So we went ice-skating.

Once again, Darling wifey’s mother offered to have the Tribe for a day and allow us to have some fun. Darling Wifey and I spent some time weighing up other options (water-ski-ing in the North Sea, rally driving in Hamsterly Forest, ski-ing on the real snow at the Castleford indoor slope, single-seat racing driving at Croft…) before settling on a day out in Sheffield with a couple of her minions from work.

Who am I to complain about spending the day with a blonde, a brunette and a rehead?

Needless to say, a couple of seasons of roller hockey when I was a teenager was inadequate preparation for a day of ice-skating, and blue is now the colour of my chuff.

We returned to discover that the Mother-Outlaw had decided that we were cruelly neglecting Little Nutter, and that she had decided to put her sympathy into action. She brought him some big bags of sweets. Contraband sweets…

It took the next 18 hours for him to “come down” again. Gee, thanks.

Meanwhile, Humble Secretary came to visit us – always a pleasure. We had a day out in York with a mutual friend, watching Viking battles and longship races and physically restraining her from all the university students in the rowing clubs.

But the high point of the weekend was when Little Nutter saw me bring his PJs dowstairs and he ran into the kitchen to hide. I shrugged, changed Tiny Flirt’s nappy, and then followed him into the kitchen. Big mistake.

He had climbed onto a table and found the blue food colouring, with which he painted his face. When I found him and grabbed him, I got my hands covered in the stuff.

How do you remove blue food colouring?