The school holidays are upon us and we have the pleasure of the younger Talpids for the next week. After an active morning on the beach and plates of fish fingers and beans they are now each engaged in their own thing. The order of whose photograph should be on page 1 and whose on the extra page was decided by a penalty shootout and the fastest time for pushing a cat in a pram over 100 metres. 

Children aren't what they used to be - our daughter used to trundle Gabriel, our real cat, around in her toy pram dressed in a dolls dress and bonnet! Note the loon's marless sheen; don't ask me why!