I don't want to count my chickens...


... but I think there's every chance we can persuade Z to look after Amelie full time. And judging by the way Amelie burst into tears and started sobbing that she wanted to stay longer as we forcibly dragged her towards the car, I don't think she'll need much convincing either.

Anyhoo, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that we didn't have a lovely time in Suffolk. But the good news is that we had a very nice time in Norfolk. Which is what happens when you don't realise what county your friend lives in. As it turns out, Z and the Sage reside in Norfolk, but close enough to the border that if the socialists of Suffolk ever erect a wall to keep out the Diss respectful, their house will be the equivalent of Checkpoint Charlie.

Since Thursday afternoon, Lisa, Amelie, Toby and I have been staying here...


... whilst hoping they wouldn't notice that I'd driven my car into their hedge. The Zedary is actually a gorgeous Tudor house which dates back more than four hundred years to a time that even Lisa can't remember. It's all oak beams, low doorways and hidden staircases, built by people without access to spirit levels. And it's been furnished by the Antiques Roadshow. It's the kind of place where Amelie could do five grand's worth of damage with just one performance of Gangnam Style.

But despite our potential to wreck both their house and their lives, we were welcomed warmly into their home, and provided with some top quality cooking. To be honest, Z's home-cooked food was one of our main motivations for going, and we weren't disappointed. Having dined on steak that first evening, we woke up on Friday to a breakfast of bacon, sausages, tomatoes, and the freshest eggs known to man...


Amelie personally retrieved those from the hen house. Which is currently a large greenhouse, occupied by about three dozen bantams. In addition to those, Z and the Sage are fostering a friend's dog at the moment, and they also have a cat...


Just look at those fearsome teeth. I can't believe the dentist said I've got receding gums.

Anyhoo, I'm not saying our friends are competitive, but whilst Stefan & Andrew have a lot of leopard-print cushions, Z's got a stuffed leopard. So that's one-nil to her. I was also treated to a demonstration of their coin-operated antique music box, which is the size of a grandfather clock, and plays The Blue Danube from a metal disc that looks like a holy cymbal. That was shortly after hearing a one-hundred-year-old record on the gramophone, and seeing the Sage's first ever pay packet, which had been framed by his mother in the 1950s.

To be honest, you could spend an entire fortnight getting lost in all the interesting curiosities and their accompanying stories that are contained within the house, but if you're Lisa, you can just get lost within the house. Even after two nights there, she still needed me to guide her towards the bedroom, and this morning she walked into the porch thinking it was the kitchen. As for the back stairs, she never worked out where they went, and assumed that Amelie's ability to walk out of one door and back through another was primarily down to witchcraft.

Anyhoo, people who say the East Anglian landscape is flat and featureless, don't know what they're talking about...


It's actually surprisingly lumpy. Amelie and I accompanied Z on her morning dog-wrangling adventure yesterday, and it was like walking on a field made from one of Lisa's sauces. The details of that little outing are far better related on Z's blog, but to prove she's not making it up, here's a photo of Ben doing a bit of Swan Upping...


By some miracle, we managed to get our party back home with only minor water damage to the dog and a mild case of cholera for Z, but that wasn't the only miracle we encountered...


There's a cow beyond that bridge who appears to be walking on water. I know the cream always rises to the top, but surely that's a bridge too far.

Anyhoo, with dogs walked and eggs collected, I gathered up my family and headed to the big smoke of Norwich for the afternoon. We'd failed to fit Toby's buggy into the car for this trip, so it meant me strapping him up in the simulated pregnancy suit...


That photo comes courtesy of the Mothercare security camera. Which was being operated by Amelie on this occasion.

We spent an enjoyable afternoon strolling around Norwich city centre while I developed a bad back and severe shoulder injuries, after which we returned to the Zedary for another gourmet feast, this time of salmon kedgeree and a baked lemon dessert. I was tempted to ask for both recipes, but it might just be easier to go back on a monthly basis.

