I think I'll have to find a new title for my autobiography...


That one's been taken. It was actually given to us last week by Lisa's sister, who found it in a charity shop and felt it would make the perfect gift for someone whose wife has no sense of direction and keeps getting lost. It's a lot like 'Where's Wally?', but in this case the wally's Lisa.

It's produced an interesting effect in Amelie. After two years of hearing Lisa's Mum call her 'Lis' (to sound like 'lease'), reading the 'Look For Lisa' book has prompted her to put two and two together, and realise what her Mummy's name is. As a result, she's been calling her Lis since Friday. It's like living with a tiny estate agent. Everywhere she goes, it's Lis-this and Lis-that. Lisa went out for the afternoon yesterday, and Amelie started walking around the flat saying "I'm looking for Lis!". It's like watching the stage version of the book.

And on the subject of leasing, anyone who's seen our block of flats in an Argus crime scene report will know that not only are people dying to come here, but we have a bit of a damp problem too. And it finally reached a head on Saturday. I was under the bed at lunchtime, replacing one of my juggling clubs which Amelie had removed, and was using as a baseball bat in the living room, when I noticed that as parents, we're not so much breaking the mould, as allowing it to grow down the back of our headboard.

The wall behind our bed, which we'd so diligently and painstakingly watched my Dad decorate back in July, was well on its way to becoming a mushroom farm. I was tempted to bring in a pig to search for truffles. But instead, I waved Lisa off to Shoreham for the afternoon, and spent a couple of hours on my hands and knees with a bottle of mould cleaner. I ended up bleaching my socks and getting a sore throat, but by three-thirty the wall was green again. And not with mildew.

So having driven Amelie into West Sussex to pick up her Mum, the three of us went to B&Q and spent eighty quid on this dehumidifier. Which was quite an achievement. Having looked on the website, I couldn't find the one I wanted instore, so I asked a member of staff, who kindly attempted to look it up on the computer. She'd got as far as pressing two buttons when she turned to me and said "How do you spell dehumidifier? D...I..?"

Frankly it was a miracle we got it at all.