Little Madam (who is almost 7) has just returned from a week at Grandma’s.

The highlight was when Grandma had promised to drive a neighbour to hospital for a routine appointment; Little Madam had been told that they wouldn’t be in the hospital for long, so she left her book at home.

After twenty minutes of waiting, Little Madam, who reads almost as voraciously as her mother, was impatiently asking for something to read. Grandma naively sent Little Madam to a large display of public information pamphlets and told her to choose something to read.

Fifteen minutes later a little voice echoed around the silent waiting room, “Grandma, what’s safe sex?“

Some of the things you can do whilst having a break from work can be immense fun.

You can go to a posh garden centre in a good part of town and, in front of all the good middle-class folk, order enough leylandii hedging (aka the “nuisance” hedging) for a forty foot garden boundary. There were audible gasps of horror, and one late middle-aged man in offensive golfing clothes actually told me off!

Then imagine them drafting their letters to the Daily Mail:
“Sir, Only this afternoon a young hooligan wearing shorts and driving an MPV bought fifteen specimens of that pernicious plant, the Leyland Cypress, with which he is no doubt going to inflict terror on the good folk of Middle England…”

Then you can chop down trees that the previous owner of your house lovingly planted. (It’s best to do this in front of the neighbours who will, once again, report your misdeeds to your home’s previous owner. You then get the pleasure of an audience of horrified former homeowners watching from their Honda as you brutally savage a row of miniature ornamental conifers with an enormous axe.)

Note: if you are going to allow your two-year-old son to watch you using an axe, ensure that he is suitably distracted a couple of counties away when you then hide the axe in a safe place. Tiny Flirt eyed that axe with an indescribable combination of delight and yearning. (Little Nutter wasn’t interested in it - but then he has autism, so he doesn’t need an axe as well.)

Tomorrow I am going to attack the kitchen with a toolkit. This is going to be a vicious, premeditated attack, but the room is asking for it.

Today was my annual manly escape: a day watching motor racing with friends.

This time, the weather was awful. For the whole day I sat shivering on a hillside and watched fast cars crash in front of me - and for some strange reason, tonight I have severe sunburn. That’s English weather for you.

Meanwhile, Darling Wifey spent the day clearing up. She cleared up the ketchup that Little Nutter spread across the kitchen whilst she was getting dressed; then she cleared up the shampoo that Little Nutter smeared across the bathroom whilst she was cleaning the kitchen. After that was the butter, then the contents of the pot that the palm tree in the front hall grows in, and then the mustard. Then the contents of his nappy, followed by Little Madam’s hair serum, and a toothpaste tube. Next was a five litre bottle of fruit juice, a bottle of bubble bath given to Darling Wifey as a gift, and then a tube of crushed garlic that he found in the fridge. Obviously, Little Nutter thought carefully before emptying Tiny Flirt’s fruit juice onto the carpet, and that is the reason why he poured a vase of flowers (water included) over Tiny Flirt first. Then, finally, the last thing he did before lunch was empty a bottle of salad dressing onto the kitchen floor and roll in it.

He gets that last trait from his mother’s side of the family.

So when, at lunchtime, I received a text message from Darling Wifey to let me know that her suitcase was packed, a hotel was booked and a good lawyer hired, I began to suspect that I really should have been at home…

She is very lucky to be married to such a sensitive guy.

Last week, after three happy but highly stressful years, Darling Wifey left her job. We agreed that a nice way to say “Goodbye” was by throwing a barbecue for her erstwhile minions.

So today they all came to York for some shopping, and then stopped at our house for some neanderthal cooking and, of course, our favourite drink: Pimm’s.

Little Nutter was not impressed.

First of all, the house was filled with sociable people who all wanted to say “hello” and chat to each other. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they kept on showing an interest in what he was doing. How dare they?

(By the way - that reminds me of the funniest one-liner I have ever heard, which took place in a conversation about special equipment for children with disabilities:
“What’s an autistic clock?”
“It knows the time but just won’t ****ing tell you.”)

Then, as if having all these people in the garden wasn’t bad enough, daddy lit a fire.

Superlatives and elatives fail me. I shall just describe the aftermath.

Eventually, Little Nutter went for a lie-down under some cushions in the playroom. I opened some bottles, and Darling Wifey served alcohol and chocolate like rationing had just been abolished.

So, a good time was had by all.

These are my big brother’s words of encouragement as I train for this Autumn’s half-marathon and next Spring’s Marathon:

“See that snail?

Slowly……………………
painfully…………………………
sluggishly……………………..
crawling towards the finish line……………………….
gasping for breath as all the younger, fitter snails rush past as if they were on an afternoon stroll………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………..
…
…
…
…
… .that’s you that is! ”

I think that this proves that it isn’t just me - it’s a family trait.

On the menu tonight was grilled steak with mushrooms and courgettes, and steamed carrots, green beans and baby sweetcorn.

Delicious, even if I do say so myself. (Guess who cooked…)

Three small, hungry people charged into the kitchen and sat round the table to eat. I put my dinner on the table as they were eating, and Little Madam gave Tiny Flirt the signal.

“Juice, please!” cried Tiny Flirt.

I went to the cupboard for a sipper cup and filled it with fruit juice for him.

Little Nutter howled.

I returned to the cupboard and found his Buzz Lightyear flask, and filled it with fruit juice for him.

Little Madam, not to be outdone, asked if she was allowed her fruit juice in a grown up glass. I gave her an unbreakable plastic beaker full of juice.

Darling Wifey smiled sweetly at me. I found a glass and filled it with that revolting fizzy water she seems to think is worth paying through the nose for.

I sat down. Tiny Flirt had stolen my vegetables. Little Nutter was just finishing off my steak. Little Madam was helping herself to my mushrooms. I was left with half a dozen slices of grilled courgette and a smear of steak juice across my plate.

A very good friend has sent us a couple of books.

Gee, thanks.

These books can only be described as relationship self-help, if such a genre exists. They are (if I may be blunt) a guide to erotic massage and somebody’s doctoral thesis on sex in long term relationships.

I must pause for a moment, Gentle Reader, and derail your train of thought. This is not, “A very good friend” as in, “My very good friend has an embarrassing medical problem,” but rather as in, “You scumbag! Just for this I am going to repay the compliment when your mother is visiting you.”

My problem is that Darling Wifey has taken all this rather seriously (as is her wont.) She is actually instructing me to study these books! She knows that when I read a book I am interested in, I write in the margin - so she has handed these erotically charged volumes over to me with a sharpened pencil!

She says that I have to pass a theory exam before I can graduate to the practical study.

I took Little Nutter for his hearing test this evening, and he passed with flying colours.

Hooray - he isn’t deaf!

Boo! That means that he is actually being unsociable (dare I say it? - autistic) when he is ignoring us.

It took three operations to sort his ears out, and I think that for as long as I live I will remain suspicious that those operations contributed to his autism. (I mentioned something about that here.)

But then I also had to admit to the audiologist that if it wasn’t for Little Nutter’s profound hearing difficulties when he was a toddler, he would never have been in the situation where experts were assessing him - and we wouldn’t have had the diagnosis of autism so soon.

So which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Anyway, he was wonderful in the audiology studio. Nurses played the sound of steam engines on their computers, and when he responded to an actual noise he was rewarded with a Thomas the Tank Engine model. When he got it wrong, they were all taken off him.

He’s a bright lad. He learned the rules in a trice and won the full set in five minutes. He clearly thought that hospital staff must be mugs if they were betting on him losing that game.

No - he was wrong. Yours Truly was the mug, because I had to get him to give the trains back and then walk him home….