And that was it, or so I thought.

With hindsight, of course, I now realize that strange things happen in a children’s Nursery; including a kind of natural selection by which each of these apparently lifeless animals ‘fight’ for the attention of their young masters. 

Some will, of course, compete on the strength of their moving parts.  Whether powered by batteries, or a more traditional ‘wind up’ mechanism, these are typically the big hitters on Christmas day.  By early January, however, when the batteries are dead and the wind up mechanisms have been wound up once too far, it is clear that they are not in this for the long term.

The same can be said, perhaps, of the life-size Crocodiles and Panda bears that are brought home from the visiting fairground attractions by soon-to-be dads on lazy, summer nights.  The high impact soon gives way to the practical inconvenience of their sheer size.

Rabbit was not a big hitter.  He had neither moving parts, nor was he, by any stretch of the imagination, oversized.  He was simply a rabbit shaped gift, with a bell in his tummy.

As the weeks and months turned into years, a magical connection grew between my daughter and her rabbit that was difficult to explain.  Like it or not, Rabbit found himself dragged around the local park, dropped in puddles and stuffed into the back of the pushchair everywhere we went – and not without consequence.  Over a period of five years, his fur wore thin and patchy, his head fell off at least three times, and he finally lost one of his legs – replaced by a prosthesis, donated by a genetically compatible rabbit found in one of the other corners of the Nursery.

None of us could remember how Rabbit came to mean so much, but by the time my daughter was five it was impossible to imagine her without this unlikely hero and companion.

Running into the house after another day at school, the ritual is always the same; her hat, coat and shoes are thrown off and left strewn across the floor – such is her excitement and haste to be reunited with her Rabbit.  Within minutes she is back in front of the TV, cradling her most treasured possession in her arms. 

And Rabbit is clearly as content as she is.

But lest you think that I am speaking now of that stuffed bunny with a bell, I should perhaps explain that this best friend is now what we tend to call Real.  Somewhere, somehow, a transformation occurred.

And that’s precisely how the story goes.

“What is REAL?  asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying near the Nursery fender… “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up?” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become.  It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shappy.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

It’s a straightforward enough question.

At least, I thought it was until I read Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman recently.  It turns out that learning to tell the time is not quite as simple as my primary school teachers previously led me to believe. 

Lightman’s book takes us to Berne, Switzerland.  The year is 1905 and a young patent clerk, named Albert Einstein, has been experiencing a series of remarkable dreams about the nature of time.  Each dream takes him to a different kind of world, where time defines reality in a different way.

 In one of these worlds, Lightman explains, ‘it is instantly obvious that something is odd.  No houses can be seen in the valleys or plains.  Everyone lives in the mountains.’

The reason for this, it transpires, is because someone once worked out that time travels more slowly the farther we are from the centre of the earth.  Despite the fact that the effect is miniscule, once this phenomenon was known, people moved to the mountains in an effort to stay young. 

‘To get the maximum effect, they have constructed their houses on stilts.  The mountaintops all over the world are nested with such houses, which from a distance look like a flock of fat birds squatting on long skinny legs.  People most eager to live longest have built their houses on the highest stilts.  Indeed, some houses rise half a mile high on their spindly wooden legs.  Height has become status.’

Despite the extraordinary lengths to which these people were prepared to go, however, their refusal to descend into the lowlands to farm and produce fresh food eventually sealed their fate.  At length, Lightman explains, these people became ‘thin like the air, bony, old before their time.’

Fast forward to 2010 and to a small corner of Brussels, Belgium.  Another young man is sitting in my favorite chair, in the corner of our living room.  Every evening after school he is there, typing his hopes and dreams onto the screen of his laptop computer – writing his blog. 

I recognize the excitement in his eyes as he stumbles upon another idea.  I watch his fascination grow at his capacity to harness the power of the Internet and connect with friends, family and perfect strangers across the globe.  I smile at his perfectionism – his innate need to get things right first time and go from A to Z without stopping along the way.

I wonder where he gets that from?

As if I need to ask. 

And if I did need to ask, it would appear that Einstein already dreamed about my world too – a world in which ‘time is a circle, bending back upon itself’ and ‘repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.’

‘In the world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.  So too every moment that two friends stop becoming friends, every time that a family is broken because of money, every vicious remark in an argument between spouses, every opportunity denied because of a superior’s jealousy, every promise not kept.  And just as all things will be repeated in the future, all things now happening happened a million times before.’

Sitting in front of me, the young man hasn’t had this particular dream yet.  He continues to be inspired by absolute uniqueness of his life. 

All I can see, on the other hand, is my history repeating itself right in front of my eyes.

I think I’ll go climb that mountain. 

Sometimes things happen that simply don’t make quite enough sense.

There was no need for anyone to talk to me as I stood in the queue, hoping to change my first class ticket from London to Brussels for an earlier train.  As I explained to the woman at the desk, I was more than happy to sit in second class, if that meant I could get home forty minutes earlier than planned.

If you can measure the quality of time in hugs, smiles and conversation about things that matter, then this weekend had been a good one.  But now it was over.  I was tired and keen to return home, having spent all my love and energy in the company of my ‘London kids’. 

A man stood in line behind me.  I am not sure when he had joined the queue or quite how the conversation got started, but as I waited for the woman to return with my new ticket we began to talk. 

