Lord, give me the strength to endure all this fun!

Here's a question to introduce you to today's topic. What kind of twisted mind would, on breaking into a shed and discovering a store of paint, decide to spray-paint his genitals black? I'll give you a clue: the hand-prints on the wall were only about a metre off the ground.

Seasoned parents amongst you will need no further help; of course, the answer is: a four year-old, three days into his summer holiday and already bored. We only found him when we were getting ready to go to the park. He was naked and covered in black paint from midriff-to knees, and from finger-nails up to his elbows. When questioned, he pointed to himself with considerable pride and answered: "I a-painted my willy!"

He was quickly rushed to the bathroom ("Don't touch ANYTHING!") and dumped in the bath. After a hasty conference about solvents we decided to use heavy-duty hand-cleaner. We instructed him to rub this all over the black bits, then, using a sponge (and on the more resilient parts, a pan-scourer) we scrubbed it off.

Under the black layer we found a blue layer. This enabled us to pin the authorship of the new blue shed mural on him. Not that we were in any real doubt about that one. The base layer appeared to be of beeswax furniture polish. Fortunately, this had prevented the paint from getting a really solid grip and the paint had all come off after the third bath.

James, by contrast, has been remarkably calm this far into the holiday. He has spend most of it sitting at his keyboard learning to play a succession of film scores. Admittedly, yesterday he said, apropos of nothing in this reality: "Don't speak to me like that, Veronica, or I'll mention your carrot! AHAHAHAHAH!" Still this is pretty mild by his standards. The worst destruction he has actually wreaked is to untidy his bedroom so comprehensively that neither he nor anyone else can get into it. He has been sleeping in a tent in the garden for the last three months, avoiding all plaintive pleas to tidy his room.

Emma has been playing a surreal selection of computer games. Her favourite is one where a group of hamsters are trying to launch one of their number into space. Whenever I protest at this waste of time (why spend your time staring at a computer screen when you could be.....er...writing up your blog?) she smugly points out that they are EDUCATIONAL computer games. She has in fact gone up two maths sets since she has started playing maths games. Well, that's all right then.

I can't wait until we go camping and the fun can begin in earnest! I may have to take some sedatives with me. Either I can take them or slip them in Robin's nutella sandwiches.