Let me explain.

CGF’s sister plus three sproglets (ages between 4 and 11) are staying with CGF for a couple of weeks. On Sunday CGF drove to Yorkshire to fetch two more sproglets (as if there wasn’t already enough chaos in the CGF household) plus grandparents – returning Monday (two-thirds of the CGF Sprogs are away with their dad this week).

We all went to Smalltown Sunday morning, and CGF went on to Yorkshire from there, leaving me to bring everyone back to Eastleigh, and look after them for the rest of the day. Hence the child seats. I’d forgotten to take them out (but as there was no other car for them to go in, it didn’t matter).

We spent the afternoon baking – the kids made some cupcakes fairy cakes, I made two shepherd’s pies (one meat, one vegan – so maybe a market gardener’s pie), rhubarb crumble (rhubarb from my own garden) and brownies (chocolate and beetroot).

I went back home Sunday evening, for work Monday, but have days off today and tomorrow, so returned to Eastleigh last night. The eldest four sproglets slept in the tent last night. Hmm, slept. I use the term loosely. The noise died down sometime after 2300, and restarted soon after 0600. Hopefully we’ve tired them out today and they will sleep more – though at the time of writing (2100), there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of that! All the females in the house (six of them) are having a French plait competition.

Today we went to a country park, where we walked and played ball games and skimmed stones and ate ice cream. Because of the size of the party, we needed two cars. “Oh, Ruby’s got the child seats,” said CGF. “He can take the children and I’ll take the adults.” How did that happen?

And if you didn’t think that was enough madness, there was also an emergency run to Gatwick in the early hours of Sunday morning. Despite not getting to bed till 0330, I was up at 0830 for a full day of entertaining and visitor hosting.