I do love to be beside the seaside

Ms Rational Self-Determinism’s younger child, the one who resembles the Artful Dodger, was ill today: she reckons it was the effect of too much fresh sea air on his little Hackney lungs. Duly, he rested.

When that palled, and between bouts of headache and general malaise, the suggestion was mooted of a trip to the swings before dinner. At this the 12-year-old (black leather wristbands, earrings, silver skull rings and all) moans from the couch: “Why do you always make us go out and play? It’s our holiday too, you know!”

But at least he’s been gainfully employed, plotting out in a Black ‘n’ Red notebook the first 19 chapters of his novel, about a posh restaurateur who goes mad and murders all his friends and eventually his staff, finding ever more ingenious ways to hide the bodies – even posing them as customers in his restaurant – before the police burst in, BBC-style, led by someone sinister like Patrick Malahide.

Okay, so the casting is my touch – it’s my holiday too, you know!