All's well that ends well...almost

Unlike last summer's magnificent family holiday, this summer's offering has been a series of short breaks and escapes involving various permutations of the dramatis personae of the little house on the prairie. There was the wedding in Saint Tropez which I refuse to count as a holiday because almost every moment was spoken for even before my beloved and I took off from Leeds Bradford airport. Then there was my important supportive role as companion to the lovely Louise in Portugal - well obviously, it would have been rude not to.

More recently, there was the fabulous five-day break with the singing dancing doctors and Skip and Mrs Broccoli in Majorca which number 3 and I were lucky enough to join. And then as soon as we got back, number 4 went on her coming-of-age girls-only holiday also to Majorca which was most ably supported by the singing dancing doctors who were on hand to offer air-conditioned accommodation respite (their hotel did not have it and it was 40+ degrees) and fried egg sandwiches as required. And while number 4 was gadding round the nightlife in Alcudia, my beloved went off in the van to support the fantastic Neil Jones and friends who ran - yes, ran - from Leeds to London to raise money for Cancer Research. An utterly brilliant effort and I am in awe of their achievement.

Then just a day or two with everyone - my beloved, moi, 3 and 4 plus various houseguests - before I skidoodled off to the intrepid granny's which provided a handy base for looking at universities with 3 and 4. In case you're interested ... liked Nottingham, wowed by Bath and quite liked Oxford Brookes though not for sport. We also managed to include in our three-day, all-action trip lunch with my oldest, dearest childhood chum, Alps, who has a fabby restaurant in Bath - The Circus - do go if you're ever down that way! Also met up with brother 3 and his two daughters so a bit of cousin-bonding going on, and a trip to the RSC to see All's Well that Ends Well which might almost have summed up AS level results day on Thursday. Almost...

So the beloved and I have been like the proverbial ships in the night so a brief escape was definitely in order. This took the form of a two-day break at the fabulous Low Graythwaite Hall in the Lake District, b&b and home to Basil and Sybil (or David and Manda, as they are more correctly known). David and Manda moved there some three or so years ago, leaving Harrogate and jobs behind, to try their hand at b&b-ing and very good they are at it too. So two days of walking, eating, resting, segwaying and playing games with the aforementioned plus other dear friends, Wheezy and Ebabe, before we returned home to 3 and 4, plus one lodger and now the arrival of Milton - the doggy equivalent of the late, great Tommy Cooper - who is with us for three weeks whilst his owners, number 2 child plus partner, loll about in Vietnam.

So now from this constantly transient house, I have packed number 4 off to Leeds Festival to do some music appreciation combined with camping too hideous for anyone over 30 to contemplate. She went with roughly the same set of don'ts from me as her recent holiday in Majorca - except that possibly the ones about drinking on balconies and not going jetskiing were probably unnecessary! So we are down to three residents, one lodger and three dogs. For now...

The fabulous Circus restaurant in Bath with chef Ali, my gorgeous godson Kips, manager Geoff and me and the intrepid granny!

Yes we can segway! Top fun in the Lake District with Ebabe and Wheezy.

Don't let me go in the Karaoke Bar!

After our brilliant trains, planes and automobiles holiday touring USA last year, the original plan (in as much as anything gets planned in this house) was to return to Portugal this summer with our rather extended family. However, my beloved is too busy with work commitments to factor in any kind of holiday at all, so, holiday-wise things were not looking too promising a few weeks ago.

Then number 4 child decided to go on her coming-of-age holiday with two of her girlfriends to Majorca. Swallowing hard and trying to put all my motherly anxieties to one side, we agreed and currently she is larging it in Alcudia but in receipt of a whole list of instructions from moi: no piercings, no tattoos, no sex, no returning to your drink, no balconies, no jetskis and so on. Or, as one friend put it,  I have just provided her with the complete bucket list!

That left number 3 with no holiday on the cards until fabulous friends, the singing dancing doctors and Skip and Mrs Broccoli asked us to join them in Majorca. These two families holiday together in almost adjacent villas in the hills above Puerto Pollensa and their three sons are amongst number 3's best mates and, despite the lack of comedic presence of my beloved and the gorgeousness of number 4, they still wanted us to come. And well, it would have been rude not to. Or that's my excuse!

So we have just returned from five fantastic days of lying by the pool, eating and drinking (the latter almost to excess but it wouldn't be a holiday otherwise), swimming, cycling and, unfortunately, singing. The cycling was delightfully downhill from the villas which stand a few hundred feet above the resort and made freewheeling down pleasurable but potholey! Of course, the return trip was always a hard slog uphill with extensive use of the lower gears and was, in my case, pitifully slow.

