As the intermittent blogging might suggest, the last few days have been a bit of a struggle. Since the weekend, my dodgy throat has become a heavy cold, and whilst I've made a return to work, doing so has been like wading through treacle with a bag of rocks on my back. By 5pm I feel older than most of my patients.

But while I've spent the week slowly dying in hospital, Lisa's had a visit from an old friend, who brought us an array of gifts on Monday, including a personalised chocolate advent calendar (her daughter works in Thorntons), some baby clothes for Toby, and a couple of books by the nation's two leading authors.

The first is by Julia Donaldson, the current Children's Laureate and best-selling author of The Gruffalo. And the second is by Peter Andre. It's called 'A New Day at School', and as the blurb says, "Peter Andre is a singer-songwriter, TV Presenter & personality and businessman. Out of all these roles, he feels his most rewarding job is being a dad". Especially if he gets paid for writing rubbish. I read it to Amelie last night, and frankly the man should have stopped after Insania.

But fortunately I'm not the book's target audience, and Amelie seemed to love it. She's always been a Mysterious Girl. So hats off to you, Mr Andre, you've got another hit on your hands. I'd also highly recommend reading the reviews on Amazon. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments there.

On the subject of high quality writing, we had a letter from Amelie's nursery yesterday about her Christmas Concert in December. It says this:

There using all there skills to teach our daughter spelling, which is very reassuring. I'm also impressed by the way they're highlighting the effects of global warming by naming rabbits as a winter creature.

Lisa's currently scouring the internet for a costume, and doing her best to ignore Amelie's request to go as a pony. We're tempted to buy a bit of net curtain and call her a Snow Princess, but as things stand right now, it's between a Christmas Tree and an Angel. Amelie favours the latter, but I'm worried the role of an angel might be too much of a stretch for her.