Blogging has been lighter than usual here over the last six weeks or so but this, as some British readers may guess, has been mostly due to it being the school summer holidays and I, along with my free time, have been very much otherwise engaged. Often this has involved taking our child to various holiday activities in garishly coloured and extremely loud soft play centres, arty stuff in community centres or being completely terrified watching him climb trees with an alarming but admirable dexterity. Also broke up a fight between my one and another boy in a park following a dispute over who ‘owned’ the slide. Hopefully a more regular service can be resumed as soon as possible.

At present my wife and I are catching up with the jobs around the house and garden that could not be done or were difficult to do with our little Lobbus running around. Painting for example is all but impossible when you have a child whose first instinct when seeing paint is to grab the paint and run off with it thereby depositing paint in places where paint really should not be. The need to catch up means that writing has had to be put to one side and that at least for the rest of this week there’s going to be a fair amount of ‘from elsewhere’ pieces and pieces that are somewhat chronologically delayed.