RICHARD, you’re a wild man. Has it really been 16 years since I last saw you? It would have been at one of those end of the century parties. I can see you now, staggering in through the hot July night, clutching a £1.99 bottle of plonk. High velocity guitar music and strobe lighting will have announced your entrance through the patio doors, illuminating yet another East Oxford kitchen.

Stony-eyed divas fell at your heels. Men looked on agog as you downed vodkas like teaspoons of orange squash. Later you’d unfold yourself across the sofa, fag ash dropping from your fingers. In a long whingeing voice you will have proclaimed yourself as the last in a tedious line of rock ‘n’ roll animals.

But your leather trousers have since left the building. Your strobe lights are permanently packed away next to the Flymo in the shed. Your dreams of conquering Madison Square Gardens with your guitar have been reduced to the size of an MP3. Because after all this time I see you again and you’re not holding an electric guitar. You’re holding a baby.

There you stand, non smoking in the car park outside the Kassam Stadium. Your face is taut, as though you haven’t broken wind for months. A second child snatches at your anorak, while your wife goes through your pockets, fingering for car keys. I’m in equally dire straits. My two wrestle each other on the pavement outside Frankie and Benny’s. Half term has worn me out. Our eyes meet. Has it really come to this? “We’ve been to the soft play area,” you choke, “but I had to get out”. Then you add, “It’s like a war zone in there.”

I know what you mean, I inanely reply, we’ve just been to the Bowlplex. I gesture sadly towards the ten pin bowling arena.

Our visit to Bowlplex was notable because it formed my introduction to the music of Justin Beiber. I’ve successfully dodged him for years. But, as we played our one and only game of bowls, there he was on a giant video screen, stretching the entire length of the building like a pubescent python. At that scale I could avoid the pain no longer.

Thankfully my eight-year-old daughter wasn’t afflicted by Justin Beiber mania, although she didn’t take to bowling either. I realise it’s stressful to be whipped at bowls by your six-year-old brother. But it’s difficult to compete when your playing technique involves hiding under a nearby table and screaming.

So here we are, Richard and I, in one final showdown. And although neither of us will headline Madison Square Gardens any day soon, we can still fight it out like men. Which one of us will win the battle of complaining loudly about how knackering half-term is? And which one us will be first to hide under a table and scream?