What’s happening to Britain’s fathers? A terrible madness seems to be gripping an increasing number of them, driving them to destroy their children rather than protect them, and to destroy themselves at the same time. Latest victims of this disturbing phenomenon were Amy and Owen Philcox, aged seven and three, who were found dead in a fume-filled car at a remote spot in North Wales. Their 52-year-old father Brian Philcox, estranged from their mother, was dead alongside them, joining a growing list of men who have killed or harmed their offspring and themselves over the past year. So I suppose we must really consider him to be a victim too. But of what? Why are these men being driven to put an end to the lives they helped to create? In the case of Brian Philcox, it’s been reported that his wife had left him because of his temper and the violence he showed to her 18-year-old son (who was his stepson), and that he feared that the divorce settlement would force him out of the matrimonial home. So you can imagine that he would be feeling anxious, perhaps even desperate. Maybe he also felt vengeful, wanting to punish his wife for leaving him and taking his children with her. But surely that wouldn’t be enough to prompt him to take their lives, would it? And his own? But there’s another possibility. Maybe on top of all that, in his depressed state he saw no future for himself, and a deeply worrying future for them. We live in an uncertain world. Nationally and globally, it seems that everything is going belly-up. Nothing is fixed any more. The world that our children and grandchildren will have to cope with is steadily being stripped of the certainties many of us took for granted. The twisted mind of a fearful father, imagining the sort of challenges his children could have to face, might well throw up scenarios which are simply too grim to bear. I’m not making excuses for him, merely seeking a reason. It’s at worrying times like the present that families need to provide mutual love and support. Mothers and fathers need each other (it’s much easier to face an uncertain future if you face it together). Their children need them both. Yet a huge number of families are fragmented. What the mother and father share isn’t love and loyalty, but resentment and animosity. And the children are the biggest losers. Amy and Owen Philcox paid the ultimate price. Whether their father killed them and himself to spite his wife or because he thought that he was in some perverse way protecting them from some imagined future nightmare, we will probably never know. Whatever the reason, they join the tragic toll of innocents slaughtered by the men they should have been able to depend on to keep them safe.

When two paths cross...

The etiquette of pavements and towpaths is complicated. How should a pedestrian behave, for example, if a cyclist on a narrow pavement stops to let him pass, bearing in mind that the cyclist shouldn’t be on the pavement in the first place? A reader proceeding on foot who found himself in this situation failed to acknowledge the cyclist’s courtesy, and it troubles him. “I am not normally rude in this way but couldn’t see why a cyclist would be riding on the footpath. He made some retort because of my silence but I replied that he should use the road next time. “The dilemma is: if I thank someone who has given a right of way when he shouldn’t have been on the footpath in the first place is it tantamount to legitimising his right to use the footpath?” By coincidence, I faced a similar dilemma on the towpath of the Leeds-Liverpool canal last weekend. A cyclist scrunched almost to a halt right on our heels and we, aware at the last moment of her presence, moved to one side to let her pass. She thanked us as she pedalled on. But I then challenged her for not using her bell to warn us she was approaching. She stopped again and protested that she’d said thank you. But I replied that that was all very well, but an advance warning would have been preferable. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Pedestrians walk on towpath side by side. Cyclist approaching from behind rings bell in good time. Pedestrians move into single file making room for cyclist to pass by without needing to slow down. Everyone’s happy. So why, then, are so many cyclists reluctant either to have bells fitted to their bikes or to use them? Some do, and it makes life so much easier, but many more don’t. If walkers and cyclists are to share towpaths, which is legal, they need to be considerate of each other’s needs. So do walkers and the cyclists with whom they increasingly, and illegally, are sharing pavements (because cyclists are understandably reluctant to share busy, dangerous roads with cars, lorries and buses). I’m sure most pedestrians would readily turn a blind eye to it as long as cyclists acknowledge that the pavement is first and foremost the pedestrians’ domain and give them right of way. On that basis, the bloke on a bike who the reader encountered was doing the right thing.

Playing a Trump card

Best TV moment of last week for me (apart from Joan Rivers on Loose Women) was the joint appearance on the Paul O’Grady Show of American millionairess Ivana Trump and the Krankies (alias Janette Tough, featured elsewhere on this page, and husband Ian). Janette and Ian were very funny in the best British variety tradition and the banter between them and O’Grady, was hilarious. Poor Ivana, meanwhile, looked totally bemused, as though she’d been beamed down from a different world and time. Whoever planned the guest list that day had either made a terrible mistake by inviting such ill-matched people, or had pulled off a stroke of genius.