Before I begin our account of our holiday, I should perhaps mention that we did actually have a super time – and also that the holiday cost less than a quarter of the price of a week’s stay in a Hilton or Marriott hotel. And also that I appear to be channelling super-bitch Katie Hopkins, in all her hate filled misery. In the words of our now familiar friend Mike The Knight, Hazzah! Enjoy. Prior to departure for Butlin’s in Bognor Regis last Monday, wise friends of ours chuckl

What a morning. Tom’s been away working in London for the last couple of days which means that the boys’ good behaviour benchmark has gone downwards. Apparently the wrath of one dad is less of a threat than the wrath of two. So, we’ve had low-level irritating squabbles a-plenty this morning; poking each other’s ribs, violent cushion fights that are on the wrong side of the fun/fight border and farting in faces including one very potent one from Richard right into my mouth whe

Beware. This blog update might cause a slight ripple among readers and I do apologise if I come across like a miserable middle-class snob...

The barbers that we go to in town charge £3.50 per haircut (I know, cheap right?) and do a satisfactory job for the ridiculous 1980 price tag. But they’re restricted to the one style, which is essentially a WW1 soldier’s short back and sides with a side parting and a tidy little shaved line to assist with parting-location. Actually they also once did a rather special short front and longer back buzz-cut on Lyall, but we don’t tend to talk about that. The vintage style looks a

Once a month, the marvellous people at the Board Game Blogger’s Club send our family a new game to play and review. This month, it’s the turn of landscape building game Carcassonne. So, first things first. How do you pronounce Carcassonne? We each had a guess, ranging from “Car-crash-ownie” from Lyall, “Car-sass-son” from Dad, a kind of tongue out “Carr-rraaa-raara” from Richard and a very admirable (even if I do say so myself) “Cceer-casss-on” in a splendid French accent fro

It’s official. Our eldest (Lyall, 7) is obsessed with rude words. Not swear words, mind, just irritating body-parts and toilet function words that seem to be cropping up all the time. Incidentally, Richard, our little one, attempted an actual swear word at breakfast last Wednesday… “Bollops to it” “I beg your pardon Richard?” “Bollops!” “What did you say?” “BOLLOPS?” I smiled. “It’s bollocks and that is not a word I want to pass your lips again until you’re at least eighteen.

Welcome back. Hands up whose had a busy month? Ours was berserk. We’ve had our family’s first birthday, celebrated in style with a jolly wander down to Pizza Express followed by a terrific disco back at home in our kitchen; Dad got Grandma Audrey’s disco lights down from the loft and I manned the decks, well, actually my old phone plugged into a really loud 5.1 PC speaker set. Sounds like the world’s crappiest disco but actually the affect in our darkened kitchen was most imp

Problem. It’s too soon for us to leave the boys at home with a babysitter (all of our house rules would go straight out of an upstairs window, along with all the boys’ soft toys) and we’re dying to go out on a Friday night to scoff an enormous Zizzi pizza and glug down a nice bottle of Montepulciano. Solution. We’ll take the boys along with us. So, how does a Friday night out with two excited four and five year old boys look? Well. Every so often, about once every couple of m