To be honest, I was only half listening, so did not quite catch the name of the Caribbean island from which he was returning or the exact nature of the project in which he was involved over there.  Neither did I ask him to repeat this information, as I simply assumed that this forty-something, well dressed man with a strong Dutch accent was just being polite -  passing the time of day before it was his turn to be at the front of the queue.

The woman at the desk called me over and handed me my new ticket.  But as I turned to leave, the man in line approached me again.  He clearly wanted to keep the conversation going.

‘I believe we have met for a reason,’ he started to say.  ‘I have a very strong feeling about who you are and believe that we have an opportunity together to make a difference.  You are a good man, with a good heart.  You are a good dad, trying to do your best for your children.  I see that in you.  I feel that very strongly about you.’

Taller than me, I looked up at this stranger who, for whatever reason, had chosen to speak with unusual candor and intent.

If only you knew, I thought to myself.  If only you knew how complicated it feels to be anything close to ‘good’ when it comes to being a dad these days.  If only you knew how many times I have stood in this very station, at this very platform, caught in the middle distance between children in two countries. 

Despite the awkwardness, there was a warmth in his voice that I found hard to explain.  Why me?  Why now?  What did any of this mean?  My mind was full of questions.

Thanking him for his kindness, I explained that I needed to call my younger son back to resolve a technical difficulty that he was having with the new iPod he had just purchased.  

As we shook hands, he told me his name. 

John. 

Looking back as I passed through the security barrier, I noticed that the stranger on the platform was gone.  Perhaps I’ll never know what he wanted and, to be honest, I don’t really care.

It was just another fragment – a moment in time worth remembering.  All part of life’s unfolding and wonderfully enriching story.

We’ve all been there and should know the routine by heart.

1. The door slam.  This marks the opening of the ritual and is often triggered by a simple remark or apparently reasonable request.

2. The stomp, carefully designed over the years to betray the laws of physics and produce a pounding, reverberating, echo that hardly seems possible from a girl so small.  It is also designed to alert the neighbours that ‘life is totally and utterly unfair’.

3. The tears.  Like taps, they are turned on and off at will.  Their intended effect is to evoke an overwhelming sense of guilt.

4. The sulk.  All of the above is but a precursor to the long, lingering, stinking atmosphere that teenagers can create.  War has been declared and the strategy is clear: victory by attrition.

It’s a long way from those giddy first days as a parent, where life was a rainbow of pastel blues, pinks and first smiles.  The photos, kept carefully in my bottom drawer, remind me of simpler days, charged with the wonder of first birthdays, first steps and first days at school.

It was easier back then.

Or was it?  The more I think about it, the more I suspect that we have developed the human capacity as parents to overlook a long, dark and painful shadow on the experience of bringing new life into the world.  We have learned to ignore the price we have to pay for those ‘magic’ moments.

And it is all to do with a kind of dying or letting go.

From the moment they are born, the notion that our children belong to us is challenged.  We spend years trying to manage their growing independence, wrestling consciously or unconsciously with the paradox that what came from us is not us, but a unique, emerging adult who may not see the world as we do or follow the path we have trod. 

It is not so obvious at first.  Wrapped up in blankets and oodles of love and cuddles, you could be forgiven for thinking that your children will always be a part of you.  After all, they rarely leave the safe embrace of our arms and there are plenty of opportunities to reaffirm the deep physical connection between our life and theirs.

It begins quietly with things that only half matter - choosing what they want to wear, what vegetables they want to eat and what football team they will support.

And then one day you turn around and they are living out a totally different story where parents, at best, are only playing a supporting role.

We tell our friends that we feel so ‘out of touch’ with our teenage children.  And maybe, here, this is exactly right because one of the most obvious outward signs of this natural, heart-wrenching process has to do with our struggle to literally keep in touch with those we love the most.

As Tony Parsons, in his most recent novel, so eloquently explains:

“When they are babies you can revel in them, you can kiss their cheek as hard as you dare and get drunk on their smell and the velveteen sheen of their skin.  When your children are babies, you can get stoned on the incredible living fact of their living.  Then it all changes as they grow.  You hold them.  And then one day you realise you have stopped holding them… by the time they are in their teens, you can let years drift by without really touching them.  The physical expression of your love – the hugs, the kisses, the way you are allowed to touch their hair – all disappears.“ (Starting Over)

Families, thank God, are not what are shown in films or even what we dare to post to our Facebook profiles.  They are messy, complex organizations of people learning to understand their dependence upon one another – whilst also affirming their ultimate independence.

Families, on some days, really are zones of war.

But I, for one, am resolved to stay in touch for as long as I can and keep my fingers crossed for the rest.

When is a dad not a dad? 

This question has bugged me for years now, but I guess that perhaps that’s normal – particularly as someone who lives in the shadow of divorce and the endless ritual of weekend ‘appointments’ with my children. 

Once upon a time, I never would have given it a second thought.  I had always ‘been there’ and simply assumed that I would always be captain of the ship that steered these young lives towards adulthood.

I never once thought, back in the day, that we would end up shipwrecked.  I never imagined, washed up on the shores of a strange land, how everything I had taken for granted would be challenged.

So what makes a dad?

Do we lay claim to this honorable role by virtue of our biological connection to these young lives?  Do we command their love as a by-product of what we do – day after day, year after year?  Are we, in other words, as uniquely important to our children as we like to imagine?  Or can anyone with the right level of commitment and dedication lay claim to the paternal wheel?

