My rocket is not coming along. Sorry, our rocket. My three-year-old daughter and I are finding it harder than we anticipated. Her nursery class is doing a project on space, and she has decided we need to get a head start. It is Sunday morning and, armed with our stock of loo rolls, cereal boxes, paint and glue, we’re striving to make something Nasa would be proud of.
I– ahem, we – settle on a simple design utilising a single loo roll, painted red, with a conical tip and some supportive fins at its base. The fins are gold, which does make for a natty look that complements the rocket’s crimson fuselage, but is primarily because I’ve cut them from a box of Weetabix.
My daughter paints avidly, making sure that every inch of the loo roll – and her hands, wrists, chin and nose – are fully pelted with red. I get to work making the conical point, and quickly discover I don’t really know how to do it. Every attempt I make looks more and more like a lampshade. And I do mean every attempt, since even the one I finally tape into place sits atop the cylinder as if it is a hat the rocket is wearing rather than an airlocked portion of a working spacecraft.
Every night my daughter and I travel to space. This is achieved by turning the duvet into a dazzling command console
I should know better, for I am a seasoned astronaut. Every night, after I read her a bedtime story, my daughter and I journey to the vacuum of space. This is achieved by pulling the covers up over both of our heads, and turning the duvet above into a dazzling command console. My daughter is first lieutenant, and takes great joy in beep-boop-beeping coordinates into the flight computer. Then comes the pulling of several imaginary levers, the flicking of a dozen switches, a single press of one mysterious plunger, and finally the hitting of a big red button. This sets us in motion as the spaceship shakes violently and she clings to me, laughing, while we trace our path to the stars. Our destination: Jupiter, at whose primary spaceport we land, with my finest Americanised computer voice announcing our arrival. I let out a dignified “Pfshhhh!” as the airlock releases and our covers are are withdrawn. Soon, in a plot twist I’m sure you were all expecting, we are beset by the planet’s population of giraffes. They mean us no harm, but beseech us for help. “It’s dinnertime,” Plorp tells us (he, the giraffe mayor of Jupiter, is played by my extended left arm) “and we’ve run out of our favourite food.”
“Cheeseburgers!” shouts my daughter with delight, before ordering me to go through each of this adventure’s next steps in the exact same order as always. Jovian giraffes eat only cheeseburgers but have run out of cheese, and they need us to journey back to the moon and mine its surface for their beloved fromage. I sometimes propose we go to Mars – where elephants eat hot dogs – but she reacts to this with the baffled rage of someone at a Chesney Hawkes gig when he announces his intention to play some of his newer stuff. (“NO!” she says, quite angrily: “Cheeseburger giraffes!”)
As repetitive as this rigmarole has become, it’s one I truly adore. Mainly because my daughter almost always prefers being with her mother than me – except, it turns out, on this ship. For in space, I am king. Perhaps that’s why she sees me as the man to help her design the perfect spacecraft. And as I – I mean we – add the finishing touches, of a few extra fins and a porthole bearing a drawing of her smiling in a space suit, we marvel at our work and high-five. At drop-off the next morning, she carries her dumpy little rocket close to her chest. I see that many, if not most, of the other kids are empty handed, and inwardly smile. That is, until several arrive carrying massive rockets, some that fuse multiple plastic bottles and bear ingeniously constructed portholes formed of caps. They’re coated in tinfoil and festooned with go-faster stripes, and one even has tiny little ribbons of red and orange protruding from small cylinders at its base, perfectly mimicking a flaming blastoff trail.
Suddenly self-conscious, I shuffle toward the back of the class and hang up her coat. “I made this!” my daughter says, proffering her single red loo roll with eye-watering pride.
“Yes,” I say, smiling nervously. “She made that herself – all by herself.”
Photograph by Getty Images