Jonny McCambridge: The pizza boxes and the tumble which say the times, they are a changing

We have eaten enough pizza to have become familiar with the young woman who works in the outlet. She knows which toppings we like.

The pizzas – one large pepperoni and one small pepperoni – are removed from the oven, slid into their boxes and sliced.

She brings our food to the counter and hands us one box each. She gives the large pizza to me, and the small one to my son. He quickly casts an alarmed glance in my direction.

"Actually,” I explain. “It’s the other way around.”

She looks confused, before giggling as she swaps the boxes.

Earlier, when we were considering our options, my son insisted that I not order him a ‘baby pizza’, explaining forcefully that it does not fill him up and that he’s more than able to tackle the larger portion.

I had the opposite consideration. I know from long experience that consuming the large pizza will leave me feeling bloated and uncomfortable later on.

Furthermore, despite good intentions on my part to take more care over my diet, the waistline does not seem to be shrinking in the way that I had hoped. I’m just not sure that I can allow myself to eat how I used to.

As I viewed the surprised reaction of the pizza vendor, I had the feeling that a hugely significant turning point had been reached, that things are not as they were.

My son and I are moving in different directions. He is progressing quickly while I regress at a much less noticeable rate. There is no single crossing point where he becomes more capable than I do, but rather a series of smaller signals that he is surpassing my abilities.

Being able to eat a bigger pizza than me is just a minor one.

A large part of parenting is monitoring progression, taking pride when new things are achieved or worrying when the advancement does not arrive at the pace that is hoped or expected.

If there is such a thing as a great leap forward, it seems to have come for my son in the first few weeks of secondary education.

A new school means lot of new challenges which, so far, are being embraced. A lot of this I would have found difficult to imagine just a few weeks ago.

My son is learning German and will recite the alphabet and numbers over dinner.

He has begun to acquire some cooking skills and occasionally brings food home (he also insisted on cooking dinner one evening and then washing up the dishes!).

He tells me that in school he has used a saw, a drill and a Bunsen burner. From the mud on the boots that I bought him I can confirm, against my earlier scepticism, that he is participating in some form in rugby.

Many of these are activities which I had previously attempted to get him interest in with zero success.

He has made an array of new friends whose names I am struggling to remember.

I, on the other hand, have to accept there are things that I cannot do as well as I once did. I have resumed my participation in the weekly Saturday morning 5k parkrun.

There was a time when I could run that distance in under 20 minutes. Now, it takes me about 27 minutes to wheeze and gasp my way around the course.

Yes, I can improve my fitness and chip away at the time, but I know in my deep heart’s core I will never be able to run a 5k in under 20 minutes again.

There are also the undeniable mental gaps. Names have always been a problem but now I find myself forgetting words, what the right diction is to use in a particular situation.

This is a potentially disastrous impediment when trying to pose tough questions for politicians in press conferences.

It is late on Friday night. As my wife and son prepare for bed, I have a well-worn routine.

I will gather all the cups and glasses strewn around the house, stack the dishwasher, check the doors are locked and turn off all the lights.

I have several glasses in my hand as I begin a descent of the stairs towards the kitchen. On the second step my foot slips and I begin to fall.

The glasses are dropped and shatter violently around me as I plummet painfully, bouncing down the stairs before landing in a heap on the hard tiles in the hallway.

I hear the pounding of my wife and son running down the stairs after me and their cries of alarm.

I know quickly that I am not badly hurt. I seem to have sustained no damage to my head, back or neck. However, I have pain in my hip and wrist, several carpet burns on my arms and a number of cuts on my hands from the broken glass.

However, the worst impact is that I am badly shaken. I’m embarrassed as I haul myself upright and remain mostly silent as my wife gets me to sit in the kitchen and patches up my wounds.

Then, as she begins to gather up all the bits of broken glass from the carpet, I get up to resume my late night routine.

"What are you doing daddy?” my son asks.

“I have to do the dishwasher and turn off the lights and check the doors. Like I do every night.”

“For God’s sake daddy, just go to bed, I can do that.”

I can sense the concern in my son’s voice. I do as I am told.