Mad, meddlesome parents need to back off other people’s children

When my daughter was two-and-a-half years old she was a bridesmaid at my brother’s wedding in Berlin. Dressed in a tutu and ballet slippers, she insisted on carrying a handbag, which in retrospect had suspicious angular bulges.

At a key point in the ceremony, the little page boy she was partnered with annoyed her, so she swung it at his head. His howl alerted us to the toy bricks inside. Mortified, I apologised profusely — to the page boy, his German father, my brother and his wife. I insisted that my daughter apologise too.

But at the reception, the page boy’s father wouldn’t drop the incident. Was I concerned, he asked, “that she will grow up to be unusually violent?” Was the issue pathological? Had I sought help?

At one point I caught him speaking directly to my daughter. At that moment I wished I had my own suspiciously bulging bag. But — damn it — any show of temper would reinforce his point.

Months later, my brother mentioned that the page boy’s father had left his wife — who was pregnant again — and page boy son to have an affair. I asked my brother if I could text the man to ask whether there was anything in his own childhood that might have predicted that he would turn out to be a cheating, lying piece of scum, and whether, had he sought help earlier, it might have prevented his behaviour? My brother said I could not.

I relate this because while I understand my brother’s UN-grade diplomacy, occasionally an incendiary is needed. My friend’s 10-year-old son recently experienced something similar from a school parent who told him unsolicited that he was boisterous because “you’re small for your age” and “because your mother works”.

I have told my friend I will happily draft the kind of email to this mad, meddlesome mother that the page boy father was spared.

So death becomes the main attraction

A friend who has recently attended a number of funerals has made a terrible confession. As he kneels to pray, stands to sing or bends his head in reverent reflection on the life of the dearly departed, he can’t stop the mental drift towards the celebration of his own end.

He plans it: psalms, songs, eulogy — even a mental guest list, those invited, those spited. He confided all this to find out if he was alone in his introspection. “F**k, no,” another friend of ours answered. “And I don’t stop there. I’ve been planning which of the funerals of my enemies I’m going to gatecrash.”

Beware the charming, famous man

The American actress Sally Field, who is to appear at The Old Vic next year, has written an autobiography, In Pieces, in which she describes how her longtime lover, the late Burt Reynolds, was controlling and violent.

Even from the outset he tried to “housebreak her”, instructing “what was allowed and what was not”. She relates how he pinched her face if any man talked to her, demanding to know who he was. Obviously these are screamingly signs of abuse. Well, I say obviously... Reynolds was handsome, charming and funny to rest of the world, even in death. Never is that more obvious than a comment that Field was reduced to a “shadowy version of myself, locked behind my eyes unable to speak”.

“Shut up Sally Field, you make me sick,” said one critic. Another accused her of “crying wolf”, a third of “playing the victim”.

Beware the charming man, the saying goes — and their blind and benighted fans.

Those cold hearts in the newsroom

Reading Allegra Stratton’s account of her boss’s lack of sympathy when she returned to BBC’s Newsnight after maternity leave reminded me of being asked to “come back” seven weeks after the birth of my own first child.

I’d just won a press award, my editor reasoned, “a good time to capitalise”. But that paled compared with being sent, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, in mid-December to Cumbria for an interview. The train broke down and I slept across two seats like a collapsed dromedary. By the time I arrived the next day, the subject had pulled out. The office response? “Shame.”