The poor wee fella is full of cold tonight. He's coughing gently, persistently and the lack of breath is making his cheeks flushed, sticky with his tears. Its a very well known cliche, most recently uttered by Tony Soprano (as I recall it), that every parent would surely take their children's pain upon themselves rather than see them suffer. The fact that even Tony Soprano said it speak volumes about the power of the emotion - this is the captain of the New Jersey mafia talking here!

If I was pressed into saying what part of this job I find toughest, I'd say it is having to stay inside with a sick boy when the sun is hammering down and all James wants to do is anything that takes him outside. James LOVES being outside. Anything that involves (in his words) "getting the digger and digging a big hole and putting it in the dumptruck and breaking it up into little pieces whoooosh". The best place to do this is of course outside where he has access to spades, buckets and most importantly, soil.


And if its not gardening its the playground. The wee chap is remarkably proficient on the flying fox, the swings or the ladders - anything that gets him high off the ground. And speaking of playgrounds we have just this week discovered Jungle-Rama, a vast new rave coloured, largely inflated playground in Newtown. Its utterly brilliant and will happily keep James entertained at least till he's married.


But we haven't done any of that today. Couldn't even do the normal wet weather save. So when you can't take the wee chappie outside and the sun's shining and the dog is sulking and the boy is clinging - help! What do you do? You reach for the DVD remote folks and you call up Winnie The Pooh, and Tractor Tom and Thomas and Bananas Gorilla. I'm not proud of it... but it worked goddamit, it worked.