Choosing the right present

I have to come up with a plan. Otherwise, daddy Dig may get a repeat of the present from last year, and that is a toilet roll with glue smeared over one end.

Toilet rolls, used or wrapped, are not good Christmas presents.

For a start, any bare cardboard inner tube, torn from a wrapping used to wipe anyone's bum, does not do justice to the huge variety of craft activities his daughters Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have achieved for the last eight years.

For all this time, Mama has entertained and educated these small agents of mass destruction in life skills that range from doll's house furnishing, face painting, papier mache and woodwork, to costume making, puppetry, beading and balloon modelling. And that was probably last month. In fact now is one of those rare moments that I intend to blow my own trumpet, because mama has been quite frankly bloody amazing when it comes to leading bizarre and ambitious crafting projects. Girls, I'd just like you to know that. Because in a week's time it could all go belly up when I lay down across the railway tracks. And if you come up with a toilet roll smeared in glue to demonstrate your craft skills, make that five days.

What's more, we cannot run a craft project to provide presents for Dig without him knowing about it. He will be inundated for demands to help find the glue sticks or where is the hammer or can we leave this half-built model of a pterodactyl on his desk. This cannot do when the whole point is surprise.

Then there is the problem of what to do with the ruddy stuff once it is made. No matter how I follow the Happy Mummy Craft Activity bible with kids, let's face it. The process of construction is fraught with hazards, littered with dangers, and punctuated routinely by screaming fits and declarations of the world's end. Then the final result is crap.

So far so good. At this point I must not blurt out the awful truth that actually the pterodactyl looks like a toilet roll, or things really go downhill. So I am a good mummy. I say it is lovely. I photograph the toilet roll and declare it a wonderful likeness of an ant/sunrise/pterodactyl/ whatever you say it is, and at the first opportunity, I bin it.

Unfortunately, I might have to stare at the toilet roll on the mantelpiece for a good month until it is overtaken by the bookbinding project, which results in one book nailed to the kitchen table by accident and a book we can't open at all because Squirrel glued all the pages together.

So I am doing the sensible thing. I am taking all the gritlets down to the Agora shopping centre with a budget of £1.50 each and I am telling them to choose the best present for daddy Dig.

Tomorrow he is going to be the proud owner of an egg cup, a hammer with a wobbly head, and three plastic screwdrivers.

Happy Christmas, Dig. Just remember it is the thought that counts.