Self indulgent nonsense about getting older

Next week my eldest daughter will be a very impressive two years old. My wife and I agreed today that, as if to commemorate this landmark, she suddenly seems like a little girl rather than a toddler. I have no idea what the difference is. Maybe it's to do with the time she has recently spent with her slightly older Canadian cousins, four and - as of last week - three. (Those are their ages, not their names.) They and their parents have cunningly timed their visit to coincide with the two birthdays.

My wife made a magnificent, joint birthday card for our daughter and her cousin. We sent this card in to CBeebies and, lo and behold, they only went and showed it yesterday. On the proper telly and everything. I've spent the subsequent 36 hours repeatedly enjoying the footage, basking in shameless pride even though my only contribution to the card was posting it.

But I thought that - rather than regale you with tales of two of the three most endearing girls I know - I'd spend the rest of this post talking about me.

It will surprise any young people that know me, but it occurred to me this evening over dinner, as I subjected - nay, treated - the eardrums of my family to a nice bit of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, that I used to be pretty cool.

The melodic Welsh britpop reminded me of the time I toughed it out in the moshpit while the Super Furry Animals triumphantly performed the best live song ever conceived: Man Don't Give a F***. I saw the Strokes live the week Hard to Explain was released. They were supported by the Moldy Peaches. I used to be one of those people who scour the NME every week for the most promisingly obscure new singles, before bounding eagerly into HMV every Monday to buy them, only to discover that my slightly cooler friend had already bought the solitary copy they stocked of each one. But I always bought them the week after. Together, my slightly cooler friend and I ran an indie night which packed out an admittedly 'intimate' venue week after week for a good couple of years. And they were a good couple of years.

I was an art student. I read some Baudrillard. I used to make my own T-shirts. My wife and I would occasionally watch French films. We weren't married then, but that's not really relevant - I'm just being factually accurate. I had my nose pierced. I more-or-less wore the same woolly hat every day for three years. I could go on. By now you should be picturing a young man pretty close to the cutting edge. And, like all cool people, I was arrogantly dismissive of any form of mainstream culture. "Music fascism," my wife-to-be quite accurately called it. I used to loathe all chart music for its unimaginative pursuit of popularity, which blinded it to any notion of creative integrity.

But now things are different. Now I don't even know any chart music. I don't recognise most of the songs they play on Radio 2 anymore, let alone its more irritating sister station. There's a boyband called One Direction. For at least a year I laboured under the illusion that they were called ID. It is quite a misleading logo. The last film I saw at the cinema was Avatar. I basically have just three T-shirts on rotation, and they're not even homemade. It's been several years since I wore a woolly hat for an unhygienic length of time, or a nose ring at all.

It's not all bad. I read a lot of books, although I must concede that that this pastime is influenced by my being Assistant Manager of a big bookshop. The other week I went to see the misanthropic, highbrow comedian Stewart Lee with my friend (who is still cool). We were sat right at the front. I laughed a lot (in fact I literally nearly wet myself, although that was largely due to poor judgement on my part), but was it as cool as being right at the front for the Super Furry Animals?

The interesting thing thing about my retreat from the cutting edge, though, is that it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I listen to the young people talking about the interesting things and manage to convince myself that I'm above all that; I transcend culture. How have I arrived at this point? It could very well be because I'm old and boring before my time, and smug enough to paint this as a crusade against pretentiousness. But I prefer to think that I enjoy and relish fatherhood so much; I take such pride in the role and its associated responsibilities, that I actually yearn to live up to the cliche. A major aspect of this cliche is that I must be embarrassingly clueless about culture.

In other words, I have deliberately denied myself the pleasure of listening to ID, or indeed knowing what they're called, so that I can fulfill my responsibility for becoming the love-to-hate figure of fun required of their dad by all children. Without such a parent, a teenager's psyche cannot develop normally.

I am a cultural martyr. This is my birthday present to my daughter.

Don't worry: I've also got her some toys and stuff.