Feed my sheep.

Yesterday the church toddler group had an outing.  We went to Highfields Happy Hens.  It's a great farm not far from here. It's run by a Christian couple who do loads of work with young people at risk of exclusion, young offenders and the like.  By all accounts, they do a marvellous job of it, and the chap was awarded an MBE at the beginning of the year for the work they do!  One of the highlights of the trip is always feeding the animals.  There are two types of feed - bags for two-legged and bags for four-legged creatures.  Despite the number of legs he's got, I couldn't persuade Joshua to eat the two-legged feed.  He opted for an ice-lolly instead.

This second picture is him slightly offended by the fact that he's just had his ear licked by one of the lambs as he was bending down by their pen.  You'll notice the lambs are all avoiding eye-contact, and no-one's owning up to the crime.  Typical of the young!

Anyway, we had a fab time.  You can also go and pick your own eggs from one of the laying sheds.  Always fun, but really smelly.  I mean, REALLY smelly.  Stifling.  Like you're in there thinking, 'maybe it wouldn't actually be so bad if I never breathed again'.  But we did get a dozen eggs out of it...

And it's great to see a Christian couple really 'walking the walk' in such a public service.

Oh, and another thought.  Should we, as 'sheep', be more willing to feed with such eagerness as the little lambs we met yesterday?...

You can really go off people...

Joshua's going through a moany couple of days. A lack of sleep is the most likely cause, though he sadly doesn't believe me on this, and thinks that 6ish is the right sort of time to get up. This makes for a grumpy daddy... It is also coupled with him being annoying (I know, this from the cutest boy in the world does seem unlikely, but there you have it...). Yesterday it was this:
I'd started one of those 'photo mosaic' puzzles. It's Homer Simpson and I'd got as far as doing the edge and his face and both arms. Can you tell? No, that would be might sweet son 'helping'. Mind you, it's difficult to stay cross when within half an hour, it's all gone quiet and you find said son thus:
How can you be cross with that?
We've had a bit of snow recently. I have to emphasise a bit. A tiny amount has settled, not nearly as much as most of the rest of the country has had. Much to our disappointment. Anyway, it was enough to build a snowman.
Joshua, somewhat unnervingly, kept referring to him as 'little brother'. (I wouldn't say there was that much family resemblance myself). Particularly disturbing when he was blithely saying that, when it got hotter, little brother would melt. Odd boy.
If you're wondering about the scale of this snowman (which you probably weren't, but hey), then this next photo will give you a fair idea.
His eyes were raisins. Oh, and this is a shot of 'little brother' as his head fell off.

A few favourites.

Well, he's been coming out with them thick and fast recently, so here are a few comments from the last couple of days that I particularly enjoyed.

"Night night Henrietta", as we were locking the ride-on mower safely into the metal container it lives in. I was a bit confused about the name, as he'd christened the mower Bessie the day before. This afternoon, as we went out to do some more gardening, Joshua said, "we've got to be quiet, because Bessie is tired and will be sleeping."

"This is the best game I've played ever." Sounds very sweet, but considering he was, at the time, sat on the hall floor playing with the multiswitch for the Christmas lights, it was actually a little bit sad. In fact, when we had to go out, he reassured himself by saying, "yes, I can finish this game later."

"Daddy, daddy, daddy (shouted in a sort of emergency-related tone) there are THREE on." He was referring to the number of episodes of Bob the Builder that were on the telly. "There were two, and now another one has come on, so there are three on Daddy." Wow, I wish I could get so excited about such things. As it happens, I think he'd counted incorrectly, but I won't mention it...

Fly me to the moon

Here's a photo competition for you ... what is this?
Well, it's not much of a competition, because I'm now going to tell you the answer. So if you want to have another think about it, don't keep reading ... If you've got this far, I'm guessing you're not that fussed about spending valuable time coming up with the answer (and, let's face it, why would you?!). Yes, this is (drum roll) the view from my spaceship earlier today.
And here's Captain Courageous...

