On the way back home, CGF and her sis “had” to go to the supermarket. “You’ll be all right in charge of the younglings, won’t you Ruby?”.

Well, the “who can keep their eyes closed longer than I can” game kept them quiet for about five minutes (only the oldest one saw through my ploy: “he just wants to go to sleep”) and so I ended up taking them to the local play park.

Have you been to a local play park recently? They are (at least, the ones round Eastleigh are) awesome. They have exciting and adventurous climbing frames, and slides, and wobbly stepping stones, and trampolines, and zip wires. None of which I was allowed on: “you’re not a child” the four-year old assertively told me.

I pushed the four-year old on the swing. “Faster and higher” she yelled. Of course, the two are linked, but I thought that physics of a pendulum was probably a bit beyond her. I tried to get the older ones to discover/demonstrate momentum by leaning outwards and inwards on the roundabout, but this wasn’t very successful – partly because of the difficulty of getting four children to move in a synchronised fashion (herding cats), but also because the friction on the roundabout was too high to make any effect on speed noticeable.

Work on Thursday – nothing much seemed to have happened in my two days off – then in the evening I drove to the Midlands to spend a couple of nights at The Ageds’. CGF had driven up earlier, taking the northern contingent of visitors –her brother drove down from Yorkshire to meet them and take them home.

My youngest nephew was there – which was the main reason for the trip. He starts a new (and prestigious) racehorse training course next week in Ireland, and popped to The Aged’ for a few days en-route (actually a few days plus one. He was staying with some Kiwi friends in London, but woke up Monday to find there was no hot water, not a single clean eating utensil or area of work surface in the place. “Grandad, can I come and stay a day early”).

When we arranged the visit, my step-sister was due to be staying, so I booked a room at the local Travelodge. It subsequently turned out that step-sister wasn’t going to be there but as I’d booked the room on a “no money-back” deal so we kept it. When I went to check-in, the manager explained that they had no hot water and offered to book me into another hotel. I asked if I could just cancel and get my money back – after all, I didn’t really want the room any more. Yes I could. So that was a stroke of luck!

Friday morning, CGF travelled back home, while I stayed another night. The Aged and I took nephew to the coach station for the next leg of his journey. Next month his mother is visiting the UK and has insisted on flying over to Ireland to check he is all right. Needless to say, he is not over-impressed at the prospect of his mum’s visit. I’m sure he’ll be all right – he’s pretty resourceful and organised. He must have a good proportion of Barefoot family genes.

On the way back we swung by Mrs The Aged’s house to clear some ivy from the wall and in the afternoon I got my tyres and brakes replaced – they were picked up as an advisory on the MOT. Expensive, but not as expensive as I was expecting. I got change (not a lot) from a monkey.

Saturday morning I did the local parkrun. Time to gloat. I ran it in 24:38. Well and truly smashed my PB. Not sure I will get that fast again!

Back homewards late morning – a three-hour journey, including a stop for fuel. Even more younglings at CGF’s. A friend of CGF and sister was visiting for the day, with her three sprogs – about the same age as CGF’s sis’s. Another friend (with no sprogs) was also visiting, so there was plenty of adult supervision. Another trip to the play park and then the kids played hide-and-seek, which provided entertainment for the adults. When the youngest two were seeking, they kept losing count and took four attempts to count to 20. They walked straight past three hiders who were not particularly well hidden behind the sofa. They then spent so long searching upstairs we thought they had got distracted and forgotten they were playing hide-and-seek. One of the mums went upstairs to check and found they were intently searching through every space – with little regard to how impossibly small it was to hide in!