Philosophers have argued this point – albeit at a higher level – for centuries.  It’s called the old doing versus being chestnut.

In 1995, a better man than me, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle and the father of two young children, found himself completely paralysed, speechless and only able to move one eyelid.  With his eyelid he ‘dictated’ a remarkable book that reflects deeply on the question on what it means to be human – and what it means to be a dad.

Describing himself as ‘something of a zombie father’, Bauby gives us a deeply moving account of his Father’s Day meeting with his children, Théophile and Céleste.

“As he walks, Théophile dabs a Kleenex at the thread of saliva escaping my closed lips.  His movements are tentative, at once tender and fearful, as if he were dealing with an unpredictable animal.  As soon as we slow down, Céleste cradles my head in her bare arms, covers my forehead with noisy kisses and says over and over, ‘You’re my dad, you’re my dad,’ as if in incantation.

… Until my stroke we had felt no need to fit this made-up holiday into our emotional calendar.  But this time we spend the whole of our symbolic day together, affirming that even a rough sketch, a shadow, a tiny fragment of a dad is still a dad.” (The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, 1997)

It is hard to imagine the depth of feeling and haunting sense of loss that lies between the lines.  And tragically, there were no more Father’s Days for this family to celebrate as, two days after the publication of his memoir, Bauby passed away.

So what does make a dad?

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there are no easy answers – no one-fits-all recipe for this ‘parenting game’.  But one thing I can say for sure is that Bauby got it right - a tiny fragment of a dad is still a dad.

Even if all we can do is tell our children how much we love them with the blink of one eye.

And, just as with environmental climate change, a cycle seems to have emerged whereby we have all had to listen to the refuters, scratch our heads over the fact that our current models and forecasts no longer apply, and work extremely hard to respond to a dramatically changing environment.

Two years on, it is hard to find any corner of industry unaffected by this economic storm and still no clear evidence that we are really ‘out of the woods’.  Some green shoots, perhaps, but in truth, it seems, the new business horizon continues to be vague and everyone remains cautious.

International schools across the world have also been affected – in some areas more than others.  This is hardly rocket science, of course.  After all, if many of these schools continue to provide a service to globally mobile families on expatriate assignments, there is going to be a direct correlation between companies having to downsize in particular regions, on the one hand, and school enrolment in that region, on the other. 

Ironically, though, in many corners of the world the industry of international education has continued to flourish.  Even our own experience at the International School of Brussels (ISB) has, so far, been less impacting that we had first feared.

Make no mistake, the future still remains uncertain.  However, one of the lessons that we have begun to learn as an organization is the importance of data management.  Put simply, better management and analysis of data at ISB over the past 2 years has broadened our understanding of what is currently going on and, in the end we hope, enabled better decision-making on the part of the Board of Trustees and school management team.

Allow me to give an example.

International schools are notorious for their lack of institutional memory.  With 25-30% turnover in most schools every year, even amongst the Board of Trustees, it is often difficult to remember why decisions were taken or what happened as long as five years ago.  Faced with the threat of a downturn in enrolment, we therefore decided to take a 50-year perspective on school enrolment.  What this showed us was that enrolment had steadily increased over this time, but that there were a number of dips in this line graph that tended to last 2-3 years before new peaks were reached.  Critically, though, our moment of insight came when we began to see a direct correlation between these dips and major US or global recessions.  In short, every time there was a major economic recession, ISB experienced a downturn in enrolment that was staggered and lasted 2-3 years before steadily growing to a new ‘high’.

This simple but insightful piece of data subsequently became the foundation for our strategic plans moving forward.  The question, it seemed, was not if enrolment was going to be affected, but by how much.  A series of scenarios were then planned – from ‘business as usual’ (we ruled out the further growth scenario) to anything up to 30% drop in enrolment.

As a new school year opened that was only marginally short of ‘business as usual’, we began to look again at why we seemed to be bucking the trend of history.  Was it perhaps that the impact on our enrolment was still to come?  Was it that we had simply taken a larger share in a shrinking market?  We continue to think carefully about these questions.  However, as we dug deeper, we noticed two remarkable trends relating to the demographic make-up of our community that may well explain what was happening.

First, we continue to see a decline in the number of US families at ISB.  In 1999, US families comprised 42% of our community.  Today, whilst the US is our largest community and continues to be extremely well represented in all sections of the school, this percentage now stands at 20%.  And it is not at all the case that they are leaving ISB to another school.  Our colleagues in other international schools in Brussels are reporting as seeing the same kind of demographic shifts.

Second, we continue to see a rise in the number of local Belgian families joining ISB.  Five years ago, this figure was 5%.  Today, it is 13% - a 4 point rise even over the past 12 months.  And we are seeing the same increase amongst our French and Dutch communities – many of whom are choosing to relocate and live in Brussels for a variety of reasons, including the quality of the international schools in Belgium. 

So what does this all mean?  It appears that the traditional notion of ISB as a school for globally mobile families is changing.  Today, in other words, we are perhaps not just a ‘local school for global families’.  We have also become a ‘global school for local families’ - responding to the growing number of local parents who want to offer their children a different kind of education in a truly international environment.

Our inquiry into the role of data in schools has really only just begun at ISB and is taking us in a number of directions – from the development of a school-wide data dashboard to questions about the use and role of KPIs in a learning environment.  What is clear, though, is that the new economic reality that we now face is only going to drive us further in this direction in the future.  We cannot any longer be blown around by the winds of chance with our fingers crossed.