Just tinkering with the controls to make sure we actually get somewhere. I know it might look like he's sitting on my foot, but he isn't really - it's just that the branch I'm traveling on is almost horizontal, so I'm resting my foot on a nearby branch! You're probably wondering where we were heading - so was I! Turned out that, according to Captain C, our destination was "The ... place ... with the pirates", which I then abbreviated to 'pirate planet', which he conceded was a good name for it.
The thing that surprised me most (let's face it, I'm not in the habit of jetting off to far-flung planets, and my inexperience really showed on this particular outing) was that when we actually arrived at our destination, we weren't inundated by pirates. In fact, I don't remember sighting a single one. Rather, we were almost overcome by a rather terrifying swarm of aliens. (What's the collective term for aliens?) I wouldn't be able to describe them, other than to say that they were persevering - they seemed to keep coming despite the fact that we were zapping them with our laser twig... (I'm no alientologist, that's for sure!)
Unfortunately, while we were on our journey, this fell off the ship:
There were two major issues with this. First of all, when it fell off, it hit my head on its way down. Thankfully, no medical attention was required (a relief, given that the chief medical officer was me, and my junior medic was the football we'd taken along for the ride) Secondly, whilst it might look to you much like any other branch one might find on a space ship, it was, in fact, a vital component, which required some attention before our return to earth could be attempted. (Thus the delay in leaving, necessitating much zapping of alien hoards)
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Captain Courageous lived up to his name, and had us back in the air in no time, and it seemed only a matter of seconds before we were back home. This was a big relief given the state of the weather.
It's all calmed down a bit now, we even went for a walk later (yes, at Calke Abbey again - they've done loads of clearing of crops in the garden). Captain Courageous has bathed and is now tucked up in bed. I'll leave you with a self-portrait he took after his bath. I might send it off with our 'Pirate Planet' press release...

Fun weekend.

Well, I say fun, but it would have been funner if it had involved more sleep.
First, Joshua and I decided to pop to Cambridge (well, I decided - he didn't get much say in the matter!) to see our niece/cousin. Sadly, boy fell asleep on the journey down and thus refused to go to sleep properly at bedtime. Then, didn't sleep properly, woke me more than once, and generally deprived me of my human right to sleep. (I should speak with a UN representative - isn't there some sort of law about not torturing people by depriving them of sleep?) Then, on the journey back up, he was so tired, having not slept properly the night before, that he (you've probably guessed already) fell asleep in the car. That led to another night of not going to sleep 'til about 10.30, and another night of daddy ending up somewhat grumpy.
Thankfully, tonight he was out at about 7.00.
BUT that's a distraction anyway, Cambridge was fab (although I didn't get much sleep, but perhaps I'd mentioned that...) and it was a delight to see the gorgeous addition to the family. (No pics without parents' permission!).
We even went to Wimpole for a quick look around the gardens. Lovely time, and a very impressive pumpkin and squash display. (Photos on camera, not phone, and camera's downstairs, so you'll have to wait...)
Then today was a 'day off' and we went to Calke. Again :) It was Fine Food Fair day today (Fine was a description of the food, not the weather, which was, on the contrary, anything but fine!)
Lovely time, and we saw some of their pumpkins too.
Now, you're probably thinking that their pumpkins are somewhat more impressive than mine. And you'd be right. In fact, some of my pumpkins haven't even exceeded the size of your average apple yet... But, when you take into account the amount of bed space they have there, and the number of volunteers tending the gardens, then it's a whole different league. (That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!)
In fact, this second picture gives you a good idea of the bed space. I just can't compete with that... Well, not without a lot of back-breaking digging, anyway!
Anyhow, it was nice to get out for a bit. We watched UP when we got home. Nice film, if a bit sad at the start...
And now I'm ready to go to bed. Maybe I'll leave it until after 8.30. Just seems a little more ... uh ... grown up.

A little trip out.