If they'll have us, that is. Amelie and I managed to set off the burglar alarm this morning whilst searching for one of Toby's spoons, so having got our hosts out of bed earlier than expected, and risked a visit from the police, we decided to make a swift getaway. After we'd had third helpings of breakfast. Amelie had been remarkably well-behaved in Z's company, which was company she clearly enjoyed far more than our own. She made a point of abandoning us at every opportunity, so that she could go and chat to Z. But once back in the car with her parents, it was naturally a different story.

We drove back down to Brighton this afternoon, with our daughter playing up in the back seat. And out of the back seat. At 70mph. Lisa told her quite firmly that if she doesn't sit still and keep her seatbelt on, she'll end up being killed. And added that "Once you're dead, there's no coming back".

Unfortunately Amelie's got an answer for everything. She looked Lisa in the eye and replied, "But Jesus will bring me back to life".

Though not if he's got any sense.

As it transpires, Churchill's generosity is even greater than I realised, and matched only by their levels of incompetence. We received a letter in yesterday's post, explaining the cheque we received the day before, and according to that statement, the settlement was for a hundred pounds more than they'd sent us. But they'd knocked off the £100 excess before paying us out.

Unfortunately for them, I paid that money up front (as they told me I had to) and what's more, I have the blog post to prove it. So I gave them a call yesterday afternoon, and having put me on hold while she checked their payment records, Mrs Churchill came back full of apologies, and confirmed that yes, I'd already paid it. So they're sending us another cheque. It's a good job I checked the letter; Lisa almost threw it in the bin.

To be honest, I need all the money I can get. I took the entire family to the dentist yesterday. Toby's already got one razor-sharp tooth, so he's on the verge of costing me a fortune. Luckily, we all got a clean bill of health (and a low bill of money), although he's concerned about my receding gums, and asked if the condition runs in my family. I told him my mother's Esther Rantzen, so he shrugged and said that's life.

Anyhoo, as committed stalkers might remember (because I clearly don't), in May of last year, when Lisa was seven months pregnant with Toby, and we had a handful of kittens in the house, I took two days annual leave so that we could go to a party in Suffolk. Unfortunately, despite arranging it months in advance, we ended up double-booked. Unbeknownst to us, we already had a date with disaster. The event coincided with Amelie throwing up, and then Lisa throwing up, and by the time I'd scrubbed vomit out of the carpet, I wasn't in the mood to party.

As a result, we never got the chance to meet the lovely Z or her blogging house-guests. But the good news is that these events can always be rescheduled. And it only takes ten months. Z and the Sage have been kind enough to invite us to stay for a night or two (although we've packed enough stuff for a fortnight), so we're leaving shortly for the wilds of East Anglia. If we're never heard from again, you can send the police here. And tell them to dust the Aga for fingerprints.

Well, it's taken two months and a lot of phone calls, but I think we've finally won the war with Churchill. There have been times this year when I've thought Hitler would have been more benevolent, but after waging the battle of Britain with our insurance company over some flood damaged keepsakes, we appear to have cleaned up. Although you can still see the water stains on the ceiling.

The important thing is that we've done something funny for money, and Churchill have paid up. Of course, in this case it's more funny peculiar than funny ha-ha, but the weeks we spent running up our phone bill, digging out receipts, taking lots of photos and compiling many lists have resulted in a settlement which makes it all seem worth it. I think. Obviously we have to knock off the hundred pounds excess we've already paid, plus the cost of the phone calls, and the numerous hours of labour (which I charge at the same rate as a plumber), but I think we're still ahead. As long as we don't have to pay for a counsellor to get over it all.

Churchill had already sent us a new vacuum cleaner (which sucks) to replace the one in the cupboard which bore the brunt of the downpour, plus a new food processor, so that we don't have to take the risk of our old one blowing up due to water-damaged electrics and sending razor-sharp chopping blades spinning across the kitchen. They'd also promised to reimburse me for the cost of replacing my ruined videos with DVDs. That cheque took weeks to arrive, but finally fell through our letterbox last week.

