Hold onto your ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hats, it’s the Gardners at the top of Blackpool Tower!


Amelie’s fainted due to altitude sickness, vertigo and a general lack of biscuits. At that point, it was an hour since her last gingerbread man.

Anyhoo, the wind died down a bit yesterday and it stopped raining for about half an hour, so we decided the time was right to scale the heights of Blackpool Tower. Or ‘Blackpool Tower Eye’, as they’re now calling it for reasons which escape me.

If you’re not sure where Blackpool Tower is, here’s Amelie pointing it out whilst covered in strawberry ice cream...


Obviously that’s a lamppost, but it’s not good to tell children they’re wrong.

Fortunately her Daddy has a better sense of direction, so within minutes of parking in the town centre yesterday afternoon, we were joining a small queue of tourists and handing over £24 for two tickets to the top of the tower. Amelie gets in free until a fortnight on Sunday.

When I asked for the tickets, the lady on the till said “Is it just for the tower?”, which struck me as an odd question for someone on the ticket desk at Blackpool Tower to ask. I felt like saying “No, I’ll have two for the zoo as well”, but sarcasm doesn’t suit me. So we took our tickets, walked through the turnstile, and immediately saw signs to the ‘Blackpool Tower Circus’.

Anyway, if you think it’s embarrassing to be turned away from the doors of a circus, you should try heading upstairs with an excited toddler and being told that your tickets don’t cover entry to Jungle Jim’s Play Area either. It was like paying twelve quid to get into the Odeon and being told the films are extra. I was beginning to think they were going to charge us to use the lifts.

By the time we reached the entrance to the 4D cinema, I fully expected us to be barred from that too, but to my great surprise, I showed our apparently worthless tickets to the man on the gate, and he waved us through. And I have to say, the experience of that cinema made up for all the earlier rejection. Not least because I got to see Amelie wearing some 3D glasses...


It’s like Brains from Thunderbirds is doing his Roy Orbison impression.

When I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had no idea what a 4D cinema was, someone (I forget who) suggested that it's "when they have someone concealed within your chair, who feels you every now and then". And he wasn’t far wrong. In reality, you watch a five minute 3D film about Blackpool whilst being sprayed with water and covered in foam, while the floor shakes and smoke comes out of the walls. That might sound like something out of Guantanamo Bay, but it was actually very good. Even Amelie said it was “Great”. Although she got in for free, so she had no right to complain.

Having emerged from the fourth dimension, we then joined the queue for the lift to the top of the tower...


It wasn’t a long queue, admittedly. I think everyone else was in the circus or the play area.

Having gone up in the world with a young female lift operator who told us that they’ve had a lot of trouble recently with visitors touching up the tour guides, we emerged at the top of Blackpool Tower to the unbridled excitement of the Skywalk!


I don’t think Amelie knows the word ‘whatever’, but she’s managed to perfect the look.

Fortunately Lisa enjoyed it more...


And even I ventured out onto the glass...


I was determined not to look down. Not because I’m scared of heights, but because I was afraid I’d see Amelie lifting up her dress in public.

Anyhoo, family photos are all very well...


... but of all the pictures I took at the top of Blackpool Tower, my favourite was this one...


The red car in the centre of the car park at the bottom is my Skoda, and the white blob to the right of the lake at the top is our caravan. You can’t see all the speed cameras, but trust me, they’re there.

We made our way back down via the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, where we watched a beautiful old-fashioned tea dance accompanied by a bloke on a Wurlitzer which rose out of the stage, all in the most stunning of surroundings...


But not as stunning as my wife. So I chose to photograph her instead.

By this time, the guilt had set in, so we decided to throw caution to the wind, and pay the £5 a head required for Amelie to enter Jungle Jim’s Indoor Play Area. Unfortunately the gate was still manned by the woman who’d turned us away earlier, but swallowing my pride and hiding my embarrassment, I marched up to her with my wallet in my hand and confidently asked for some tickets. At which point she told me that they close at 4 o’clock. It was three fifty-five.

So we went to the amusements instead...


They're a lot cheaper, and you get to watch pensioners in wheelchairs playing bingo.

I was lighting the gas fire in the caravan this morning for a bit of post-hurricane defrosting, when Amelie said to me “Which dogs like lying in front of the fire?”. I began explaining to her that most dogs like warmth and security, and that they’re essentially pack animals with an inbuilt, centuries-old instinct to gather around a campfire with their family. At which point she shouted “Hotdogs!”. I thought she was thirsting for knowledge; in reality she was just telling me a joke.