Bit of a random post, but hey.
We went to Calke Abbey a while back. It's ten minutes down the road and our regular visits make our National Trust membership worthwhile! Anyways, we took Granny and Pops, and had a nice wander around the gardens and a picnic. This time, for the first time, we went to see the ice house. Basically the oldy worldy version of a freezer, though you didn't plug it in, you collected ice in the winter to fill it with, and kept it nice a chilly for as long as the ice lasted! Pretty natty. Here are a couple of pics:
This first one is looking into the ice house from above (there were kinda skylight holes)

The second one is obviously looking up from inside! (I put the camera phone through the bars to take the first one, if you're wondering!)
Pretty cool.

Not only did we 'find' the ice house on this trip (it's a little way beyond the gardens and we'd never bothered going that far - lazy, I know!) we also came across a hide! Some bloke built it with donated materials and you can watch birdies from it (and deer, if you open the side window).
Here are some deer (though not seen from the hide) and a small boy who seemed quite happen to frighten them off!
Perhaps I should just point out that he's wearing 'short-trousers' it's not just that we haven't bought him any clothes for months...

But perhaps the most exciting thing was this:
Joshua was allowed to ride on the buggy with Granny and Pops AND he got the front seat AND the lovely man who was driving let him press the button on the remote to open the gate at the end of the drive! What a lucky boy! He doesn't look thrilled in this picture, but he was really :) Daddy did still manage to beat them up the hill, but felt a little worse for wear afterwards...

And here are my fave photos from the day:

What do you smell with?

Late to pre-school today, as Joshua was still asleep when pre-school started. He did wake eventually, and we got up, ate and got in the car. On the way there, we had this conversation:
Joshua: Daddy, look how many fingers I have in my seatbelt.
Me: (turning round to look) two.
J: Daddy, look how many fingers I have in now
Me: Sweetheart, I can't keep turning around to look at you - I'm trying to drive and don't want to have a crash.
J: Daddy, look at me, and I'll look at the road to see if any cars are coming.

Needless to say, I didn't think his advice was great...

Then at pre-school, we got out the car and:
Joshua: do we have anything to take in today?
Me: We've got loads of stuff in your bag.
Joshua: No, I mean toys. (there's a 'letter of the week' and if you take in something that starts with that letter, you get a sticker)
Me: The letter this week is 'N', what starts with 'N'?
Joshua: (I can't remember what he said, but it didn't start with N!)
Me: No sweetheart, think of a word that starts with 'N'. What do you smell with?
Joshua: Uh, pooh?

Oh dear. Still lots of learning to do.

His favourite 'starting with' letter is 'P'. Not really sure why, but it is. This means that lots of things apparently start with P (rarely accurate!). We were recently discussing Fireman Sam's vehicles, and Joshua said. 'Venus, that starts with P'.
Oops :)

More school on its way...

Well, he's still growing... And he's been hassling us for a while saying that his friends get to go to school more than he does, so from tomorrow, he'll be starting school for a second day each week. It's a little bit sad - sort of an early empty nest feeling :( But it's a great school, and he loves it to bits. He's very excited about tomorrow too. Of course that might be linked to the fact that it's a teddy bears' picnic!
So, today we decided we'd have a bit of an adventure, and we went to watch this:











Not exactly high-brow, cultured entertainment, but good for a laugh. It's in 3D too, which meant that Joshua had to wear these:

I was slightly surprised that he was quite so happy to wear them. It's a good enough film. We missed the first few minutes (some traffic-light-related issues...) but it didn't seem to matter too much. Joshua announced afterwards that it was 'a bit scary and a bit good'. So he was obviously content. The next trick was keeping him awake on the journey home (he'd not had a nap...) so that he can have a nice early night tonight :) Here's hoping he crashes out in front of the telly after tea!!

As for me, well, I've got to make sure his uniform's in good order for tomorrow, and then tomorrow, I've got a book to write! We're already looking forward to the summer holidays ...

