We had to pop to the shops today because the dog nearly sank. No, bear with me, it’s so worth it. Oh I love shopping in the school holidays. What could be nicer than standing in the middle of a packed shoe shop having a hissy shouting match with your number two son about whether you’ll be replacing his lost riding boots (I won’t) and whether or not he’ll have to make do with a pair of wellies (he will) until September when he can bloody well find the ones he lost.

Oh it gets better. Then we discover that every shoe shop within striking distance (an hour’s drive) doesn’t supply trainers narrow enough for #1’s ridiculously emaciated feet and that we should try a sports shop who sometimes do narrow fittings. Oh yes, they do narrow fittings all right, but only in the most offensively expensive trainers in the whole shop. Cue an already sullen #2 trudging along six feet behind the rest of us, dragging his new wellies and bemoaning the unfairness of having normal feet, while a delighted and beaming #1 prances along in sixty quid’s worth of new, narrow-fitting Adidas-something-or-others-that-have-Goodyear-tyre-tread-soles-and-are-outrageously-trendy.

Anyhoo, the muddy dog debacle that prompted all this chaos went something like this: my new regime is to prise the children away from their PlayStations at least once a day to prevent them from turning into something akin to those limp, pasty, ‘before’ children you see on ‘Honey, I’m Killing the Kids’. The enforced dog walking causes a large amount of carping, but I stride briskly ahead, chatting breezily about how healthy it is to get out in the fresh air. Bertie, who is loving the extra walk with the added bonus of two more victims for his ‘run round them enough times with the extendable lead and blimey, they fall over!’ game, was bustling along at the edge of the field. The sheep, who have been practising SAS-style stealth evacuations of their paddock into the wheat field to eat their fill before melting seamlessly back into the night, had left bits of wool and lovely smells all in the ditches and Bertie just had to go and investigate. Unfortunately he chose a ditch that was full of black, stinky mud and we all watched, open mouthed as, looking remarkably calm, he started to sink, Titanic-like into the inky gunk. #1, a panicker of epic proportions, hurled himself into the mire to save the doomed Bertie, now happily up to his ribcage in muck, only to find that he, too, began to sink and was also shortly buried up to his knees. Yanking on his collar, #1 soon freed the disgustingly stinky Bertie, and was himself saved by the heroic, if a little tardy, #2 who waded in (in his football boots) and pulled his brother out. There was lots of congratulations and back patting which were soon broken up when Bertie shook himself and showered everyone in sludge. Later, as #1 and I lifted the odorous furry torpedo into the bath, I remarked that we really should get #2 some wellies. And that, dear reader, is where I came in. There’s probably a moral in this story, but frankly, I can’t be arsed.

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