It wasn't enough to set the world alight (or even cover our heating bill), and we were still waiting to hear about the rest of our claim, but out of the blue, we received another cheque in yesterday's post, for an amount which is more than I'd hoped for. Even in total, the payout doesn't make it into four figures, so I don't think I'll be retiring just yet, but it's enough to make me glad we went through all that hassle. Which is not something I thought I'd say a few weeks ago.

On receiving an unexpected windfall, most people would buy a designer outfit and take the kids to Disneyworld. Unfortunately we're operating on a tighter budget here. Lisa's heading into town this morning to buy Amelie a new pair of shoes, and I'm booking us tickets for Peppa Pig World. It's a lot like Florida, only nearer Southampton. Let the good times roll!

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.

Surprisingly for someone who likes to bring up pretty much everything he eats, Toby looked a little apprehensive as we left for The Swallow's Return yesterday lunchtime...


To be honest, I think he was less concerned by the vomit-themed restaurant we'd chosen, and more worried about the fact that we'd dressed him in the same outfit he wore last time we went out. Unfortunately, due to his ever burgeoning appetite and the fact that he has the ample thighs and bingo wings of a morbidly obese American, it's actually the only ensemble that fits him. We had to make an emergency dash to High & Mighty on the way home.

At the time, I thought that picture of Lisa was the most gorgeous photo I'd take all day, but as it transpired, I was wrong...


That's Tilly, the cat formerly known as Bad Eye, who looked like this before we farmed her out to a better neighbourhood...

They grow up so fast. It seems like only yesterday I was scrubbing her poo out of the carpet and trying to stop Amelie from smothering her with love. In a literal, and fatal, sense.

She's now matured into the kind of cat that can jump up onto high kitchen units to steal your food, and cause hundreds of pounds worth of damage to your home. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but she fell from grace pretty quickly. She's cost them a fortune in repair bills and turned their home life upside down. Truly she's her mother's daughter.

H wouldn't be without her though...



As she posed for that photo, I commented that Tilly's clearly quite happy to be held. To which H responded "No, I've just got her by the neck".

Anyhoo, catching up with Tilly was only half the reason for visiting H and her husband in Worthing yesterday. The other half was to eat a meal without Amelie insisting on sharing my pudding. So having enjoyed our feline meet and greet, we headed off down the road to The Swallow's Return, which looked less like a vomitorium, and more like a garden centre...


Not only is it housed in an old farm building, but it's situated in a field, and has the clientele of a Saga holiday. The only thing keeping the average age below ninety was the presence of Toby. I also felt slightly misled, as I'd been told it was a pub, when it's far more like a restaurant. I was expecting the 'two meals for £7.95' deal of The Jacob's Post in Burgess Hill. What I got was a wild boar burger for £10.95.

When he booked the table, H's husband had requested a highchair (for Toby, not himself), but the one they presented us with was so highly varnished that it might as well as have been coated in Teflon. Despite strapping him in securely, Toby was sliding about so much he couldn't stay vertical for more than ten seconds (he's so like his mother), and we soon gave up and stuck him under the table in his car seat. He started crying after twenty minutes, but we'd forgotten he was there, and assumed it was someone else's child.

To be honest, he wasn't the only one crying within the first half hour. They took so long to take our order, I could have wept. Admittedly, they had a bit of a pensioner rush on, but it was thirty minutes before we even got our drinks, and longer before we were allowed to order food. By the time it arrived, we were on the verge of an evening meal, and I understood why they'd chosen the name Swallow rather than Swift Return.

Admittedly, my Wild Boar & Chorizo Burger was very nice, but the portion could have been bigger, and the waitress removed our rack of sauces halfway through and gave it to another table, just as I was about to dip in. The meal was redeemed by the expensive desserts, which were very nice, and featured so much cream that I came close to fulfilling the name of the restaurant, but overall I felt disappointed. Although on the plus side, the painfully slow service meant that the forty quid I spent worked out at a reasonable hourly rate.

