I've spent most of the weekend trying to figure out how some facts seem to become embedded in the Little Darling's psyche, and other's don't. After school on Friday they watched an episode of Dr Who, The Shakespeare Code, where the good doctor takes Martha back to Elizabethan England (I appreciate that I'm in danger of alienating my non-Anglo readership) . Boychild asked who Shakespeare is, and Twin 2 announced, with the condescension of a Cabinet Minister, don't you know anything Jack, he was a writer when Jesus lived. I didn't know where to start correcting that one, so I let it go. I'm sure most parents have experienced the dinosaur debate - did they exist when you were little, when Granny was little, and so on. Their lovely little minds simply can't comprehend the expanse of history, and they seem to dip in and out of moments in time much like Dr Who in his TARDIS.

Twin 1 has a fascination for what did and did not exist when I was her age - she was horrified to learn that I had to endure only three channels on a black and white tv, that music was emitted from a crappy old cassette player, that windows were for looking through and mice were vermin, that the closest thing to a games console was etch-a-sketch, and that cutting and pasting involved scissors and glue. I suppose the Little Darlings' inability to comprehend life before technology is understandable. How the hell did anyone get any work done before email and the Internet? My first task every morning is to check the inbox, delete the plethora of invitations to extend my penis, have sex with an unfeasibly large breasted woman from Indiana, and pay my tax bill online. What I do love about email is that it reduces the number of telephone conversations with minions from the Ministry of Justice who are definitely somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and aren't on an extended period of sick leave, strangely enough, and therefore have to suffer my particular brand of sarcasm. I know it's the lowest form of wit, but you have to admit that it is incredibly funny.