Forget the “Hagrid Theory” – I heard from somewhere the “Oliver Wood Theory” and so I did a little bit of research. According to this theory, the ‘olive wood chamber’ is a place in heaven reserved for martyrs.

But it gets worse.

In Jeremiah 11, green olive wood is cut down and burned as an offering to the enemy.

The plot of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” was known in Jerusalem in the seventh century BC. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t face the same fate as Jeremiah’s other prediction: that one was cut up into tiny pieces and burned by King Jehoiakim.

Being a kid would put any adult into therapy: on the one hand, you want to please your adorable parents by conforming to their every dream. On the other hand, you want to resist the insane plots of those mad bastards at any cost.

Parents deal with this by drinking.

How to make your light bulbs last forever.

First, you need a two-year-old boy. Give him his own room, and fill it with the usual things that these alien creatures need: toys. Trust me – beds are completely useless.

Every night our son is put to bed in clean pyjamas with a drink, a soft toy, a nice, warm duvet, and a story. Every morning he wakes up stark naked on the carpet.

With a good light bulb, he can stay awake all night. So I took the bulb out, and put it in a safe place. “Next time a bulb fails,” I thought, “I’ll swap it with this one.”

Eleven months! Almost a year! Forty-eight weeks without a single bulb-failure in a house with over thirty lights in it.

Insanity is hereditery. You get it from your kids.

And, by the way, a great quote from my daughter was repeated to me. It had worked its way down the grape-vine. “My daddy says I’m far too young to be a teenager.“

“One in three male virgins has the Bond theme as his mobile telephone ringtone.” Giles Coren, in The Times today.

Incompetence and unaccountability

Now I know I want promotions. Lots of them, and FAST!

Remember the ‘Threshold Application?’ All those meetings? One of the “issues” they raised was the loss of 30 student files. I couldn’t explain what had happened to them – except that they were last seen, by me, on my desk. Losing files, I was told, is a sure sign of incompetence.

Today a member of the Senior Management Team came to see me: she had found my files in her office. She had “accidentally” picked them up after she left my desk when she borrowed my room four weeks ago, and only noticed them today. But of course, I was told, I don’t mind because anyone could make a simple mistake like that.

Except when a junior member of staff appears to have made a mistake like that, it is an excuse to harrass him so much that he doesn’t sleep for a week. When a member of the SMT (who incidentally has dinner with the Boss at least once a week) does it, then we should all gracefully accept the apology and sympathise with her for the stresses and strains of management responsibility.

Well, I do apologise for my lack of grace, but that is blatantly hypocritical. And yes, I said so. And I probably harmed my career in the process.

Tonight I am mostly drinking Australian Chardonnay…

Home alone daddy.

Darling Wifey is off for the day, having fun with friends, leaving me alone with three children. This would be tolerable but my new Game Boy Games haven’t arrived yet, so have been forced to occupy myself with vacuuming, ironing clothes and cleaning the kitchen after Little Nutter’s breakfast. (Just imagine a cow exploding in a cornflake factory, and you’ll get the picture pretty accurately.)

There are advantages to being an unsupervised husband for a day. Little Nutter is wearing check trousers and a striped shirt (not for the usual reason, which is that they are the first things I can find. I looked for them!) Lunch will be pies and chips with no vegetables and gingerbread men for pudding. And I’m going to have some beer tonight. Oh yes I am. And I’m going to quaff it, not drink it tidily. And I’m going to burp.

*Edited to add:*

Things not to do when you are a home alone daddy:

1. Let a 2 year old with the nickname Little Nutter help bathe the baby in front of the telly. The carpet should be dry in a day or so.

2. Turn your back on your 5 year old whilst drying the carpet. It took forty minutes to unknot my shoelaces. (Yes, I was wearing them…)

Even Darling Wifey’s computer doesn’t take any notice of me! Five times I tried to log her out of her blog so I could post on mine, and five times it automatically logged back in.

It’s been a full-on boring week at work, and the usual non-stop never-ending pressure of running a family at home, especially for Darling Wifey. At least I get a change of scenery every day and get ignored at work ; she just gets ignored at home all day, every day.

And has the baby smiled yet? Or is it wind? And why does Little Madam have to keep cutting out paper shapes and gluing them to everything. Check the seat before you use the toilet.

The only highlight of this week has been in winding up 1,400 Harry Potter fans at school; less than a dozen have seen the Chamber of Secrets yet, but Darling Wifey managed to get us preview tickets again! We have seen both films a week before their release dates now. The kids at school say I don’t deserve it, because I am a Slytherin: predictably, I give them a detention for insolence.

