‘Yes,’ I said, punching the air. ‘Daddy got the highest score’ — and other triumphs

What are the two words guaranteed to fill any parents of young children with terror? School fees? Chicken Pox? Gina Ford? The answer, I’m afraid, is half term.

My daughter, Sasha, only started going to ‘big school’ in September so I wasn’t anticipating too many problems. What I hadn’t factored in is that my wife gave birth to a third child this year, which meant she already had her hands full with a three-month-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old. The fact that our au pair resigned a couple of months ago didn’t help, either. How could I cope?

The answer, said my wife, was to cram in as many activities as possible. In this way, she assured me, the time would pass quite quickly. Unfortunately, after I’d prepared a detailed schedule, Caroline decreed that ‘watching television’ and ‘going to the cinema’ didn’t count as activities. What I had to come up with, apparently, were ‘educational excursions’.