Everywhere but Rothbury

Now I recall. There are advantages to living amongst the family I married into.

After a hearty sausage-heavy breakfast at the local Premier Inn, we reduce triplets to twins by offloading Squirrel to a Morpeth lake with a rowing boat, pre-laden with Aunty Dee.

Third time round, Aunty Dee must think she's forever destined to travel the River Acheron. There are a lot of energy-giving sossies to get through, so she'll be circling round a good few times yet.


Fortunately, we don't have to watch. We already arranged to dump Tiger at the stables with the horse cousins. They have the farrier round to bash horse feet. That also means a no-nonsense ride, and it doesn't cost me twenty quid for 30 minutes.


We celebrate having a single child by driving Shark to St Mary's lighthouse and tipping her out at the sea shore. After thinking about it, she decides the best use of her time is to draw pictures of seaweed.


Success indeed. For we did all that, and still managed to avoid the police helicopters, road blocks, exclusion zones, armed police, and local crazy pissed off ex con.