It also gave H plenty of time to bond with Toby...



He was about to slap her in the face for tickling him too much, but other than that, they're good friends.

Amelie's in St Leonards today, being forcibly babysat to allow me and Lisa a bit of adult social time. Unfortunately word has reached us that she's currently speeding back along the coast with her feet off the pedals...


She's likely to be delayed by every ice cream kiosk between Hastings and Brighton, but even so, it means we have, at best, three hours to head away from her in the other direction, and meet our favourite Worthing-based couple for lunch. Not this couple. But this one. We want to know how our third granddaughter's getting on. Although H's husband is going to be there too.

We've got a table booked for 1 o'clock at The Swallow's Return. Or The Gag Reflex, as I like to call it. It's the only pub I know which is named after the act of vomiting. But I'm sure the food's very nice. Assuming you can keep it down...

I spent today doing a set of mandatory NHS training courses designed to help me avoid hospital infections, fire deaths, fatal accidents and lawsuits, the highlight of which was the trainer who appeared to be wearing the Pope's red shoes. I presume Benedict must have put them on eBay.

But that aside, I'd just like to log the fact that I've branched out into tree photography...


Careful observers might twig that there's something missing there. It's where we get the word 'truncated'.

I actually took that photo on Sunday, but sub-zero temperatures froze my brain and I forgot about it for five days. The playground where Amelie and I chilled out with some cold food is next door to the primary school we hope she won't be starting at in September. They're divided by a chain link fence which is topped with barbed wire to deter any child who might feel tempted by the sight of fun. And attached to the fence is that tree. Or the remains thereof.

I don't know how long the fence has been there, but it's clearly long enough for a sapling to have grown up next to it, and actually begin to swallow it up. Which, to an untrained botanist like myself, seems quite remarkable. I might be called Gardner, but I didn't know trees could do that.

The tree has now been felled, but three of the branches were fused so successfully with the fence, that they've had to leave them suspended in place...


That's a bit of evidence from special branch, and this is the captain's log...


Now that I know trees possess the ability to absorb metal, my mind's spinning with the possibilities. I only need to plant an acorn next to a girder, and I'll have steel-reinforced timber for the world's strongest log cabins. Dragon's Den, here I come.

It's Snow White & the Seven Month Old Dwarf!


Technically he won't be seven months until February 30th, but we can't wait until then, so we're celebrating the milestone today. He's been in turns Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Dopey and Bashful, and he's currently got a cold, so he's constantly Sneezy and requires a Doc. Although we're making do with Calpol.

As for Amelie, she's the fairest of them all. As long as she gets her own way. Otherwise she becomes quite unreasonable.

With hindsight, if you clean the entire kitchen on Saturday, it's probably not a good idea to put up three shelves on the Sunday. By teatime, the room was so covered in brick dust that I had to clean the whole place again.

But despite spending the first part of Sunday afternoon studying the effects of sub-zero temperatures on the human body, by a quarter to four, I'd turned up the heat on my DIY endeavours, and successfully fitted my shelves...


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that clock's about two inches too far to the left. But that's where you're wrong. That clock is dead centre. It's the cupboards which are in the wrong place.

When I moved in, the cupboard on the right was already there, and I put the clock directly above the sink. Unfortunately I then fitted the new cupboard on the left, which was a slightly different width, and made the clock look out of place. Obviously I could move it, but that would require a small amount of effort on my part, and I can't be bothered. So I'm fighting the demons of OCD by leaving it where it is. Although it looks even worse now the shelf's up.

I should also point out that despite Amelie's constant assertion that the new shelves are pink, they're actually Warm Terracotta, and contrary to first impressions, we're not living in Barbara Cartland's old gaff.