It's snowing in Derbyshire.

Well, sort of anyway. In a sort of fake-snow-worthy-of-a-70s-film-set sort of way.
I finished making Joshua's pirate bean bag. Having filled it in the corridor (I figured the tiny white balls would be less likely to spread so far) I thought it would be a good idea to hoover up before Joshua himself got up from his nap. I was distracted from doing so though, and in no time I heard him shuffling down the corridor in a sleepy sort of way. In retrospect, I'm glad I hadn't hoovered the mess up, because we ended up having half an hour of riotous fun.
It turns out that they're pretty staticy (my computer doesn't like that word - I mean they stick to you!). What's more if your roll about in them, they feel really cool. In no time at all, we went from sitting in a small pile of them:
To playing ridiculous games, including the aforementioned 'it's snowing', resulting in the length of the corridor being covered! (The end of the red carpet is the end of our bit of corridor!)
Of course, the game had to come to an end eventually, but I can nevertheless recommend it most highly! You can tell how much I was enjoying it, because I don't seem to have taken Joshua's dummy off him, which is most unusual!
And if you're wondering, it's actually raining here. I'm quite pleased really, partly because I've been indoors working at the computer much of the day, and partly because it'll help the parsnips and carrots along a little!

And in other news, I'm thrilled to see that I've smashed through the double figure barrier in 'followers'. :o)

Sunburn in April.

In Derbyshire! Shocking I know, but I managed to actually burn myself by spending the entire day in the garden today. Well, I popped inside for the occasional drink and pee, but other than that, it was a proper outdoors day. Fab weather all day (thus the burn...) and great fun to be out in it.
Anna did a marvellous job of looking after Joshua while I was fulfilling some weird desire to turn a couple (three actually) of old pallets into flowerbed things. They're kinda flower troughs, I guess, but I can't show you a photo, because it was too dark to take photos by the time I'd finished sweeping up the mess. Very manly business though, even managed to use a couple of power tools for extra stud points. Sadly couldn't find my crowbar (Iso, is it in the lean-to? Don't worry, I won't ask you to post it), which meant I had to dismantle the pallets with my hammer, chisel and screwdriver (not the proper way at all!).
Joshua and I went to pick them up this morning from a friendly chap down the road. Well, strictly speaking, he's down the path, the other side of the field... Joshua was sporting his brand new Gruffalo tee-shirt, so wasn't allowed to help carry the pallets, as the tee would have got even dirtier than it did. The boy's a dirt magnet :) He stuck around for all of about ten minutes, then did a runner. To be fair, he'd already spent a fair amount of time wandering 'round the garden this morning doing the watering (still in his pyjamas - should've got a photo of that!) He did manage to water his jacket fairly convincingly too...
Anyways, the troughs are now filled with gravel and compost (yes, from the compost heap that I sorted out about a month and a half back) and are waiting for their plants. It's going to be sweet peas in the back, and tomatoes at the front. Hopefully, the sweet peas will be trained up some wires to produce a dazzling display, visible from the sitting room. Fingers crossed...
I'm now heading for bed for a well-earned sleep. There's something very satisfying about going to bed aching (well, when it's from hard labour, anyway!).

Fresh start.

Had a lovely birthday on Monday down in Worthing (thanks to everyone who helped make it a great day!). Great time catching up with friends too - here are a couple of pics from our trip to the beach with some friends ... The first one is the classic 'sun in the background over the crashing waves' shot. And believe it or not, this is not very long after Joshua's had his haircut. That's as short as it's been for ages!



The second is a wonderful picture of my brave little boy (!) running away from the waves. I know it's a fun game to play, but he's clearly a little less hardy than his mate, who's still ten foot closer to the sea than he is and hasn't even started running yet. Having said that, if you look closer at the photo, you'll see that Joshua's already failed dismally in a previous attempt - absolutely drenched trousers! His mate's mummy wasn't overly impressed with me either ... I was taking photos of them (as you can tell!) and saw a wave coming in. I legged it up the beach, staying perfectly dry, but leaving them to get wet. Oops.