So on that subject, what do you get if you cross Lisa’s birthday vouchers with her summer holiday?


I’m not saying she took a long time to choose those clothes, but some of us had time for a nap...


To be fair to Lisa though, I gave her those Next vouchers so that she could treat herself to a new outfit after eight weeks of housebondage, but having spent half an hour going wild in the aisles and crazy in the changing rooms, she eventually emerged with three dresses for Amelie and a Peppa Pig umbrella...


That photo’s for illustrative purposes only. In reality, we refused to let Amelie hold it for more than five seconds, for fear that she’d end up doing an involuntary Mary Poppins impression. She’s currently only allowed to open it indoors. Which might be unlucky, but as not as unlucky as watching her paragliding towards the Isle of Man on a force nine gale.

Anyhoo, as is probably obvious, yesterday was spent pottering around Blackpool, doing a bit of shopping and dodging the showers, whilst wishing we’d packed more jumpers. The road signs of Blackpool appear to be designed to direct visitors away from the main car parks and towards the nearest speed cameras. We’re only two miles from the town centre, and I think we passed eight. But having driven around in circles for half an hour, and seen the seedier side of town (including a shop called ‘Skirts 4 Flirts’), we eventually found the indoor shopping centre. Where we discovered the same toddler ride they have at the Brighton branch of Asda...


It was like a home from home. Only colder. And with more pound shops.

We returned to the caravan park through a massive downpour, which not only gave my car a much needed wash, but also produced this view from our front steps...


I thought I could see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it turned out to be another speed camera.

I’ve only been living in a caravan since 5pm yesterday, and I already feel like getting a couple of slaves. If only to act as a wind-break. The good news is that we’ve made it to Blackpool. The bad news is that if we step outside, we’re likely to end up in Oz.

We might be in the midst of a hurricane, but our journey up here was a breeze. We left an hour later than planned (obviously), but the roads were good and Amelie was better. Not only did she sit happily in the car, but I’ve never seen her so well-behaved at a service station. It was a Welcome Break from her normal behaviour.

We got to the Marton Mere Caravan Park just before five. We’re in a Prestige caravan, away from the riff-raff, and within view of the lake. So we’ll probably be flooded when the wind picks up. We’re thirty seconds walk from the on-site Spar shop, but a two minute drive from the 24-hour Tesco Extra, so I know where we’ll be shopping. In the middle of the night.

Having settled into our caravan, Amelie and I soon headed out into the gathering gloom to look for the toddler play area. As the sign on the left shows, we found it. Amelie suggested that it might have been "broken by a naughty child", but judging by the boot-sized hole that had been stamped into the base of the slide, I’d say it was down to a combination of alcohol and The Sun’s latest 'Holidays for a Fiver' deal.

The see-saw was a lot more fun though...


And even better were the indoor amusements. The last time we stayed at a Haven Holiday Park was at Burnham-on-Sea in May 2010, when Amelie virtually lived in the spinning teapots ride. Well the good news for her (and bad news for the person who has to pay £1 a go) is that there's one here too...


We're up north, so she was attempting some gurning.

I'm not sure it was such a good idea to tell Amelie about Blackpool Pleasure Beach yesterday. She woke up crying at 7:45am this morning, and when I went in and asked her what was wrong, she said:

"I dreamt that Mummy and Daddy went on a rollercoaster without me!"

I reassured her by telling her that that the only rollercoaster we're riding is life, and that we're all in that together, before adding that the only place we ever leave her is Asda. She seemed quite happy with that. Two minutes later she was unpacking the suitcase and getting out the iPad.

But that aside, we're all ready and raring to go. Chloe's at my Mum's, the suitcase is full of thermals, we've finished Stefan's second strudel (no, seriously) and most important of all, I've photocopied Amelie's birth certificate. Having checked out a few websites last night, it appears that Blackpool Zoo, Madame Tussauds and various other attractions are all free to the under-threes, but the moment you hit 36 months, you start paying through the nose. This time next month, Blackpool Zoo will charge her £9.70 just to look at the meerkats.

So with three weeks of legitimate freeloading still available to her, we're taking no chances. We bumped into an old friend of Lisa's near the hairdressers on Saturday, and she took one look at Amelie and asked us if she started school last week. I don't want to be having that conversation with a bloke on a turnstile.

So the paperwork's in order, the wind is blowing a gale, it's pouring with rain, and the weather forecast is poor. Blackpool, here we come!

When you've just had your hair cut, there's nothing better than posing for a photo with a few friends...


I am looking good. You'd never guess I'd trimmed it myself. As for Amelie, she might look as though she's being violently shaken by a crazed Canadian midget, but I can assure you she's not. In reality, the Canadian is of average height.