Anyhoo, as previously stated, my main aim with these shelves is to test the flame-retardant properties of Dulux by positioning a prime piece of firewood above the gas cooker. And here it is, in all its warm (soon to be smoking) terracotta glory...


Lisa likes to broil sausages at a high heat, so there's every chance a fat-fuelled flame could shoot out of that grill at any moment and ignite the whole kitchen. Fortunately the shelf's designed to hold 25kg, so I could keep three buckets of water up there. Or use it as a naughty step for Amelie.

On the downside, there's every chance I've weakened the structure of the entire building. Anyone with the eagle eyes of a property surveyor will notice that the wall above the shelf appears to have been attacked by a vicious new strain of concrete worm which has left it with the structure of Swiss cheese. In reality, however, the worm that turned that wailing wall holier than thou was none other than me.

There are certain parts of this flat which have always proved impossible to drill into. Which explains why our curtain rails are always falling down. I'd previously thought it was only the external walls which are inlaid with diamond-studded kryptonite, but it seems that the upper wall of our larder is also made of reinforced steel. Which is reassuring, as it means that in the event of a bomb blast, our croissants should be safe.

I'd already drilled the lower hole for my shelf bracket at the desired height with no problems whatsoever, but when it came to drilling the corresponding top hole, I hit a brick wall. Only harder. Despite having the bit between my teeth (which is probably a bit unsafe), the drill wouldn't go more than a centimetre in. So I went a bit lower. And a bit lower still. And then down, and down again. By the time I'd cleared the solid granite, I had four redundant holes, and a shelf that was practically in the grill pan.

But still, what's the worst that could happen? I might have made the building structurally unsound, but we're all going up in flames anyway.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Phil, with the weather turning arctic, temperatures below zero, a wind chill of minus ten and a very real risk of both hypothermia and frostbite for anyone foolish enough to venture outside, where's the best place in Brighton for a picnic?"

Well it's funny you should ask. Personally, I like to wait for a light snow flurry, and then head a few hundred yards along the road in a biting north wind, before sitting down at a rusty metal table next to an empty can of Tennent's Super to enjoy some Marmite sandwiches in the shadow of a council tower block...



That's not a smile, it's a grimace of pain. And my face was frozen like that for an hour. Frankly the only thing balmy about me in that photo are the smudges of 'Warm Terracotta' paint on my hands.

Having dried my pine shelves overnight, I let Amelie loose on them first thing yesterday morning. I needed to touch up the edges and paint the brackets, and she's the most promising artist in the family. She can also spot a mini roller from twenty paces, and refused to let me do it alone. So having carefully explained to her how to paint wooden furniture without getting any on her clothes, we completed the job, and I put her pyjamas into soak before Lisa got back from church and saw the streaks of emulsion down her sleeves.

While we waited for everything to dry (including the laundry), I told Amelie I'd get our lunch and then take her to the park. Which was the first of my many mistakes. Having heard the words 'lunch' and 'park', she insisted we combine the two and have a picnic. I did explain to her that I could see snow through the iced-up windows, and that not even Eskimos would eat out in this weather, but the thing about Amelie is that she rarely listens to a word I say. And when she does, she generally decides I'm wrong.

In addition to that, the clinical photographer who bumped into me and Amelie in Asda after work last Wednesday, and found us carrying two pints of milk and a boxed set of Snakes & Ladders, will testify to the fact that I'm a soft touch, and give in to my daughter far too readily.

As a result, I found myself wrapping sandwiches in foil yesterday lunchtime. Although I felt more inclined to wrap myself in it as a form of impromptu space blanket. To say it was cold out would be like describing Death Valley as a bit mild. But undeterred, Amelie and I made it down the road to the bleak wasteland of the park, which was (oddly, in Amelie's opinion) completely deserted for the entirety of our stay, allowing us to enjoy our picnic in the peace and quiet of a Siberian crosswind as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

Despite losing the use of at least eight fingers due to frostbite, we followed our meal with a bit of after-dinner activity in an effort to restore some circulation. Amelie asked me to film her speeding downhill towards the open road on her scooter, so I considered her request and said yes. I was hoping to shoot something like this...