Then there is the “Hagrid Theory,” for which I think I may never be forgiven.

I think that the ‘horrible death’ in book five (about which JKR commented at the UK premiere of the COS) is Rubeus Hagrid. I mentioned it at school and made an eleven year old girl cry. How cruel can a person be?

Yesterday we visited Birmingham so I could parade around the place dressed like a Gospel Choir singer. This involved a three hour drive to Nottingham, in convoy with the in-laws. They insisted that I they always drive at 65mph, and hit the motorway five minutes in front of us. I cruised considerably faster than that, and 75 miles later they ‘phoned as they pulled into a stop. It took us ten minutes to reach the same stop.

At Nottingham I watched as the in-laws sat in their Citroen changing into their posh frocks. Then, after feeding the children on Burger King’s finest flame-grilled, we chugged down the M42 to Brum.

I sat at the front of St Chad’s Cathedral whilst Darling Wifey sat with her in-laws and her parents. Little Nutter couldn’t resist the opportunity to add this glorious place of worship, built by Pugin, to his personal list of “Places I Have Done a Smelly Poo.” One way of making sure you have room to play, I suppose.

Then we sat in a traffic jam at Spaghetti Junction for half an hour,

before we went back to my old college for tea. Which we missed, because whilst we were in the traffic jam, everyone else ate it all.

Finally, we had a four hour drive back, but not before we nipped down to Soho Road for an assortment of bhurfi, jelebi and other Asian sweeties. Nostalgia, I know, but when we lived in Brum we used to stop at the same shop in Handsworth regularly. When I taught RE in Brum, I used to joke that every act of worship known to man could be performed on Soho Road – including Aphrodite worship. (If you don’t already know what that means, trust me – you don’t want to find out!)

Nintendo thumb.

Darling Wifey bought me a Game Boy Advance as a present for passing my MA.

I spent four hours getting my Formula One time round the Suzuka Circuit in Japan down to a respectable figure.

On her first go, she beat me by nine seconds.

I hate her.

Yesterday: the trip to the Motor Show.

Darling Wifey’s dad and I go regularly. It’s a nice “male-bonding” sort of thing. We grunt at each other, laugh at all the flashy cars and the idiots who will pay three times the price of a house for one, and blag our way into ‘invitation only’ stands. The only one we have never managed is Bentley – more of that later.

Darling Wifey’s mother decided to invite her big brother – Uncle Harry. Uncle Harry remembered that I have an MPV, and decided to fill all seven seats for me. So kind. So I arranged to take the Volvo instead. Uncle Harry then pretends that only one of his friends can come.

Great. So now I have to drive a 420 mile round trip with a retired head teacher and a retired police chief inspector in the back. That means I have to drive at least 20mph slower than usual. And on the morning of the trip things didn’t get any easier.

First, since I have been on holiday all week, I hadn’t changed my alarm clock from daylight saving time to GMT. I arrived at the meeting point at 5:45, an hour early.

Eventually the rest of the party arrived. Now, there is something about retired men and Volvos with Diesel engines.

Mine is eight years old and, in Darling Wifey’s words, the colour is “diarrhoea meets haemorrhoids.” (You would not believe the trouble I had finding the correct spellings.) In the early morning light, these two old men raved and raptured about my wonderful vehicle. How many miles to the gallon? How big is that boot? (“Trunk” if you are American. I never knew that Volvo made elephants.) And oh wow real velour seats! The motor show started with an eight year old Swedish eyesore on the damp streets of Washington (UK) before dawn.

We settled into the car, and I hit the motorway at an only slightly illegal 80mph. Chief Inspector tut-tutted, and then admired the ride and the relaxed engine. I never noticed before, but apparently my Volvo only turns 2,000 rpm at 80mph. Retired men get excited by thatzzzzzzzzz.

Then Uncle Harry started to tell us about his wonderful new ‘water tablets.’ Not the ones that sterilise water so you can drink it, but the ones that, well…

get the picture…?

I was beginning to feel quite tempted to drive into one of the bridge supports…

At the motor show we got accidentally separated….

I won’t bore you with details of the motor show. Carnography is either boring, or you already know everything I could tell you. Let’s just say that the Bentley Azure (quarter of a million quid) has lovely, comfortable seats, and I watched a scene from Harry Potter in the back of a Bentley Arnage T, whilst sipping sparkling mineral water and eating something slightly salmony with lots of cream.

And thankfully, on the journey back, the two old men fell asleep.