Little did I know when I shot that video yesterday evening, that it would be the last footage ever recorded of Amelie's buggy. Within minutes of putting the girl to bed and uploading the film to YouTube, Lisa had tripped over Iggle Piggle, gone flying over Makka Pakka, and broken both her fall and the buggy with a crash landing on Amelie's baby.

Having examined the wreckage, I decided it was beyond help. And the buggy couldn't be fixed either. So I picked up Lisa, looked at both her and the buggy, and decided to throw one of them in the communal bin outside. A lot of huffing and puffing later, I admitted defeat and settled for the buggy.

The good news is that our senior administrator at work gave Amelie another buggy just a few weeks ago. The bad news is it's currently thirty-five miles away at my parents' house where she has more room to push it around. Bearing in mind that Amelie's favourite toy is her baby, and she spends half her life dragging it across the floor in a buggy, there was naturally a slight panic in the Gardner household at the prospect of another piercing scream when she got up this morning and found it was gone.

So while Lisa distracted her with breakfast, I got my shoes on and my wallet out, before driving the girl across town to Toys R Us. She toddled around the store until she'd eventually picked up so much stuff she could no longer move. At which point we dumped it all, I grabbed the cheapest buggy they had, and we made a swift exit.

Amelie's spent the rest of the day saying "Buggy!" with a big smile on her face, as she staggers around the flat like a gymslip Mum on a council estate. It's actually quite heart-warming. But even better than that, after months of grabbing the handset, she's finally worked out who our phone company is...


Yes, that's right, we're with Pipex.