So far we have managed 12 hours without Mum. Kids are up and claim to have done homework and one of them is banging round the house in need of exercise and something to do. The other two are reading books and the paper listening to a lover’s rock compilation I picked up some months ago and managed to forget about.

So for supper this evening we had Swedish Meatballs. The idea was that they should supplant themselves in the kids affection over and above whatever meatballs they had in the cafe in Ikea one evening.  The recipe came from Simon Hopkinson and his book of forgotten food I wrote about a few weeks ago.

The girls toyed with them, ate one meatball and all of the chips and said they had had enough, Galen had the five meatballs I gave him and then finished off whatever the girls had left. Boys may be a pain in the backside but there is a good point to them when it comes to the hoovering up stakes.