and gloves. And I could also see that Henry was about to say possibly the one thing worse than saying he didn’t want to support QPR.
“What if I support Arsenal?” he asked.
We’ve got a house full of children, dogs, hamsters and visiting toddlers; why on earth did no one create a distraction? How come the first blanket of silence for a decade dominated this specific moment?
I’m interrupted during almost every conversation at home. Usually the three-year-old diffuses any chance of adult chat by saying or doing something impossible to ignore. “Don’t eat that conker,” she yelled as I tried to hear what the man at the BT call centre was telling me. “It’s spurious.”
But now, nothing. We had to stand in nervous silence awaiting a response. And possibly a maternal intervention. “He doesn’t want to feel left out or get made fun of,” I reason out loud and, hopefully, impartially. Mr Candy sighs.
“But QPR is my team,” he says, before bombarding us with boring statistics, tales of their “comeback kid” history and their glory days (OK, I made that last bit up).
Maybe, I suggest, Henry can stay up late and watch Match Of The Day with you, whoever he supports, but for the purpose of school, perhaps it’s best he goes with Arsenal. Mr Candy shrugs agreement.
Mabel, aged three, decides to interject. She wants to stay up late, too.
“You can’t,” I say. “You’re too small.”
“But I want to be a Hoop,” she says. “And I have got powers. They could be helpful.”
Daily Mail
* Lorraine Candy is editor in chief of Elle magazine.