Top 10 dads’ excuses

We know many dads are a bit partial to top 10s so here, especially for Fathers’ Day, is a list of the best excuses from dads for bunking off.

2. Late-running meetings/early meetings. Depending on which bit of the day is most tense, a meeting is something it is hard to argue against, plus a meeting can be anything from a full-blown board extravaganza to chatting with a mate so theoretically you might not even be lying.

3. Bad backs/headaches/”flu”. Self explanatory really, but it is always a good idea to go into great detail about pain clouds and make horrible grimaces to show how very brave you are being. There are many, many household chores that are impossible to do with any combination of the above.

4. I cleaned the toilet last year – always, always remember the exact date of your last household cleaning outing. Make sure that when you do clean the cooker/fridge etc that you make it a Very Big Thing. Get all the newspapers out, get on your hands and knees, read a manual or perhaps six before even embarking on the job. Compare prices of oven scourers. Buy the Which guide to oven cleaners. Make it sound so complicated that it could only possibly be a once a year thing.

5. Flattery – tell your partner that they are very, very skilled at all the things that you basically don’t like doing. Get the children to suggest likewise. Do not on any account compare your partner to your mother. This will erase all plus points you have gained through flattery.

6. Cooking: choose something that you like doing and have a vested interest in. This counts as helping, though in fact you would have done it anyway. Meanwhile, your partner is probably stuck in the middle of bedtime chaos and you can put on some music and escape into a world of Masterchef.

7. Choose household tasks which require minimum input, such as doing the washing. Make sure that when you say you will do the washing, it only extends to putting the clothes in the machine, twiddling the knob and putting in the powder. Hanging up the washing is another chore altogether and much more labour intensive.

8. Claim a poor memory. You knew there were lots of things to do, but you forgot them all because you are getting old, near death, have potential illnesses that have not yet been uncovered, etc. In addition to getting you out of doing a lot of things, this also plays to the sympathy vote.

9. Multi-tasking – the old ‘women are better at multi-tasking’ excuse is a good one. Apparently women are born to be able to launch emails, clean up poo and organise the summer childcare simultaneously. Men can only do one thing at a time, but “in much more depth”.

10. Attempt to show sympathy for your partner’s tiredness. A good ploy is asking how well she slept and then, depending on her answer, saying you too have had a bad night and were kept up by the baby/teenager screaming, although due to your bad back, flu, etc, you didn’t actually manage to investigate further. Another good ploy is to suggest that women are “lighter sleepers” than men so you would have got there, but she just beat you to it.

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