How relieved Emily must be to have not been the focus of someone’s wrath for ten minutes! Last night, it was Tom who was the bad seed of the Hughes family with his mini-rebellion regarding having a pierced ear. Not only was Emily not the bad child for a while, she also had the opportunity to side with her parents and berate someone else; it must have been like a holiday for her! She didn’t escape entirely though because Simon’s still on at her to get a better job and keep ‘normal’ hours, and as Emily has a prospective new boyfriend on the horizon, there was plenty for him to tease her about.

However, as mentioned, Tom was the focus of last night’s show because he turned up with a ridiculous dice earring in his ear. He obviously loved it but to be fair, he did look silly. He looked like a human VW Beetle because as far as I know, they are the only things that still have anything dice-like adorning them. Anyway, needless to say, it went down like a lead balloon and became a battle of wills and a rather tense face-off between Simon and Tom as to who was going to win the battle of the pierced ear.

Initially, it was Charlotte who discovered that Tom had had his ear pierced and she then told Emily who was suitably horrified, but you could see the glee on her face at the thought of what her mum and dad were going to say and do. Tom told Emily that he’d pierced his ear himself and she replied ‘are you mad?’ She later followed that up with dire warnings about the possibility of a painful death from septicaemia.

Then it was time for Tom to tell Jane about it, and she was not a happy camper. He was already getting on her nerves with his pleading to be allowed to go to a different school – which she refused, telling him he just needed to learn to accept authority and do as he’s told – so when he broke the news about his ear furniture, I wasn’t sure whether she hid her face in her hands to hide tears or her exasperation, but either way, she wasn’t pleased. Tom was obviously hoping to get her on side and clearly wanted her to break the news to Simon, but she was having none of it. Instead, Tom was left to pace his room, the stairs and the hallway waiting to hear the dreaded key in the lock.

However, Simon didn’t come home in time so that meant that the confrontation was going to have to happen the next morning… in theory. When morning came however, it seemed Tom had chickened out and decided that the anticipated row could wait until later so as he was getting ready for school, he very obtrusively kept his hand or his hood over his ear, hoping that his dad wouldn’t have any clue as to why. What Tom didn’t know was that Jane had already told Simon about it, so he wasn’t at all surprised when Tom refused to go within ten feet of him that morning.

A little sub-story was running too because Ziggy the cat had gone AWOL. Last seen, his little black body was heading out of the cat-flap but he hadn’t been back in for his dinner and Simon was getting worried. He was the only one who noticed that Ziggy wasn’t around and enlisted Charlotte to help look for him. She exhaustively searched for Ziggy, and by ‘exhaustively searched’, I mean she put her head out of the front door and called him. It didn’t bring the feline member of the Hughes family instantly running so she went back inside and the mystery of his whereabouts persisted.

Later, when Simon got in from work that night and over dinner, the subject of the earring was finally publicly aired. Tom protested that it’s his body, his ear and he should be allowed to do what he wants with it. Simon batted back that he hadn’t asked permission to do it and Jane – for once – agreed that he should’ve asked first. In a return volley, Tom said that the girls had been allowed to have pierced ears so why shouldn’t he. Simon scored what he considered to be an ace by saying that they are girls and Tom isn’t. Unfortunately, he then tripped up badly by remarking about Emily’s tattoos to which Tom replied that at least he could take his earring out and it would heal up, but Emily’s scarred for life. That, in his eyes, made what he did better than what Emily had done, but Simon wasn’t taking any prisoners…

The next day – with Ziggy still absent by the way – Simon ordered Tom to remove the earring. For a few rather squirmy minutes, it seemed Tom was going to totally defy his dad and refuse, but after a great deal of intense eye contact and I’m Staying Calm And Reasonable banter from Simon, Tom took out the earring. However, he wasn’t going to give up that easily and at the first opportunity, he ran back to get it, put it back in his ear and was out of the door, all at a slightly faster speed than sound travels.

He was of course caught out and worse yet, he’d been sent home from school with a letter about his behaviour. Oh dear. Jane was conspicuously absent during the showdown about both his behaviour at school and his defiance over the earring, and as most often happens, Simon was left to deal with it all. He and Tom sat in the living room and Simon asked Tom to explain what was going on at school and also why he’d put the earring in again when he’d been told to leave it out. Tom’s responses were typical teenager stuff; the teacher’s just hate him, they’re too strict, they make up stuff about him that he didn’t even do and generally, just enjoy making his life a misery. He wisely chose to focus on his unreasonable teachers rather than the earring debacle.

Simon decided to go with the I’m-On-Your-Side-Honest-I-Am approach, as was indicated by his use of swear words in the conversation. It seems to be an unwritten rule with teenagers but if you want them to really listen to you, it invariably means including swear words. It’s supposed to indicate some camaraderie in that the application of a few naughty words gives the thing an ‘us against them’ theme.

By the end of the talk, father and son were best mates again and Tom had been forced to see the error of his ways while Simon felt that treating the situation as if he was on Tom’s side – but had to be a grown-up and give lip service to grown-up things – seemed to have worked and a temporary peace descended.

Then, Ziggy turned up. He was greeted happily by Simon and Jane but nobody else seemed to be too bothered that he’d turned up. His whereabouts for the missing days may never be known, but he seemed none the worse for his adventure.

So will Tom win and keep his earring or will Simon triumph and Tom will be earringless? Will Emily manage to stay under the radar or will she soon be back in trouble? And when is Charlotte going to be the one causing angst again? Check back next week when we’ll have the answers to many of these questions!