But try as I might – and perhaps you’re the same – I just can’t help thinking about Christmas without getting all sentimental about this season of goodwill. 

I am a believer, you see; but not in a traditional sense.

Of course, it is hard not to be affected by the devastating, disruptive power of the Nativity; hard not to be drawn to this most fragile, paradoxical moment in human history: ultimate power and vulnerability in equal measure, conjuring up a story of hope and resurrection.

But I am one of the unlucky ones, believing in the whole, damn romance of Christmas – everything from Advent calendars, Santa and Christmas shopping to mulled wine, Quality Street chocolates and roasted chestnuts on an open fire.

It wasn’t always this way, of course.  Circumstances change and these things tend to creep up on you.  If my twenties were all about de-bunking the myths and running away from the traditions to somehow stand out from the crowd, my thirties have been dedicated almost entirely to the pursuit of tinsel-covered emotion and nostalgia.

At 39, you might say, I am a hopeless case and a marketeer’s playground.

The difference, though, between me and my five year-old children is that I am conscious of what I am choosing to believe.

Of course, if I stop to think about it, it hardly ever snows on Christmas Day in my small corner of the globe; my efforts at a traditional Christmas feast are never quite as tasty as Jamie Oliver makes it look on TV; and I haven’t enjoyed the opportunity of waking up and unwrapping presents with all of my children in nearly ten years.  Nothing, in reality, is simple.

But still I believe in the magic of Christmas as something worth fighting for.

Some might say, I guess, that all this tinsel and wrapping paper is just a way of covering up the pain – including the heart-breaking ache of absent children.  And perhaps they are right.  Except, I choose to see things differently.

A pious ‘man of god’ spoke to me this week and told me plainly that, at this time of Christmas, I no longer had a family, but rather a broken family.  As I reflected on his remarks, I thought to myself how awkward, even resentful, this statement made me feel.  

‘I am a believer too’, I reasoned with him, ‘And yet, at this time of year, where you see darkness, I see light; where you see brokenness, I see moments of healing and hope.  Whereas you find God in ritual, I discover him to shine more brightly from the shadows.’

The story of the Nativity is a messy, complicated story, full of shadows, ambiguity and paradox. 

So is mine.  But it won’t stop me singing about it.

You’ve heard it before, but life is a lot like a game of snakes and ladders. 

Roll the dice: you plod along, one step at a time.  Roll the dice again: you jump up a few levels, thanks to that helpful ladder.  Roll the dice a third time: just when you think you’ve made it, you land on a snake and drop back down to the bottom of the board.

Most of us who played this game as children determined, pretty quickly, that the trick was to avoid the snakes.  But then, who were we kidding?  Where is the skill in that?  I mean, in the end, it’s just a game of dice, isn’t it?  It’s all about probability, statistics and chance.

Like life itself.  And there are some pretty big snakes out there. 

Now is it just me, or do we all have our top five – those numbers we desperately want to avoid? 

1. Loss of a child, 2. Loss of a partner, 3. Debilitating accident, 4. Cancer, 5. Mental illness … 

To number them in this way feels artificial.  But the point is this: life’s a minefield and, even if you manage to negotiate your way successfully through the lower half of the board, the chances are, sooner or later, we are ‘gonna get got’ by one of these big guys.

Sooner or later.

And sadly, unlike other games, you can’t keep a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card in your back pocket for when that moment arrives (despite what modern day preachers sometimes promise).  Most of these venomous events in our lives pay no respect to who we are, how good we have been or what we have contributed to society along the way. 

A highly respected friend of mine, Scott Alcott, published a book this week.  He is just the kind of guy that, if anyone could, would know how to roll those dice in perfect combination and avoid the snakes.  But his story is one I am quietly hoping that I will never have to tell.

For my 40th birthday, I got stage four cancer. A small lump under my cheek turned out to be a rare, high-grade sarcoma. The doctor said I would need immediate surgery and a year of heavy radiation and chemotherapy, assuming I made it that long. I was told to “make arrangements”.

From page one, I found myself gripped by this personal account of coping with and continuing to survive cancer.  Page after page, I found myself to be a curious onlooker – intrigued by the details and moved by the emotion held within this well-told tale.

I read the entire book in almost one sitting, but would sometimes stop and wonder to myself: ‘But what if this was me?  After all, the Scott I know is a man that appears to have it all – including the resilience to beat this thing.  Would I have what it takes?’

Scott makes the same point, comparing his journey of recovery to the now legendary return of Lance Armstrong: a man who overcame all the odds to not only survive a deadly snake, but in effect turn the bugger into a ladder – going on to win the Tour de France seven consecutive times!

I guess that none of us feel we’re going to be strong enough until it is our turn.

To change the subject just a little: have you ever noticed how thoughts (and ideas) come to us in clusters? 

It was only a couple of days ago that I found myself driving home from work – unaware, at the time, of Scott’s book – reflecting on the fact that I will turn 40 next birthday; thinking how lucky I am to have avoided major illness or tragedy in my life so far; wondering whether that means I am due for some pain any time soon.

Of course, life doesn’t work like that, does it?  Some people have all the luck, whilst others just keep hitting those snakes.  It’s all about chance.

Yes, everything is random, but nevertheless sometimes coincidences occur.

Scott’s story is not a tale I ever want to have to tell.  But if I do end up making it my own, I pray to God that I’ll approach it with something like the same resolve.