Anyhoo, I'm clearly a man of my word, so within hours of bumping into Stefan outside the Eye Hospital the Friday before last, I pulled my finger out and used it to type an e-mail, inviting him, Andrew and Nora around for dinner. They were kind (and hungry) enough to accept, and by 7 o'clock last night, I was bumping into Stefan again as I ran past him and said cheese before the self-timer went off.

It was a hastily arranged dinner date, and Lisa and Stefan have promised that given more time, they'll consult with each other in future to avoid clashing so hideously. But wardrobe malfunctions aside, the evening was a total success. Admittedly there was a slight issue with the pesto pasta dish that we so lovingly prepared for our guests, but I can't go into details because Lisa and I have sworn to take that secret to our graves. Which is likely to be sooner rather than later if we've given everyone food poisoning.

The good news is that we managed to extract some gifts from our guests before we killed them. Amelie was presented with a delightful book called 'A Bit Lost', which I'm sure has nothing to do with her recent experience in Asda, plus an audio-visual pirate book, an ornamental owl, a ladybird watering can and a solar powered light. Frankly I've seen people win less on The Generation Game. But Lisa and I received something far more valuable: two of Stefan's strudels.

It's a generally accepted fact that everyone remembers where they were when they first tasted one of Stefan's home-made strudels. Personally, I was dealing drugs on 18th August 2008. Which explains why I always had the munchies. We managed to eat the walnut, apple & cherry strudel between us all last night, meaning there's one now left in the fridge. Needless to say, it won't be there for long.

But despite having our mouths full at all times, we still managed to catch up on all the important news. Stefan and Andrew examined the sideboard that broke Lisa's teeth, I showed them my City & Guilds Diploma, and then Andrew told us how he was almost killed when a con-man fitted dodgy brakes to his car. I'm tempted to name and shame the mechanic involved, but apparently he's quite scary, and liable to beat you unconscious with a car jack and shove you in the crusher if you question his work. So, on balance, I've decided not to.

In addition to our mutual near-death experiences, Nora told us about the misery of not having a job, Stefan told us about the misery of having his, and Andrew explained the problems of getting foreign goods through customs without paying any tax. But the most amusing anecdote came from Stefan, who told us about the jaunty theme music that accompanied the weather forecasts on Hungarian state television when he was growing up in Slovakia...


He watched that for sixteen years, and he's only just found out it's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I trimmed my few remaining hairs with the electric clippers this morning, which is the kind of pointless task I like to do at the weekend, and Amelie walked in and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was cutting my hair, to which she replied "Was it getting in your eyes?".

I took that as a rhetorical question. Frankly, these days the only way I'd get hair in my eyes would be if I developed pupils under my nose. But Amelie is a different matter. For the past couple of weeks she's been experiencing the fringe benefits of looking through a hair curtain at all times, so with us due to leave for sunny Blackpool on Monday, we decided to get her a holiday haircut today.

We ended up at Tai Hair & Beauty, a classy establishment in Hove where they cut the fringes of society for a fiver. On the way, we stopped off at Hove Town Hall, where I cheerfully handed over £108 for the privilege of being allowed to park my car outside my own home for another year, so by the time we got to the hairdressers, I needed a stiff drink. And fortunately they provide them free of charge...


That's Amelie downing her first vodka & orange of the afternoon. So with the drinks drunk, it was time to get on with the styling...


That's Amelie half cut. After which, things took a serious turn...


But having sorted out the purple pony's bad hair day...


... Amelie was soon trimmed, combed and ready for Blackpool...


Although once she's got her 'Kiss Me Quick' hat on, you won't be able to see it.

When I got home from work yesterday, Amelie ran down the hallway to meet me, threw her arms around me and told me she loved me, before instantly ruining it by adding that she loves Mummy and Chloe lots. She then dragged me into the living room, where she told me to sit on the floor and help her with an iPad game. She was stuck on level 23 of Puzzle Escape. Which is two levels further than I've got.

Having settled ourselves on the carpet and started taming the beer-bellied bear (which isn't a euphemism), Amelie then turned to me with a serious look on her face, and said this:

"When I'm older, I want to be a Daddy, and go to work and come home again."

That's what I call dreaming the impossible dream. In twenty years time, sex changes might be commonplace, but there won't be any jobs around.

The difference between me and Lisa is that I can more or less fill a 4GB memory card without leaving the flat, whereas she can spend three hours at Monkey Bizness and come home with this...


