All good things must come to an end, and sure enough, Amelie returned home yesterday morning. She had a swimming lesson in the afternoon, which began far from swimmingly when they accidentally put her in the wrong group and tried to get her to jump into the pool without armbands, but fortunately we've raised her to be argumentative and disrespectful of authority, so she refused and burst into tears. Which is probably preferable to sinking like a stone in the deep end.

She was fine about five minutes later, but I didn't want to take any chances, so when she arrived back home, I forced her to undergo an intensive course of art therapy in an effort to help her over the trauma. It basically involved us sitting at the table for an hour, drawing whatever sprang to her mind, which in this case was a scene from the mythical kingdom of 'Horse Land'. I drew it to resemble Newmarket.

Having impersonated Squiglet just long enough to intimidate Toby, I told Amelie to draw something on her own while I went to do the washing up. Ten minutes later, and with my arms deep in Fairy Liquid, she presented me with this...


Now, I'm not saying we've got a child genius on our hands (although I will if you ask me), but she's drawn all the colours of the rainbow in the right order. And I know Lisa didn't help her, because she was locked in the bedroom at the time, eating Monster Munch in an attempt to avoid doing the ironing. Admittedly, the violet's been replaced with a violent shading of pencil (or possibly the pansy at the bottom), but other than that, Amelie's got them all spot on. And she's captured her own suitably smug grin.

The important thing is that she's displaying the right combination of artistic flair and intellectual ability to get her onto an Art History course at St Andrews alongside William & Kate's future son. She might have to take a few gap years first, but give it thirty years, and I should be the King's father-in-law.