Now it's my daughter's turn.

Relationships with my wife have improved somewhat, evidenced by the gradual thawing of frost on every horizontal surface in the house. Unfortunately the same can't be said for my daughter.

    She usually prefaces every sentence to me with one of three words. Each one guarantees a definite subtext.

   "Father"     Pure patronisation.
   "Pater."       Unbridled sarcasm.
   "Daddy."     I've broken something.

     Now she's acquired an new weapon in her arsenal.
    "Dad!!!"  Yes, like most teenage girls she can pronounce exclamation marks. She can even speak in italics but I won't subject you to those - it's just too horrible.

    I was subjected to Dad!!! for the first time this evening. But just to set it straight, I put more money into her bank account every month than I was earning when I left the Royal Marines -  and people were trying to kill me then. I've just paid £150 to tax her car, and am about to pay another £500 to repair something in said car even though I've been asking her for months to stop driving it and put it in the garage. But now, two days before her birthday, because I've already spent a kings ransom on her and refuse to spend my dwindling resources on something she'll never even use she's furious with me. Words such as: Miser, tight-arse, skinflint and other  myriad adjectives Roget's would have been proud of have been flowing for hours. Thus she's resorted to the final ploy; the one that always used to work.

   "You hate me and wish I was dead!!!!"

   I'm seriously thinking of getting on my motorbike and driving to Greenland.