It's Amelie going downhill fast. Which is something you can photograph pretty much any day of the week, usually by lunchtime.

After six weeks of pain-free walking, I thought my plantar fasciitis was on the way back this morning. From the moment I got up, I could feel a slight pricking sensation in the centre of my right heel every time I put my foot down. I tried to walk it off around the kitchen, but the discomfort continued, and within five minutes, I was convinced I was hopping down the path to another steroid injection.

At which point I took off my slipper and found a self-adhesive googly eye stuck to my sock. I know the podiatrist told me to keep an eye on it, but I'm not sure that's what he meant.

As it happens, Amelie and I made an 'Alien Mobile' at the weekend...


I saw the kit stuck to the front of a magazine, assumed it must be what E.T. used to phone home, and bought it in the hope of making intergalactic contact with intelligent life forms. It turned out to be a few bits of cardboard, foam and tinsel in a polythene bag. We made it on Saturday night, and it's been falling apart ever since. Partly because Amelie insists on taking it to bed with her. Other people get tied into a mobile contract, but Amelie wakes up every morning with no strings attached to hers.

So it wasn't a complete surprise to find an alien eyeing up my foot this morning. The good news, however, is that Amelie's been kept out of mischief today. Lisa took her to 'Monkey Bizness' this morning, a fine establishment in Lewes where they teach small children how to spell badly. At least, I assume they went. I'm actually writing this during my lunch break in a small ophthalmology room in West Sussex, where I'm dealing with the blind of Horsham. That's the rollerblind of Horsham Hospital. It's broken, so I'm typing this in semi-darkness.

Anyhoo, Amelie's never been there before, but a friend of Lisa's invited them along a couple of days ago. Apparently the exact words of her invitation were "Does Amelie like Monkey Bizness?". To which Lisa, who'd never heard of the place, replied "What's Monkey Bizness?".

Personally my answer would have been "Yes", regardless of whether I'd heard of it.

Amelie had a couple of friends over yesterday afternoon for a playdate...


Years from now, when we're asked by social workers, journalists, chat show hosts, investigative reporters, bounty hunters and high court judges, "When did you first realise that Amelie was different from the other children?", we can show them photos like that.

We can also quote them verbal examples. Halfway through the afternoon, the mother of Child H, on the left, said to him "Come here now or you'll get a smack."

To which Amelie responded, "I'd like a snack!"

That's what happens when you replace corporal punishment with bribery.

She might have the tattooed arms of a right-wing navvy, but I'm beginning to think Amelie's left-handed...


Obviously she lost it a bit in the last thirty seconds, but I think that was just the carpal tunnel setting in. I don't think Lisa and I could get that far with our left hands. And Lisa's left-handed.

But whilst I consider whether mancinism is a sign of the devil, I've had news from the more god-fearing, psychic side of the family. Lisa's Mum phoned us up last night, refused to speak to Lisa, and asked to talk to me. When I picked up the phone, she informed me in hushed tones that she'd had a dream on Friday night about one of Amelie's socks. I told her that sounded more like a nightmare, and entered the phrase 'Brighton care homes' into Google as she continued.

Amelie, it turns out, didn't appear in the dream, but her sock played such a central role, and the dream had been so vivid, that my mother-in-law woke up on Saturday morning convinced she'd had a vision. She then checked the morning paper and saw that a horse called 'Smarty Socks' was running in the 3:15 at Ascot.

The rest is obvious. Suffice it to say that we now have serious wealth in the family, the next series of 'Secret Millionaire' is in the bag, and Lisa's expecting the kind of inheritance that would make Paris Hilton look underprivileged. Or she would be if her Mum had put more than two quid on the thing. That horse might have romped home, but all she can treat us to is a packet of crisps and a Kit-Kat. I told her to phone me before the race next time.

It's almost eight weeks now since Lisa imposed an international news blackout on photos of her face. To be honest, there was very little point. She had nothing to smile about, so no one would have noticed anything wrong. But with her temporary teeth now firmly in place (Fixodent works wonders), we can resume the family photos...


Ignoring the fact that I have the healthy glow of a radiation victim, I'm slightly concerned that my daughter's dress appears to be exactly the same height as my wife's. Give it ten years, and I'll be grounding her for an outfit like that.

But hemlines aside, that photo was taken yesterday morning in my parents' garden in St Leonards. My brother was invited to a barbecue on Saturday, and his wife and daughter were so reluctant to attend that they decided to spend the day in another county, rather than risk being dragged along. So while he was forcing down an undercooked burger, they decided to visit my parents. And we decided to visit them.