... but I struggled to keep up with my subject, and ultimately the lack of a Christ the Redeemer statue as a backdrop let down the production values, and I ended up with this...


I was hoping she'd hit a mogul at the bottom and vault over both the fence and the passing car like Evel Knievel in a bobble hat, but tragically she just ploughed into the grass and fell off. Not that I'd have filmed it if she had. I was so far behind, I'd have missed the whole thing. To me, stunt videos are a lot like DIY: best left to someone else.

You meet a lot of cowboys in this line of work...


Some of whom are wearing spotty pyjamas under their red plaid and cowhide. You probably think I've cropped the gun from her left hand out of repsect for Oscar Pistorius, but in reality she was merely waving across our one-horse town in a slightly camp manner towards Boss Hogg and Daisy from The Dukes of Hazzard...


To be honest, I'm considering hiding my camera when I go to work. I think it just tempts Lisa to dress up the children in ever more ridiculous ways. Both those photos were taken on Friday, shortly after the postman arrived with the cowgirl outfit that Lisa had bought online for a fiver without telling me. By the time I got home, Amelie had learnt to say "Yee-ha!" and was trying to lasso me as I walked down the hallway.

Anyhoo, the trouble with weekends is that they're far more exhausting than work. Since 5pm on Friday, I've barely paused for breath. I hadn't even changed out of my work clothes when I found myself trapped in the kitchen, being forced to make Princess Butterfly Cakes with Amelie...


We made ten in total. Six of which had been eaten by the time I turned on my camera. The other four were gone before the flash recharged.

Having cooked up a storm on Friday, I spent Saturday repairing the storm damage. The kitchen hasn't had a thorough clean since Toby was born (he's not as helpful around the house as I anticipated), and we're rapidly running out of storage space (again), so while Lisa caught up on some lost sleep, I attempted to make the oven clean enough to eat your dinner off.

I paused halfway through to join a modern art collective, and contribute at least 50% of the creative input that went into this original masterwork...


We produced two others on a similar theme, but in comparison they were disappointing. The ears went a bit wrong, and they didn't have flower tattoos.

With the kitchen scrubbed from top to bottom (excluding the ceiling and floor), I took some sage advice from Lisa and threw out all our expired herbs, after which Lisa took Amelie swimming, while I escorted Toby to B&Q for some shelving. It seemed like the more manly thing to do with my son. We bought five pine shelves, then drove to the swimming pool to meet the girls. Toby found his sister's water-based exploits quite amusing, which is not altogether surprising. The girl swims like a fish. And then sinks like a tin of tuna.

From the pool, we drove straight to Asda to do the weekly shop while Amelie went wild in the aisles and did her best to get us thrown out. By the time we got home, it was bedtime for the under-fives and breakdown time for the rest of us. But like a legless man with a burglar, I don't know when to stop. So having put the shopping away, I dug out the leftover paint that we used to decorate the kitchen, and painted three of my new pine shelves. They'll be going up this afternoon. Possibly in smoke, as I'm hoping to put one above the cooker.

The problem with strapping Toby into his new highchair is that it turns him into a sitting duck. And sooner or later, ducks get shot. If not with guns, then with cameras...


I came home from Burgess Hill yesterday to find that photo on my memory card. The glasses belong to my mother-in-law, the photography's by Lisa, but I'm sensing that the styling was all down to Amelie. He looks like Edna Mode from The Incredibles.

Or he will do once his sister gets her hands on a wig.

Anyhoo, Burgess Hill is fast becoming my favourite place to do a clinic. Which is a shame, as I'm only working there one more time before December. I enjoyed another thrifty lunchtime special at the Jacob's Post pub yesterday, whilst chatting to the people's favourite for election to the town council in 2015. He offered me the chance to interview Chas from Chas & Dave for the BHU website (he's got far bigger fish to fry himself), but having considered the offer, I felt I lacked both the shorthand skills and the necessary bugging equipment, and besides, I'm holding out for Renée from Renée & Renato.

