Last month, my blog reached the grand old age of 12. I can’t quite believe it’s been around for so long – it’s a veritable digital antique now – and that I haven’t got bored of it yet. Speaking of which, I may eventually hang up my keyboard before the next traditional landmark – although I have no plans to do so yet – so it makes sense to celebrate while I’m still going. And how do you celebrate when you’ve written way too many blog posts? With a compilation post, of course! Over the years, I’ve covered the grim side of parenting quite a lot so, without further ado, I give you the dirty dozen ..read more

The summer break is well and truly over and I’ve been so relaxed that I’ve neglected to write about anything for ages. Including our first proper holiday as a family of five. It was also our first holiday abroad in eight years. As soon as the school year was over, we headed to France to stay with my parents. We decided to go all the way to Bordeaux via train, stopping overnight in Paris both on the way out and back. There were a few reasons for this possibly questionable choice – mainly environmental and financial, but also an awful experience last time we flew. Having used British trains for ..read more

Disclosure: This is a paid collaboration with Very. We may only be a week or two into the summer holidays but I already have one eye on when the kids go back to school. Not because I’m mean, but simply that there’s so much to prepare! Fortunately, the Very school bus turned up outside our house last week, packed with all the uniform – including the all-important new shoes – that youngest will need. So, with all of this in mind, here are my tips for a smooth start to the school year. Get the uniform in early Yes, kids have an irritating habit of growing over the summer but it saves a lot of st ..read more

Disclosure: I received a copy of each Solve It! book to review and keep. The summer holidays are almost upon us and with them comes the age-old challenge of keeping kids entertained. Particularly if you’re travelling anywhere and keen to keep the calls of “Are we nearly there yet?” to an absolute minimum. I’m a strong believer in keeping their minds active while school’s out – six weeks is a long time not to be giving their brains a workout, after all – so this new range of books by Collins is just the job. The Solve It! range comprises four books, each focusing on a different area and all aim ..read more

I broke a mirror the other day. Not by looking in it, before you ask. No, this smashing experience was thanks to our old front door. Which currently resides just to the side of our new front door in the hallway while we wait for it to be taken away. It was one of those experiences that probably only lasted a second but felt much longer. I must have stepped on the wrong floorboard as I didn’t make contact with the door at all. The next thing I knew, a dark shadow loomed over me and I instinctively stepped away. Just in time to simultaneously miss out on a nasty concussion and witness it smashin ..read more

Somehow or other, oldest is nearing the end of his first year at secondary school. He’s done amazingly well and we’re really proud of him. He and I are quite similar, so I can’t help but compare his experiences with my own at that age. Happily, he hasn’t experienced some of the things I did – like ‘shirts vs skins’ in PE lessons – but it feels like I still had an easier time of it. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s too much pressure on kids nowadays. And this doesn’t just apply to his age group – I’m basing it on his siblings’ experiences at primary school too. Homework is an o ..read more

Somehow or other, I’ve got back into old video games lately. And when I say old, I really mean it. Some of them are around 30 years of age. I’m not quite sure how this happened or, indeed, what this says about me on a psychological level, but I’m loving it. They say nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, but they’re wrong. Among other things, I’ve had a wonderful time preventing rodents from succumbing to the perils of gravity, unearthing the secrets of a lost civilisation and rewriting Tottenham’s history from the 97/98 season onwards. For me, these games have really stood the test of time but I ..read more

Youngest is six now so we’re well and truly beyond the baby years. She and her brothers – who are 10 and almost 12 respectively – are all pretty independent. So you’d think that the evidence of the early days is in short supply. But you’d be wrong! It struck me recently that there are still a few things from back then that we still do. They’re basically just strange little learned behaviours that haven’t evolved with the kids’ ages. That’s not to say that we treat them like babies because we don’t. There are just a few oddities that seem to have remained in existence. The television is home to ..read more

Spring has sprung and it seems like the weather is becoming a little more settled. So it’s an ideal time to make the most of it and go for a nice family walk. Yeah, about that… Because parenting is often a matter of balancing expectations and reality. And, in this instance, it’s always my own expectations that are so far removed from reality. Mark Twain once said that “golf is a good walk spoiled”. That may be true – I’ve never tried – but there are much more affordable ways of achieving this end. So, based on more than one recent experience, here are five ways to ruin a nice family walk. Let ..read more

I’m really proud that my kids are so unassuming. We’ve always lived within our means – which were meagre when I was a full-time blogger – and they seem to have learned from that. They don’t take much for granted and have never been particularly materialistic. Long may this continue. There’s a strange flipside, however. They seem to think some fairly run-of-the-mill things are ‘posh’. I assume that they mean ‘different’ but that doesn’t make for good reading. So here are five ordinary things my kids think are posh. A Thameslink train We were on our first proper day out in two years and had to t ..read more