First stop, bloody border battles.
No, not the fine line between Squirrel's left leg and Shark's right leg in the rear seat of a Citroen Berlingo.
Although that does indeed qualify as casus belli, especially after five hours of enforced listening to your sister breathe.
Incidentally, other legitimate causes of war include the following: all unicorn politics; unicorn court proceedings; unicorn tea-making ceremonies; unicorn recorded history ...
also ... walking through doorways first; finishing the apple juice without telling anyone; claiming the mud patch is yours; moving the sea-shell bucket deliberately; reading a book that someone else wants to read, and barricading the door to your sister's room with a vacuum cleaner and a chair in the full knowledge that she is inside, sulking over the recent unicorn fight.
And don't mention the grudge matches! They come with us wherever we go! I have not heard the last of it since Shark bit Squirrel and Tiger hit Shark with a shovel.
See? We people with children can bring up quite an impressive range of warmongering! Ye border strifers twixt England and Scotland, is it the best that you can do, to argue over some hills, a few sheep and an ox?
Now, having set the scene, here is our first stop, the glorious Preston Tower. You can see why everyone up here felt they needed something just like this. I am sure, given enough time in each other's company, every person in an entire family would need a fortified tower apiece.
Second stop today, the wonderfully defended Warkworth Castle. A highly recommended castling experience for warfare, where all bodies can escape from each other through plenty of dark corridors, tunnels, steps up and down, doors, windows and little corners where you can curl up and pretend it is the fourteenth century and there are knights in shining armour battering the door down and come to take you away.
If you have a mind to warfare, you would thoroughly enjoy the border experience here.
But is it not a mother's job to be peacemaker and tranquility seeker, whatever the odds stacked against you?
I have discovered that throwing my hands up in the air is a good opening gesture, followed by tutting, predictable reprimanding, mild hectoring, scowling, finger wagging, emotional manipulation, then giving up and stomping off before grasping at straws and using bribery with promises of liberal application of ice cream.
That works! Peace in all the borders! (At least for a good five minutes.)