That’s all I can hope for right now as I continue to play the game and roll into the upper half of the board.

I’m Not Lance! A Cancer Experience and Survival Guide for Mere Mortals by Scott Alcott is available for purchase here.

It is December 1 and on this day we have become accustomed to making space for those who have lived and died with AIDS. 

The big picture is simply too much to handle.  So let's take a fragment.

In South Africa alone, each year some 80,000 babies are born to die. They contract HIV from infected mothers, and without preventive treatment, they are doomed to a sickly descent into death. Half will die within a year of birth; most of the others will perish before they are five years old.

Stories like this are simply too tragic, too overwhelming for us to take in.  So we turn our heads, become preoccupied and learn to forget.

Until this tale of loss comes knocking on our door and we are faced with the loss of a brother, mother, friend. 

‘Remember me?’ shouts the disease.  ‘I am the disease that you thought had gone away; the sickness that you naively believed would never touch you or the ones you love.’

Back in Africa, some are referring to this new generation of poor, untreated children as the ‘living dead’.  But I wonder if they begin to understand the irony of this label?

You see, here’s the thing.  In African traditional religion, the concept of the ‘family’ and ‘community’ is at the root of all existence.  As one African writer once put it:

I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am. This is a cardinal point in the understanding of the African view of man. (John Mbiti)

In other words, it’s not all about me; it’s all about us; and that ‘us’ extends even beyond life itself to those ancestors whose story continues to be so intertwined in ours.  Those who have passed on, says Mbiti, are therefore not gone.  On the contrary, these are the ‘living-dead’ who live on in families inasmuch as people have personal memories of them.  And our duty is to keep ‘alive’, not only the memory, but the spirit, of these ancestors who no longer can be seen - by telling stories about them.

‘Remember me?’ shouts each one of those children who have been taken away by AIDS.  ‘I am a nameless child that you thought had gone away; a member of earth’s family.  Will you remember me?’

Our own day will come, of course, soon enough.  And it will be our turn to cross the river and join our ancestors on the ‘other side’.  And I can find no other conclusion than this:

If in life, though, we have not taken the time, the trouble, to tell these stories, we can hardly expect anyone to keep our memory alive. Can we?

So don’t forget!

The Remember Me? campaign was a European Commission project launched in 2006 aimed at young people.  As a consultant on this project, I was asked to come up with a slogan that would capture feelings around the disease and the importance of remembering its continuing impact upon society.

Do you ever feel lonely?

Sitting on the Central Line, travelling through London’s West End on a Friday night, I am enjoying watching people go about their business, on their way to Who Knows Where? 

I can’t help but notice the three Indian ladies on a rare girls-night-out, excitedly chatting over everything from life as a hairdresser to the benefits of laser eye surgery in Mumbai.  The young French couple opposite me, meanwhile - betrayed as tourists by the scrunched-up map in their hands - are saying nothing.  They gently caress each other as the rhythm of the train lulls them into light sleep; something that can hardly be said of the happy shoppers at the end of the carriage.  Alighting at Oxford Circus with their armfuls of new stuff, you just can’t miss their blow-by-blow account of latest bargains and indulgent treats. 

And then there’s me.

Who’s noticing me?  I wonder.  I feel like I am just a by-stander here - invisible, unnoticed, cut off from everyone around me, trapped in a bubble.

Who’s stopping to consider where I have come from or where I am going, who I have left behind or who I am travelling to meet?

I know this feeling.  I’ve had it before.  To me, at least, I recognize it as loneliness.

Or is it?

As I leave this underground world at Clapham North, ascending back into the streets of this busy capital, I notice a homeless man sitting under the bridge.  He is almost out of sight and his requests for money for food are inaudible to those who pass him by.  I am struck by how cut off he is: ignored, dehumanized and yet accepted as a ‘normal’ part of the urban landscape.

Is that loneliness? I wondered.  Or does this increasingly enigmatic word describe something else?

I couldn’t quite let this one go, so I came up with a theory that there are at least four types of loneliness that are to do with places, decisions we make, solitariness and the universal human condition.

Allow me briefly to elaborate.

The loneliness of place

This one’s easy.  Certain places generate a feeling of being estranged, left out or disconnected from the whole.  And the irony of this type of loneliness is that, more often than not, you feel it when you are in the middle of a crowded place.

Big cities, busy railway stations, football matches – we’ve almost all experienced, at one time or another, the feelings that can these situations can give rise to.  You see, being surrounded by people, is simply not enough for us.  Rather, we have to find a place in the story that is being played out; we need to establish some kind of connection or entry point with these huge, sprawling social networks. 

The loneliness of decision

Another type of loneliness, I believe, arises from the decisions we make.  Women and men in leadership positions will often speak about how lonely it is at the top; when they are the ones having to make that difficult call.  Likewise, political activists and great social reformers will refer to their struggle to hold on to what they believe in, when challenged on every side.

At a different level, all of us have faced difficult decisions at one stage or another in our lives – Should we take that degree course? Should we buy that house?  Should we walk into that relationship or out of that marriage?  And in that moment of decision, we can often feel overwhelmed by ‘loneliness’, as we realize that no one can make these decisions for us; no one can assure us that they really are the right steps to take.  You might say that this is the loneliness that comes with living by ‘faith’ in the future.

