Me and my European conspiracy

There's a mood of rebellion in the air. Francis is refusing to drop Deborah at school any more, because the mothers keep being horrid to him. "What exactly are they doing?" I ask. "This morning one of them said, 'Still unemployed', then laughed," says Francis. I ask Janet's advice. "Well, I asked him how the job hunting was going and then said I was sure he'd find something soon." she says. "Do you think that's what he means?"

Leo is also very quiet. "Freddie called me a horrible name again," he says, sadly. I e-mail his teacher, then check one of the many hyperactivity sites I've stored in 'favourites' - a misnomer if ever there was one - and, sure enough, find 'Bullying: Children with ADHD are more likely to be bullied because they may seem different.'

I'm sure there's a grain of truth in it - but how much? Is there a research gonk under every desk collating complains to teachers and cross collating them with rising incidents of hyperactivity? I contemplate googling redundancy, certain that somewhere there'll be some site that will link mid-life job loss in slightly balding men to previously undiagnosed hyperactivity.

Own a small dog? A neurotic cat? Prefer cold chicken sandwiches? That'll be ADHD and £400 please - collect the bill on the way out.

But the real truth is that we just haven't been thinking fast enough. On the radio this morning, the World Bank chairman, Paul Wolfowitz, who gave his girlfriend a tiptop post there the second he landed the top job, claimed that calls for him to resign were nothing to do with this at all - no, it was, in fact, a politically motivated European conspiracy. Of course.

And last year, you may remember that another bloke, caught with his fingers either in the till, or all over somebody else's wife - something of that sort, anyway - claimed that he'd been misunderstood. It wasn't what it seemed. It was - stupid of us all not to guess - part of an art installation project in progress.

So when Francis fails to get a job offer, I make a string of mistakes in assembly that turns 'Jesu good above all other,' into a John Cage tribute performance, full of silence and polytonality, and Leo's homework mysteriously goes missing from his schoolbag, I think we all know what it's about: a European conspiracy; the insensivity of the public in grasping the essence of the artistic temperament or, of course, that good ole family standby, ADHD.

Bring on the future.