A fruitcake of a woman once said to me, when I was a young twenty-six year old having a high old time, that life really began once you had children! I listened to this in disbelief. My life was full and enjoyable so how could this be? Two children and two decades later I still believe she had lost her marbles.

So, let’s begin with a general overview of the reality of having children, which may not always be pleasant. There are joys to having them but that will be covered in detail in my next book, ‘Insanity, A Welcome Escape From Reality.’

Children change your life, drastically, but don’t be fooled into thinking that life isn’t complete without them. I often regale the children with stories of where their parents could be today had they not had any children. Lovely house, lots of money, lots of peaceful holidays, lots of money, no rabbits, hamsters, budgies, or dogs, lots of money and a clean car instead of one, the inside of which, resembles the local dump. They roll their eyes and say,

“Here we go again. Any minute now we’ll get the ‘perhaps we’ll have you adopted routine’.”

Anyway, you’ve perhaps decided to have one or two or more if you are really barmy so you’ll have to be prepared to make some sacrifices.

Firstly, you can’t go out anymore, at least not easily and you’re not allowed to shut them in the cupboard with a box of sweets until you get back from the pub. We should know, we tried it once, but they managed to escape and turned up at the pub in their pyjamas and asked the barman for the number of Childline. We managed to shut them up with a few sips of a half pint shandy and told everyone we were rehearsing for the school play.

So, you can’t leave them home alone, but if you take them with you where can you go? Not anywhere with tablecloths because they either spill everything over it or manage to pull it off the table, not to the pub because they know we locked them in the cupboard and not anywhere remotely nice as they’ll probably say ‘No children before 2pm or after 2.15pm‘.

What about the cinema? OK, but only to the matinee of the latest Disney film or a re-run of ‘Lassie Saves The Day’. There will of course be lots of other children there and they’ll undoubtedly be crying, shouting ‘When does the film start?’ in the middle of it, dropping popcorn down the back of your neck or kicking your seat and continually going to the toilet. If you can survive this you can survive anything! You emerge from the cinema shaken, confused and with no recollection of which film you saw so it doesn’t really matter what you choose to go and see in the first place.

A cheaper option would be to get away from the crowds and take your little hoodlums walking. This will be covered in greater detail later but suffice to say at this point that you could have more fun standing in a dark cupboard for a few hours. Talking of dark cupboards, perhaps you should just buy a box of sweets and …………

Tip: Pin the Childline number to the inside of the cupboard door to prevent them from turning up at the pub!