Camping tips, tricks and advice from a fairly average parent and a reformed dad blogger
Robert came home from school last week with a small plastic fob, which upon further investigation we discovered was part of a new initiative in Reading called ‘Beat the Street‘. Despite my initial scepticism, I was delighted to find that BTS seems to be a very well-thought-out and excellently implemented project to promote exercise and…
This is a Reading Buses bus pass – one of those clever new ‘smart cards’ (much like an Oyster Card) that virtually all travellers on the Reading Bus network use. They work remarkably well, and look fairly normal in the scheme of things. They all seem to be covered in the URL ‘EasySaver10.co.uk’ – so…
Next weekend (Sunday the 11th of May, to be precise) the ‘Hoo’s Kids Book Festival’ is taking place just outside London – and to celebrate, I’ve been given a great prize to offer up to you guys. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know how close children’s literacy is to my heart…
The Elliss family were on the brink of a developmental dental-disaster this evening… It all started when my wife picked Robert up from school. He’s had a wobbly tooth now for several weeks – possibly months. We’re talking the most hotly-anticipated teeth-based incident for decades. This was Robert’s first foray into teeth-losing, so it took…
When I was sent a copy of a ‘Heroes of the City’ DVD to review, I’m ashamed to admit I was a little sceptical. As a slightly snobby TV-parent (If I had my way, my kids would never watch anything but the BBC) I rarely venture away from the comfort of the TV shows I…
Today I learnt (to much amusement, I’m ashamed to admit) that somebody I know has an unusual phobia. Now I’m not going to name names here, because I don’t want to see the person in question suffering from unnecessary anxiety (though part of me is quite curious to see what happens!) but the phobia got…
Don’t worry, I haven’t gone mad and decided to explain the birds and the bees to my 2 and 5 year old – this is a completely different type of sex conversation… As I sat with the boys last night, ready to read our usual 2 bedtime stories, I was chatting with Robert about one…
Even though they love us dads too, the team over at sk:n clinics asked if I wanted to run a competition for Mother’s Day – and who am I to turn down cool competitions? Especially when it means one lucky winner can win almost £100-worth of skin-care products for the lovely mum in his or…
With Mother’s Day approaching fast, the time has come to start planning our card – and as luck would have it, the timing coincided perfectly with an assignment from a reader! When I was approached by a lady working on behalf of ‘Family Investments’ with the offer of a big box of craft STUFF to…