The loneliness of solitude

Standing alone on the edge of Lake Nakuru in Kenya, thousands of miles from anyone back home, confronted with the beauty of hundreds of thousands of flamingos in a single place against the backdrop of the Rift Valley, I discovered a different kind of loneliness; a variation on the theme that seemed to take me to a much more positive place.

I guess that this is what they call solitude; that inner peace and stillness that is hard to find amidst the noise of everyday life.  This is the kind of loneliness that requires a letting go of people, things and places; a loneliness that enables us to connect to the earth at some deeper region.

Sadly, I fear my children will find this feeling much harder to come by in a world that is exchanging its ancient cathedrals for shopping malls.

The loneliness of our humanity

The fourth kind of loneliness is the one that none of us can get away from.  It is a feeling of emptiness and fear that, when it comes down to it - stripped of our temporary man-made comforts - we are totally and utterly alone.  It is that feeling that comes to us when we stare into the Abyss of human insignificance and consider how ‘little’ we are – how meaningless, inadequate, helpless, empty and temporary are even our most noble acts.

Or, in the words of Jean-Paul Satre: ‘Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.’

The death of a loved one – or facing up to our own death – brings us closest to this deep existential angst.  It forces us to question and reinterpret our lives from an entirely different perspective; leaving a single question ringing in our ears:

Is this it?  Or is there, by chance or design, a deeper story to be told?

Launching their careers in a blaze of sexual appeal, social angst and rebellion against the status quo, there comes a time when almost every male performing artist will decide to give up the campaign and travel upon a more reflective path.

More often than not, the experience of becoming a dad is the turning point; opening up a whole new world of vulnerability, responsibility and emotional turmoil that is just too good not to sing about.

There are lots of great examples out there to choose from.  Who can forget Cat Steven’s melody of advice from a father to his son?

It's not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to go through.
Find a girl, settle down,
if you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

And if that isn’t to your musical taste, you really can’t go wrong with Sting.  He has an uncanny ability to capture those everyday parenting moments in haunting, harmonious lyrics:  

Hush child,
Let your mommy sleep into the night until we rise
Hush child,
Let me soothe the shining tears that gather in your eyes
Hush child,
I won't leave I'll stay with you to cross this Bridge of Sighs
Hush child,
I can help the look of accusation in your eyes
In your eyes

French singer-songwriter, Pascal Obispo, got in on the act too with his smash hit, Millésime, following the birth of his child, drawing parallels between fatherhood and the producing great wine:

Tu es mon millésime
Ma plus belle année
Pour ce bonheur en prime
Que tu m'a donné
Je suis à jamais ta terre
C'est ça être père

You get the picture.  And most of us dads will, at some time or another, have been moved – perhaps even to tears – as these poetic portrayals of parenthood resonate with our own stories and bring meaning to the father we are and the father we are trying to be.

Watching Peter Andre on the television this week, however, I saw another variation on this rather lucrative theme.  Somehow, though, I felt that what I was watching was a far less glamorous, far more complex, dramatization of what it means to be a dad these days.

As if anyone didn’t know, the celebrity Couple that was Peter Andre and Katie Price split up earlier this year.  Those of us who might have enjoyed watching (even making fun of) their media-obsessed relationship over the years suddenly found ourselves watching a very different kind of drama: divorce TV. 

We were into a new kind of story with complex human themes emerging.  And at the heart of the story, a song that somehow seemed to capture the pain and deep, deep irony of the whole situation - a love song of unconditional love, written by a dad for a child that, since the split, was no longer considered his ‘own’.

It’s not the best song in the world and certainly may not be to everyone’s taste, but personally I respect the fact that Peter Andre is prepared to wear his heart on his sleeve:

I was already there, just in another place
Destiny had brought us face to face
What I didn't realize, how you'd change my life
Turning from a boy to a man, becoming a father before I became a dad
I wish I was there for your first breath
I wish I'd have held you for your first step
But I'm here now…

The message of the song is clear.  Here is a man who has stepped into the role of ‘dad’ for a child who faced many challenges ahead and desperately needed any kind of unconditional love.  It was a fairytale, from beginning to end.

Yet divorce always betrays the fairytale as a myth.

I have to be honest.  Watching Peter Andre record the video for this latest song on TV this week, I was struck by a man who seemed not to be your average ‘pop star’ but a man on a journey; a step-dad, struggling with the fact that the child he had come to love as his own was no longer present in his life as before.

Being a dad is tough.  We all know that.  Being a step-dad is tougher.  A lot of us know how challenging that can be.  But being a step-dad to a child in the context of a relationship breakdown is perhaps the toughest job of all.

And in that sense, I think Peter Andre happens to be doing pretty well.

I received a mail in my inbox this week.  The opening sentence made it clearly recognisable as spam.

It will take just 37 seconds to read this and change your thinking.

Nothing like an attention grabbing claim to pull me away from what I was doing and read on, just out of sheer curiosity.

Unlike all those Nigerian princes, with their millions of dollars just waiting to be transferred into my account: unlike the Magicians, who regularly ask me to think of a number and then (at the bottom of the mail) inform me that the number I was thinking of was 7 , the author of this message had a story to tell – a story worth re-telling.  This story, you might say, was good enough to spam.

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. 

One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window.

The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end.  They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and colour of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.  Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every colour and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.
Although the other man could not hear the band - he could see it in his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days, weeks and months passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.

She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.  He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.

It faced a blank wall.

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.
She said, 'Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.'