Great to catch up with people at Worthing High too! Lots of new faces though ... weird. I now don't recognise half the school!

Then we got back home and I discovered this:


Yes, a tree fell over in our garden while we were away. Well, there's a bit of a 'did it fall or was it pushed?' debate, but the less said about that the better. It's funny, I was stood there thinking, 'oh no, that's our best cropping plum' (ok, call me sad if you like). And then I looked up at the sky, saw what a great spot the tree had been planted in and immediately started thinking, 'I wonder what else we could plant here instead'. If only all loss was so easily dealt with! And of course, there's the other advantage that we've now got more wood to burn!

I'm also now trying to work out what things need to be planted in the next couple of weeks. Our new fruit trees are on the way, so they'll go in. But I've got serious amounts of seed to go in, with what is currently quite limited planting space. I think more stuff may have to come out... Oh dear. Joshua and I planted some more tulip bulbs (WAY too late!) and some dogwood cuttings today too, so hopefully they'll make it... If not, it doesn't really matter, they'll just compost down over time!

And last but not least, we had a lovely lunch today with friends here. They introduced us to a game called 'chairs'. There are 24 little (like, two inches tall) plastic chairs that have to be stacked in a tower, with only one touching the ground. It's more fun than it probably sounds (think Jenga, but building from scratch, with plastic chairs...) and I spent some time crafting the amazing tower below ...

Little things please little minds ... as they say.

Beaten by a draft excluder.

Yes, that does read 'by' and not 'with'.
Joshua's loving the game 'Shhh, don't wake dad' at the moment. It was given to him for Christmas by one of the girls. He's now beginning to get the hang of the rules (though still ignores them...). However, at the outset, it was a case of talking him through the entire game. It's mercifully quite a quick game though. I have to point out that I did win the first game (yes, I was playing fair!). However it was downhill from there. The second game was won by Joshua, who only just beat me to the finishing line (which in this game is a fridge). It got worse though. He decided that Mole and Teddy needed to join in the action. So I was taking charge of making sure Mole didn't cheat, and Joshua was keeping an eye on Teddy. Mole is a draught (draft) excluder, Teddy is ... uh ... a teddy. Of course, we had to spin the spinner for them, but they did help move their pieces around the board. The inevitable happened though. Mole won. I could see it coming too, and was almost overcome by the temptation to cheat to enable one of the non-stuffed-toy players to win, but managed to resist and instead accept defeat at the hands (?!) of Mole.
Ah the joys and burden of responsibility!

Happy not-so-New Year

Thankfully, I didn't make any rash New Year's Resolutions about blogging daily. In fact, I haven't really made any NYRs at all. My thinking is that I'll get around to making them when the dust of the holiday has settled somewhat. That way I can make some that are a bit more carefully planned than, 'Argh, seven-and-a-half minutes 'til the New Year, what should I promise myself?!'.

Had a lovely New Year though. I'm currently having a facebook conversation with a friend who refers to his New Year as 'insane'. I told him that I would have been most upset if my New Year had been insane (perhaps it's linked to the fact that I'm twice his age...)! Thankfully ours was very calm and orderly. So calm, in fact, that we forgot to set off the fireworks. Oops. A civilised roast dinner, followed by a few games of 'Snatch'. Rounded off with a nice bit of fireworks-on-the-telly and a glass of champagne. Even cracked open the bottle of Chateauneuf du pape. Very nice stuff. Silky smooth, in fact!

That was preceded by a couple of really nice visits to see old friends, (old in the long-standing sense, not in the long-in-the-tooth sense). North Wales was, as expected, grey, cold and somewhat wet, but brightened immeasurably by the renewal of friendship, occasional cup of tea, and roaring (well, more flickering actually) fire. Birmingham was also cold, but likewise was uplifted by the friendship and tea motifs.