Unfortunately, while I was breezing through the day with a spring in my step, a song in my heart, and some cheap chicken tikka masala in my stomach (I'm back on the diet tomorrow), it seems I was being observed from afar with the kind of bare-faced ageism I thought had died with Jimmy Savile.

Word reached me this afternoon that a patient at Burgess Hill had told my colleague who was there today that it was nice to see a young man doing the job. When he replied that he's not really that young, she told him she'd been at the health centre for another reason yesterday, and there was a "much older man" doing it then.

The sad thing is that we're supposed to be saving sight, but she's clearly as blind as a bat.

Just to prove what I said about clothing, here's a photo of me in my dressing gown...


Amelie took that yesterday morning. Toby was slapping the table in the hope of summoning a waitress, and I was posing next to the new highchair I'd just spent twenty minutes trying to assemble. I think her composition was an attempt to avoid the issue of red-eye.

The chair itself is actually very low, but it attaches to any standard seat, stool or misericord via the use of some supposedly adjustable straps which take about ten minutes to tighten. We did have a dedicated highchair when Amelie was little...


... but they don't make plastic like they used to, and it was already secondhand when we got it, so by the time Amelie had eaten her way through toddlerhood, it was only good for the bin.

So we've invested in the new piece of kit above, which arrived in the post on Tuesday. I've been teaching Amelie to use my old camera recently, and aside from lowering it too quickly after pressing the button and cutting off people's foreheads, she's doing remarkably well. Here she is capturing the momentous occasion of Toby's first breakfast in his highchair...


And here's the resulting photo...


With multiple cameras going off at once, the next stage is to turn these shots into bullet time. We should have The Matrix 4 completed by the end of the week.

Eagle-eyed observers with a fine attention to detail may have noticed that in the family portrait I published yesterday, all four of us were dressed. That's a surprisingly rare occurrence in this house. At any given time, there are usually at least two of us in romper suits and pyjamas. And sometimes we don't get the kids dressed either. I'd like to claim that the reason for our mutual garb-fest was to pose for a nice photo, but in reality it takes a lot more than that to get us clothed at the weekend.

We were actually waiting for a visit from these characters...


That's my sister-in-law being closely watched by Big Brother. It's like 1984. They're both wearing leg-warmers under the table.

My brother and his family are currently holidaying in the party capital of the south: Etchingham. According to Wikipedia, it's famous for having the second largest series of misericords in the county. Which is impressive until you find out what a misericord is, and then realise I said county, not country. With that kind of holiday destination, the first thing you want to do is leave, and sure enough, they decided to spend the second day of their stay with us here in Brighton.

Amelie had been looking forward to the visit all week, not because she likes her aunt and uncle, but because she idolises her cousin. In the days leading up to Sunday, Lisa and I were treated to an ongoing series of announcements regarding all the things she was going to do when her cousin came to visit, including drawing, dancing and playing Cowgirls. Which is basically Gangnam Style without music. I haven't seen anyone so excited to meet a 13-year-old girl since Jimmy Savile died.

Unfortunately, the reality was a bit different...


Amelie talks the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk, she sits down on the sofa with her iPad. It was a good hour before she stopped giving her cousin the cold shoulder.

Fortunately her brother's a lot more engaging...


Although it's a fine line between engaging and intimidating. His kind of eye contact is verging on a poke.

Anyhoo, seeing my brother and his family is a lot like Christmas coming early. Or a couple of months late. When we saw them at my parents' house in December, they claimed they had bought us gifts, but they'd conveniently left them at home. I think it was just a ploy to allow them to go shopping in the sales, but fortunately good things come to those who wait, and sooner or later, Amelie will get her hands on a chocolate Gruffalo...