Of course, the story didn’t actually end here.  It is obligatory these days for all spam to conclude with a few fortune-cookie-style wise phrases (in this case ‘Today is a gift, that’s why they call it The Present’), followed by a request to pass this message on to everyone you ever met; followed by a promise that, if you do, you will be the recipient of good luck.

Despite the fact that it was spam, though, I have to confess that I did get to thinking about this mail – both in terms of the medium and the message.

The message hardly needs explanation.  In fact, it shouldn’t be explained.  Like most truthful tales, it’s a shame when you try and unpack it or articulate ‘what the story means’.  It may be ‘meaningful’ to you or me for any number of reasons; resonating with any number of different themes in our lives.  So let’s just say that this short narrative helped me understand the transforming power of stories in our lives and leave it at that.

The critics will say, of course, that it is nothing of the sort.  They will argue that it is sentimentalism, wrapped up in spam.

But then I started thinking about Jesus of Nazareth – a man who knew both how to tell a story and pick exactly the right medium by which to tell it.   We all have our favourites, don’t we?  I like, for example, the one about the son who ran off and squandered all his money, only to find that his father was still able to welcome him with open arms upon his return.

What’s that if not sentimental?  How many fathers, in reality, kill the fatted calf when their wayward teenage children finally decide to return home from the party?

Not many, perhaps.  But the truth of the story as an expression of an ideal should never be dismissed too quickly.  And I can well imagine Jesus, if he happened to live in our time, sending this one around by email with some considerable success.

So what’s the point I am trying to make here? 

We used to say ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ and understand exactly what it means.  Today, we might just want to modify this pithy phrase a little and remind ourselves not to delete spam before we judge the truthfulness of the body text.

Or something along those lines.

Not so very long ago, I could do no wrong in the eyes of my children – at least when it came to being ‘cool’ and picking out the latest fashion.  Even my taste in music was treated with a degree of respect, despite being given a run for its money by Crazy Frog and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The point is, I was the one setting the standard, making the rules and defining what was ‘good’. 

In an instant, though, something happened and I found myself wondering whether it was I who had changed or the young man who now sat opposite me.

One simple sentence.  But it was enough to knock me off my guard and lose my bearings for a moment:

‘Come on, Dad!  You are far too old for a pair of Converse!’

Standing in the middle of a shoe shop, somewhere in London’s Soho district, it was only a minor crisis of confidence, but the words rang out so loud and clear that I felt that somehow everyone was looking at me and quietly walked back into the busy street empty handed.

When did I start being ‘old’ in his eyes?  Did it happen overnight or was it something that occurred gradually?

And all this got me wondering about other parental milestones that seem to have come and gone, almost unnoticed or left unspoken.

When, for example, did I stop holding the tiny hands of my children when out shopping or when trying to cross a busy road? When did I become too old to help them brush their teeth or stop deciding what they should wear each morning?  When did I stop giving kisses before bedtime?  When did I start feeling self-conscious about giving them a hug or telling them that they are so wonderfully and uniquely loved?  When, precisely, did they stop running into my arms after a day at school?

A series of milestones – a never-ending series of losses; all part of what it means, as a parent, to ‘let go’ of our children in order that they might travel life’s journey for themselves.

And what I am thinking is that it’s all too easy to let this stuff slip by.  The rituals of childcare are so routine – so demanding – that we can forget to notice how important, how precious, they are. 

Until they are gone.

These glorious, if fleeting, moments in our lives, so filled with significance and meaning, relegated to the pages of dusty photo albums; until one day we look back and see how far we have come and how much the landscape has changed since those early days of sleepless nights, cutting teeth and much celebrated first steps.

Back in the shoe shop, somewhere in Central London, I look at my son and see a young adult starring back at me – a soon-to-be man enjoying the opportunity to flex his muscles and challenge his ‘old’ Dad. 

‘I remember precisely the moment when you took your first steps,’ I think to myself.  ‘I remember the look of joy on your face when you received your first football shirt and the look of fear on your face on your first day at school.  I recall the stories that made you laugh at bedtime and the nights we sat on the sofa together because you could not sleep.  So how did we get to this?’

Leaving the shop, there is a spring in my son’s step that is distinctly lacking in my ‘old’ shoes.

‘But that’s okay, ‘ I reasoned to myself.   ‘Just because of all those memories you have given me, I’ll let you keep your Converse.’

At least for this week.

Forty years of research by Gallup demonstrates the difference effective teachers make on student performance - not just to students' academic gains but also to their hope, engagement, and well-being.

We all know that good teachers make effective learning.  But let’s look a bit closer at the evidence here.

If you ask students in America today whether they know they will graduate from High School, find a job, or whether there is an adult who cares about their future, 50% will answer no.  They have no hope.  They no longer believe in the learning process; they are disengaged.

If you measure levels of student engagement in the learning process, 60% of students in America feel connected to the process of learning at Grade 5.  Year-on-year, however, this felt connection to the learning process drops to an average of 36% by Grade 12.  

Gallup also demonstrates the link between levels of well-being and engagement in the learning process.  79% of students who ‘smiled yesterday’ feel engaged in today’s learning.  Class size, meanwhile, had no impact of levels of student engagement.

Whichever way you look at it, the system seems to be broken.  Students have no hope because they are not engaged; and they are not engaged because they do not have a sense of well-being.

So what’s the solution?