And before that, of course, came Christmas. A Lewis spectacular: fantastic food, and a wonderful family Christmas. A highlight for me was the suckling pig (sorry if you're reading this Clare M...). In particular, Joshua wandering into the kitchen, seeing said pig in a tray about to go in the oven, and announcing, "I want to eat his nose!". No sign of vegetarianism breaking into his lifestyle! He was also taken by the disappearance of the sherry, mince pie and carrot left for Santa and co., and by the appearance of footprints in the ash by the fireplace. Ok, so the footprints were barely discernible despite being the work of a number of people and a fair amount of time, but the rest was good! Joshua was a huge fan of his new kitchen that mummy and daddy and granny and pops gave him. As you can see, he's cooking up a storm already.



And yesterday (apologies for the topsy-turvy chronology of this post) we did this:
I say, "we", but I have to say I'm the only one who saw the project through from start to finish. It was the (very well chosen!) gift of one of our girls. Anna and Joshua initiated the construction, but then abandoned ship on me. I think perhaps I was being a little over-enthusiastic about getting it 'just right' (though you might well question whether I actually succeeded...). A prize for the person who can spot the five differences between the two otherwise identical pictures...






Anyway, it's now a long long time since I actually started writing this (it's 20.42 now...) so I'm going to stop there. Joshua is now in bed, and I'm thinking of going out for a spot of sport :) Happy New Year to all of you. (All five of you, that is. I was hoping I might have hit 10 followers (not literally, you understand!) by 2010, but maybe I'll have to wait until 2011 for that)

Morocco

Just thought I'd blog some likes and dislikes about Morocco, but will blog further and with more photos when I've got some more time.
We went to Marrakech for four days this last week.

Likes:
The traffic - absolute chaos
The orange trees that grew 'wild' along the pavements.
The smells - some unfamiliar, some all too recognisable :)
The fact that you could shop after 5.30
The people
The bartering
The weather (though it did rain a fair amount on our first day)
The architecture
The mint tea
The call to prayer
The snake charmers
The monkeys in the marketplace
The couscous royale (mmm tasty)
The airport (seriously stylish)
Having to hold the torch for the guy who came to fix the electrics in our hotel room
The mini taxi we travelled in that leaked rain onto us

Dislikes:
The dishonesty of some people (like the guy who said he didn't want money for having his photo taken with us, and then gave us serious grief when we didn't give him any)
The olive trees that grew 'wild' along the pavements (I'm not an olive fan!) (nah, they were cool in concept to be fair)
People manhandling Joshua (ruffling hair is fine, but grabbing is pushing it...)

There were more of both - I'll probably add to this post from time to time, as they come to me.

Birthday boy.

He's only three, and yet the preparations for his party were on a par with preparations for a royal visit. We also had as many guests as you might expect to a royal banquet. Thankfully, some of the guests were very helpful indeed, or our survival would have been in real jeopardy.

The second parent who arrived asked whether we wanted parents to stay or not. I assured her that parents were MORE than welcome to stay (please!). I was on the fast track to cardiac arrest with that comment! Thankfully, all parents stayed, and were very well behaved (on the whole).

The hired inflatable ball pool (indoors, given the weather) was a real hit. Thankfully, the only actual hit that took place (and it was accidental) was sibling-on-sibling, so there was less explaining to do to parents. It was great fun watching the kids throwing themselves into it ... literally. (And great fun testing it out in advance of the party, too!) Sadly, the balls were all wet when it arrived, so Joshua's aunt and I had to crawl around in it with a couple of towels, but that was quite entertaining anyway... You'll be pleased to know that Joshua was unharmed in the making of this photograph - this is him having fun ...

Another highlight of the day was when one of the guests arrived and, on being told who was already there, announced that he didn't like one of the other guests. Oh dear. They all seemed to have fun anyway. We played the classic pass-the-parcel. A timeless game that takes as long to prepare as to play, and is bound to leave some people disappointed. Pin the tail on the donkey was also popular, though I think may have been beyond some of our younger guests... Joshua got it somewhere near the poor creature's head. Not likely to make a very good vet I'm afraid. (Though maybe the present of a vet's practice from his godmother will assist with that...)

