boxes. honestly, it worked on so many levels.School Hol­i­days means a very qui­et time around Welling­ton­ista Tow­ers, as all but one of the reg­u­lars are ful­ly-fledged card-car­ry­ing par­ents. And Jo won’t come in if there’s no-one to regale her sto­ries of hor­ri­fy­ing med­ical treat­ments and bow­el-move­ments to.

As well as look­ing after the kids, the home­bound Welling­ton­ista have been tak­ing some time to get those long-planned-for, often-post­poned gar­den and land­scap­ing plans into action. And there’s been a Film Fes­ti­val on (some reviews of that to come, per­haps).

Any­way, this par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton­ista had a fan­tas­tic time look­ing after his two wee lads for a few days this week. The boys were amazed at Zap­po the Magi­cian’s tricks (while the par­ents were astound­ed that he could man­age to pad out a one hour show with only half a dozen bits of actu­al mag­ic). Te Papa proved its usu­al haven for kids need­ing a runaround some­where warm and dry on a cold and wet day. And Box­es — the big pup­pets play put on at Cap­i­tal E — was great fun — much (much) bet­ter than some of the big bud­get Amer­i­can kids’ movie fod­der that’s been thrown at us for the break. Throw in some beach action, some park action, a TV-free week, vis­it­ing friends and a cou­ple of not-too-dis­as­trous gin­ger­bread mak­ing after­noons, and it was a top week all round.

And now, all we can think is: “roll on the next hol­i­days.”