You can see the Gruffalo's "terrible teeth" there, which are caused by severe tooth decay from all the sugar.

In addition to that, Amelie received a Snow White costume, which allows us to complete the fairytale we started last July with the arrival of Grumpy the Dwarf. As for me and Lisa, we received a 'Segway Experience Day', which lets you spend an hour being Lembit Opik, plus a Taylor Swift CD and a Supernanny book. It's a hardback, so it should come in useful. We can use it to hit Amelie.

With the present-opening completed, we headed out to Sunday lunch down at the marina. Lisa and I had £20 worth of Prezzo vouchers, but the wait for a table was 40 minutes and we're even more impatient than we are cheap. So having checked out the waiting time at Zizzi's (45 minutes, if you're wondering), we ended up at the Coast to Coast American Restaurant & Bar. It occupies the premises that used to house Strada until that one closed down, and the owners are clearly doing their best to ensure they make enough money to avoid the same fate. Frankly the only thing supersized about their American food is the prices.

Well ok, that's not strictly true. They do manage to fit quite a lot into one bun...


I'd expect a good sized meal for the money though. That 'Pulled Pork Burger' cost me fifteen quid. Well, it cost my brother fifteen quid. I told him I'd settle up later. Preferably out of court, and for a smaller amount.

It was very nice though, as was my (small-ish) milkshake for £4.25, and my warm chocolate brownie, which was served with honeycomb ice cream and an air of mystery...


We were informed at the bar that Coast to Coast operates a "verbal menu" for dessert, by which they mean they commit nothing to paper, and won't tell you the prices. It's a bit like playing The Generation Game. You basically have to sit there while Brucie reels off a list of items, then attempt to memorise them long enough to place an order. By the time it arrives, you don't know what you've got, or how much it costs. It's only when you get the bill that you find out your ice creams were six quid each.

Ultimately though, a good time was had by all, especially those of us who didn't pay much, and by the time we strolled back out onto the boardwalk, relations had thawed and Amelie had warmed to her cousin...


Although they'd left Toby out in the cold.

We had a request from Amelie's nursery last week for us to provide them with a photo of our family. At the time I assumed it was for them to put up in the office on their pinboard of known troublemakers, but as it transpires, it's for a display they're making of people who are important to each child. I was tempted to submit a picture of SpongeBob with Charlie & Lola, but having discussed it with Lisa, we decided that whilst Amelie clearly prefers them to us, and their influence on her is far greater, we're probably still obliged to be in the photo.

So we took some time out yesterday morning to pose for an up-to-date family portrait...


Clearly some of us are posing more than others. But at least we've all got our eyes open.

To be honest, it took about twelve attempts to get that one. We might look like we're posing with the calm serenity of seasoned supermodels, but in reality, when you have ten seconds to set the self-timer on your camera and get to the rear of the portrait without knocking your daughter off her stool, you're more likely to end up with this...


I don't know why Toby's looking so disapproving. I'd like to see him sprint across the living room and hurdle a four-year-old in eight seconds flat.

Anyhoo, we actually had a long, busy, but above all, enjoyable day yesterday, which has left me far too tired to write about it. It also gave Amelie nightmares. Or at least something did. She woke up last night saying that she'd had a bad dream in which she'd seen a man having a shower on top of a tall building, and there was tuna coming out of the shower. No, really. The man was clearly piscine in the wind.

That might not sound like the most disturbing of visions, but to Amelie, tuna is the stuff of nightmares. She once ate it in a sandwich at nursery, thinking it was spready cheese, and never quite got over the shock. In addition, her love of SpongeBob SquarePants means that she values plankton above all human life, and is naturally averse to eating sea creatures. So the thought of being sprayed with fish flakes in an outdoor bathroom is a constant source of terror.

Fortunately, however, I've identified the trigger for her nightmares. She's had quite a few bad dreams recently, and having looked at all the possible causes, I've narrowed it down to just one...


It's that Lisa keeps dressing like Freddy Krueger.