Guess what? I've my first stand-up row with the headmistress of my children's school. It was in public, in the middle of the playground, and I was rather proud of myself afterwards.

The previous day I had come to school to collect my seven-year-old son, when I found him in tears. One of the boys in his class had hit him between the legs with a lunchbox. Incidentally this wasn't the first time that the boy had hit my son. On a previous occasion he had tried to strangle him and another time he had hit him over the head with a wooden brick.

Furious, I went over to the boy in question. I was determined not to lose my temper or make any wild accusations, so I looked daggers at him, stared him in the eye, and fired a barrage of questions. 'Why did you hit Nathan?' 'Did he do anything to upset you?' 'Why were you swinging your lunchbox in his direction?'. The little boy twitched and looked nervously at me, as I had intended, and stammered out something about accidents.

Unfortunately I didn't realise that his mother was standing next to us. She complained to the headmistress. When I picked up Nathan the following day the headmistress was lying in wait. 'Mr Shamash,' she said. 'It is inappropriate for you to approach children at the school.'

Dressing down...
I pointed out that she didn't seem very interested in the fact my child had been assaulted. She said that I should approach a teacher or a classroom assistant in future. I pointed out that the teachers had done nothing. I gave her my blackest look and said that, if there was any recurrence, I would write to her and she could write back telling me what she proposed to do. And then, suddenly remembering that I shouldn't get on the wrong side of her, I thanked her for her interest and said that I was aware that she had a difficult job.

Actually, I never had any problems with the boy again. Since our discussion, he's been very respectful to me. I say hello to him every day and last week he even came to my son's party. To be honest, I think a lot of children with discipline problems tend to ignore their mums. As a man, it's easier to deal with them.

The stay-at-home schedule
This incident aside, all seems to be going smoothly with my new stay-at-home life. I have developed a routine. At 3.20pm I pick up Yolanda and Nathan, who are waiting outside their respective classrooms. I spend about 10 minutes each afternoon, chatting to the mums and arranging my children's social life. We discuss such delicate issues as whether Khush can come over on Tuesday or whether Denis can manage to visit for an hour on Wednesday before Nathan goes to football. It's all very complicated. Then I drive home - usually stopping for 10 minutes to do a bit of shopping.

There are only a handful of men at the school gates - three who work from home and two whose wives died recently, one from cancer and one during childbirth. We all greet each other with a cheery wave.

Hot dad
I get on with the mums very well. When my wife used to pick up the children she said that all the mums used to fancy one particular dad - I could never understand what they saw in him.

I like to think that now I'm the object of sexual fantasies among the mums; that they stand by their kitchen sinks thinking about my tender caress and dreaming about stolen kisses behind the bins at Starbucks, although unfortunately I haven't had any evidence of this so far.

Now read Carol's side of the story...

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