The cake was a pirate ship (well sort of ...) on request of birthday boy himself. Sadly, the only writing icing we had was Barbie glitter icing, which didn't really seem to be quite right for a pirate cake, but I used it anyway! As soon as he'd blown out the candles, he said, "I want cake first". What a gracious host he's turning out to be! Unfortunately, it was as I was holding the cake in front of him, and we were all singing, that I realised I didn't have a camera (not that I could have taken a photo with the cake in my hands!) and therefore we were liable to miss out on the classic "blowing out the candles" (a.k.a. "spitting at the cake") shot. To my relief, I saw a flash go off during the blowing/spitting process and managed to nab the friend who'd taken the shot, so we didn't go without after all.

We had a craft table to welcome the children (so to speak) which was nice for a chance to calm them down a bit after the ball pool. Notice the concentration on Joshua's face as he works on his masterpiece, with snowman looking on. This was before he got hold of the fancy wiggly scissors and cut his paper into lots and lots of little pieces (with very pretty edges!). We will, of course, be hoovering glitter up from the entrance hall for weeks to come, but that's life.
We had cupcake decorating (a good way of clearing out that Barbie glitter writing icing), which seemed popular too. More popular than the craft, but then it's nicer to eat a cupcake than a drawing, so maybe that's why...

All-in-all, a largely successful party, and our guests seemed to go away happy. Joshua was so tired that he was falling asleep as granny was reading him his bedtime story. Granny and Pops get a special mention, as do Tammie and Ben. They all worked their socks off to help provide a fantastic day for the boy, and to look after our hordes of parents. (Hordes in number, that is, not in temperament...)

Today has been somewhat quieter (though it's actually today that's his birthday). We popped into mini carols this morning (though were so late we actually missed the carols altogether) and then provided lunch for the staff in the house. 10 grown-ups are much easier to cater for than 18 children! We're spreading the present opening over a period of time, so that he doesn't get overwhelmed.

Practical Dad almost won.

It was a bit of a close contest. Joshua asked for a house to be built in the lounge. I listened and weighed up the pros and cons. Fun Dad was happy to launch straight in, but Practical Dad thought back to the previous house-building episode. It had undeniably been an enjoyable experience for all concerned, but the state in which the room was left was something approaching apocalyptic. It also occurred to Practical Dad that the floor was in a bit of a mess, and the sofa had needed some hoover-attention last time round. With the balance of power firmly on his side, Practical Dad launched into action. With the (somewhat dubious) support of Joshua, the toys were tidied away to the edge of the room, where they were piled on top of each other to maximise the effectiveness of the epic hoovering that was about to take place. Unfortunately, once the floor was clear, Practical Dad was tipped over the edge and turned, Jekyll&Hyde-like, into Desire-For-Cleanliness-Verging-On-The-Completely-Sterile-Environment Dad. The hoover was emptied first (due to a somewhat sad wish to see just how much dirt could be sucked from the carpet) and then put to work. All three attachments were used in the ensuing assault, which lasted somewhere in the region of an hour. Sofas were moved for the first time since we moved in (1 1/2 years ago...) and every corner and crevice was duly cleansed. Thankfully, the moving of sofas kept Joshua entertained for most of the process, as he enjoyed jumping back and forth between them. By the end of it, the carpet was looking spic and span and the hoover was over half full (ick!).

To everyone's relief, at some point during our elevenses break (I think it may have the the third choc chip cookie that did it), Fun Dad was rediscovered and ready for action. The housebuilding was almost as fun as the hoovering was fulfilling (?!) and probably took almost as much time. Sadly, Over-Exuberant Dad did sustain an injury in the process of vaulting from one sofa to the other, but the less said about that, the better.