We arrived in St Leonards late morning to find that they weren't there. My Mum told me they'd "gone to Battle" which made my sister-in-law sound far more aggressive than she is. In reality, they were just fighting their way to the nearest abbey. So having played a bit of swingball and posed for a few photos, I drove off down the road to pick them up. The journey back to my parents' house took fifteen minutes. Fourteen of which were spent discussing the loss of Amelie in Asda. We hadn't told them about it - they'd read it on my blog.

By lunchtime I'd convinced them not to report us to social services, and we settled down for a lovely afternoon of eating, chatting, and letting Amelie bother her cousin. Sadly for us, but luckily for my niece, who values her iPod and would prefer not to be locked out of it by a meddling toddler, we had to leave at four-thirty to get back to Brighton for another important event: the resumption of Lisa's stand-up career. Yes, after eight weeks of teeth-imposed hermitage, Lisa was due to speak at her first AA meeting since early July. And she opened with one of her best lines yet:

"I've been through a lot in the past two months. Firstly, a glass cabinet..."

I wish I'd thought of that one.

Amelie's spent the past half hour playing Dress Up Daddy on the iPad, and then e-mailing me the results. So for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know me personally, this is what I look like...


To be honest, I rarely wear green with my tight white trousers, and my Skoda's more filthy grey than black, but at least she's got my figure right. She told me the picture wasn't finished until she'd added the pliers, so I think she's confusing me with Lisa's dentist.

I spent an hour this afternoon in the doctors' mess at the Sussex Eye Hospital, listening to a debate about Norrie Disease, a rare genetic disorder which is carried only by women, and affects only their sons. It causes baby boys to suffer retinal detachments within the first few months of life, followed by cataracts in early childhood, the wasting away of the iris, inevitable blindness, possible deafness, plus mental retardation with a high chance of psychosis.

It made me think that I need to be a bit more thankful for Amelie. And not lose her so easily in supermarkets. The fact that she has so much to sing about on a daily basis is something we should never take for granted. So with that in mind...


I can't believe you can still see those tattoos. At this rate I'll have to book her in for laser surgery.

But that aside, my best guess is that Amelie's first song was this little number from '3rd & Bird', although she's clearly given it her own unique twist, and come up with something dangerously close to jazz. The way she sings "skipper dipper dipper", it's like she's using Chloe to put the cat back into scat-singing.

In addition to prizing Amelie's health, vitality and musical talents, I also need to value my friends more. I bumped into my good pal Stefan outside the Eye Hospital at lunchtime today. I haven't seen him since the end of February because he lives far, far away, right over the other side of the town centre. It would take at least five minutes to get there on a bus. So having hugged him with a guilty conscience, and spent a few minutes catching up when we both should have been at work, I've resolved to pull my finger out and invite him round for dinner ASAP.

I just need to go on holiday first...

When your wife's lost her teeth in an accident, and you've just lost your daughter in Asda, what you really need to cheer you up is a visit from the sweet tooth fairy. And sure enough, in a surprising change of fortune, we were lucky enough to receive a parcel from the angels at Concrete Cow Confectionery yesterday. As well as sweets for Lisa to get her new teeth into, it contained gingerbread men for Amelie and some peanut butter fudge for me. They're probably hoping I've got a nut allergy.

So a big thank you to CCC for ruining my diet yet again. Having stuffed myself at The Well last week, I've only got a week and a half to lose weight before our next holiday. I'm never going to fit into a bikini at this rate. We'd intended to space out our holidays a little better than this, but our break in Wiltshire was postponed by a month for dental reasons, and our September summer holiday was already booked, so I feel like I'm going away more than Judith Chalmers.

I was chatting to a patient today who's seven months pregnant and has a two-and-a-half-year-old son. She told me they're flying to Hawaii this month, which is worrying. Not for her, but for me. I can't even take Amelie upstairs at Asda without feeling stressed, so how other parents cope for twelve hours at thirty thousand feet, I've no idea.

Needless to say, we're not going on a plane. We've actually booked a week in Blackpool. Tomorrow they turn on the illuminations, but today's the day that Blackpool Tower finally reopened to the public after a ten-month restoration programme costing twenty million pounds. So it appears that we've timed our trip to perfection. In reality, we didn't even know it was closed.

It's worked out pretty well though. As of today, they have a skywalk at the top of the tower with a glass floor and walls, plus a 4D cinema (whatever that is) and a dungeon for Amelie. It's all part of a drive to encourage families back to the town. As a spokesman said at the reopening this morning, "It is a huge moment for Blackpool". They'll be saying the same when we arrive on the twelfth.