The Gallup study also shows us that 79% of students who were able to answer positively to the statement ‘My school is committed to building the strengths of every student’ were engaged and that student achievement, amongst these students, was significantly higher.

Many entire education systems, however, are founded upon an entirely different methodology.  They propose what I once heard appropriately described as a form of ‘bulimic learning’, where facts are stored up through memorization and, on a particular day, spewed out during the course of an examination.

But let’s imagine a system where teachers are trained to spot the strengths of our children and relentlessly build upon them.  What would be the impact of a system that sought to unlock the human potential of our students, as opposed to simply setting up hoops for them to jump through?

Here’s another interesting statistic that has a ring of truth about it at least.  97% of Kindergarten kids want to be entrepreneurs when they grow up.  Yet only 17% will be studying this at University and a mere 4% will ever actually do it!  By contrast 80% of us are today doing jobs that we feel do not in any way build upon our strengths.  We work, in other words, not because it is what we were destined to be, but because it pays a wage.

Companies figured this all out some time ago. Great companies are not concerned with their weaknesses or what they cannot be best in the world at.  Their strategic focus is relentless in the pursuit of becoming better at what they are already good at. 

It is time for schools to play catch up.

I attended a student ‘graduation’, recently, at a primary school not far from where I live.  Lined up to receive their certificates, it was clear that these students had successfully jumped through the hoops of bulimic learning as had been required of them.  The Headteacher even went as far as mentioning the two students who had not been successful, who were now forced to repeat another year at primary school.

I left the ceremony disturbed by what I had seen, thinking that I had just witnessed something distasteful. Even today, months later, I find myself wondering about the two students who did not received their certificates.  Had anyone ever given them a reason to smile?  Were any of their teachers relentless in the pursuit of their personal strengths and talents?  Had anyone ever thought to ask about their sense of well-being and level of engagement in the classroom?

Just when are we going to learn?

Thanks to the team at Gallup Europe who inspired this article, following their Learn@Teatime event entitled 'Can Europe create schools that live up to the 21st century's challenges?' on 4 November 2009.

One of my earliest childhood memories is about wanting to be a policeman.  It was around this time of year – the school’s annual ‘bonfire night’ in fact.  At 5 years old, I did not want to go dressed up as the traditional Guy Fawkes.  No, he was far too scary. 

So I went, instead, as a policeman.  I put on my plastic replica hat, searched out my plastic replica truncheon and, in order to simulate the famous blue flashing light, I put Lego lights in each of my ears which flashed thanks to a small lever in my pocket. 

If nothing else, I certainly stood out in the crowd that night!

At around the same time, I also remember my sister coming home from school and informing my parents that she wanted to be a hedgehog when she grew up.

Today, there is a dog that lives two doors down the street with similar ambitions as the five-year-old version of me: he absolutely wants to be an ambulance.  He doesn’t have a replica hat or flashing lights in his ears, but he is no less dedicated to his dream.  So each and every time he hears a siren on the main boulevard behind our street, he howls – as if to say, ‘I’m ready, I’m on my way!’

Well, suffice to say, I never became a policeman and, thankfully, my sister never became a hedgehog, but it does make me stop and reflect on the human need to dream, to transcend and to seek after adventure. 

Let me explain.  One of the things that mark out our humanity is the ability to have one foot set firmly in the mundane and one foot in the fairy tale.  Take either foot away and we lose our balance: we cannot afford to lose sight of what we can see, nor lose faith in what we cannot yet see.

Children are particularly good at this: dreaming their way through the course of every day and holding on to this 20:20 vision. 

And if you don’t understand, try watching a young child for a day and you will soon see how ‘well-balanced’ she is.  At one moment, grappling with the basics – how to hold a knife or control a pencil in her hand – and, in the next, enjoying life as a princess in her castle, an adventurer travelling through a dark and dangerous jungle, or a pilot flying high among the clouds.

I guess that’s where the phrase ‘living the dream’ comes from, as used by the fortunate ones who somehow feel that the fairy tale adventure continues well into their adult life.

The fact is, however, that the large majority of people in the world are literally de-humanized well before their childhood has run its course.  The opportunity to play, dream or carry the adventurer’s torch is replaced by the day-to-day need to survive.  After all, what’s the point of flying high among the clouds, when you don’t have a job and your children don’t have enough to eat?

Much of this is about the economics of injustice, but I believe that education is also to blame.  Too often our pedagogical systems have sought to drag the feet of our children – often kicking and screaming – back to ‘reality’.  We have taught them, by our over-stated focus on what is ‘practical’, that dreaming and the spirit of adventure will not serve them well for the life that lies ahead.  We have naively stripped them of their dreams and, in doing so, one of the most precious gifts of humanity.

So imagine, for a moment, a system of education that teaches our children to dream again; in which every teacher has a responsibility to nurture, encourage and fan the seemingly impossible flame inside every child. 

Wouldn’t we at least then stand a chance of producing a generation of ‘well-balanced’ young adults, who face their future with hope, convinced that what they see can yet be transformed into the stuff of dreams?

Sitting at the dinner table last night, I asked my 5-year-old daughters what they would like to be when they grew up.

‘I’m going to be a policeman!’ said one, proudly.

‘I’m going to be a dog!’ said the other, with not a hint of self-doubt.

And just as I was smiling to myself and thinking how history has an odd way of repeating itself, the dog living two doors down from me heard a siren somewhere in the distance and went into full howl!