The big night out (and there is always a big night out, isn't there?) was spent in Puerto Pollensa starting with cocktails at the Lemon Bar. I know it's girly but I like a pina colada and I generally manage not to sing the utterly terrible lyrics of what must be one of the cheesiest songs ever written. Then on to Stay, a really lovely quayside restaurant where fourteen of us enjoyed the all-inclusive menu, working our way through starters, amuse-bouches (no idea how you make that plural but that's my best attempt), main courses, puddings, wine and liqueurs. Now it's an interesting thing but I used to think that it was cointreau that gave me a terrible hangover but actually, older and wiser now, I know if I have had so much to drink that I order a cointreau, the damage is already done!

Then off for beers (sensible head on at this point) before being dragged into the karaoke bar. How did this happen? I can't sing but somehow I appear to be reprising a rendition of 9-5 which I swore I would never sing again (fortunately not alone on either occasion). And then somebody (you know who you are but I would hate to blight a promising career in accountancy by naming names...!) insisted we had jagerbombs. Where is my self-control at this point? Anyway, then Skip decided that we would sing Friday I'm in Love by The Cure which I only ever think I know the words to when I am properly sloshed.

Back at the villa, having refused to race a fellow resident up the hill (with high heels, handbag etc - not a good plan) I went to bed thinking a very bad hangover was heading my way. But I am older (a lot) and wiser (a bit) so in the middle of the night I went down to the kitchen and consumed the entire non-alcoholic liquid contents of the fridge door and consequently felt unreasonably and undeservedly well the next day.

Then there were cycle visits to old Alcudia (lovely, narrow streets with pretty bars) and Pollensa - ditto but with a big hill and a church on the top to which, yes, we climbed. And a boat trip to Formentor to the beach which was lovely. And then sadly it was time to return to Yorkshire.

But the other thing about our holidays, apart from the big night out, is that there is always a slightly competitive element. So not managing the famous beach pyramid of Portugal trips, we did attempt to get twelve in a dinghy and here is the picture to prove it.

Big thank you to Skip and Mrs Broccoli for feeding and nurturing number 3 who says that I am no longer his mother (Mrs Broccoli is apparently) and merely a random woman and especially to the singing dancing doctors, and their boys who gamely shared a bathroom with me and never left the towels on the floor once! Thank you so, so much.

The boys - who managed to stay out way later than their parents!

Finally: My beloved is currently driving the support vehicle for Run2London, the 250+ mile run from Leeds to London by Neil Jones, Chris Lawrence and Alan Copp for Cancer Research UK. This is an amazingly brave and no doubt painful challenge for these three guys and they are hoping to raise a fantastic £50,000. If you would like to help them, here's the link:http://www.justgiving.com/run2london

Cricket Tea and Scones

I have just had a look at a blog I wrote in 2011 about Feast - the big bash which takes place in our village each year the first-ish Saturday in July. What I enjoyed reading about the 2011 weekend of fancy dress, pipe band, sports and fairground attractions was the reassurance that some things stay blissfully just the same.

We've lived on the outskirts of this very sociable village for over 25 years now and one of the things we love is the summer (especially when the weather decides to play ball as it is currently) when the village becomes the hub of all sorts of social and sporting activities. Sometimes it feels as if we haven't staggered further than the sports field or the pubs or the homes of our gorgeous neighbours for weekends on end! Once we've had the May Day weekend with the schoolchildren dancing round the maypole and the most unlikely scarecrows gracing village gardens, summer seems to speed on apace towards Feast, the Fun Run (never done it and never likely to), tennis tournaments and the Burty Cup. And the same good friends as well as folks that we hardly see during the miserable winters of recent years all come out to enjoy the fun. We look in amazement that the children seem to have grown at least six inches taller over the winter and the youngsters who competed in the fancy dress of yesteryear are now enjoying their first experience of the late-night dodgems at Feast as carefree teenagers (possibly with a certain amount of under-age alcohol on board!)

This year's Feast was no exception or rather, it was, in my world. I had forgotten my responsibility as washer-upper at village tea when I agreed to do 2nd team tea on Feast day. Actually what I had done was exchange one afternoon of washing up and waiting on for the same thing about 100 yards away in the cricket pavilion rather than the village hall. The requirements for cricket tea appear to be as follows: four loaves of sandwiches, four cakes and 'please can you make scones with cream and jam?', quiches, cocktail sausages, crisps etc served, of course, with lashings of tea and squash - not in the same cups. All of the above was cooked the day before apart from the sandwiches which were buttered and filled whilst the British (well, mostly Welsh) Lions whupped Australia.

So twenty two hungry men fed and a quick change later, we were in the pub for supper whilst our teenagers did exactly as their older siblings before them - enjoyed the fair, joyfully made themselves feel sick on The Edge and made the most of the freedom of unsupervised fun whilst occasionally returning to their parents for more cash. We enjoyed supper in the pub before the braver amongst us were strapped into seats on The Edge or did some rather aggressive driving on the dodgems.

One week later and it's the full-on weekend of tennis tournaments starting with the juniors on Saturday who hurtle about the court with great enthusiasm and, in some cases, considerable skill, with the very serious shaking of hands across the net at the end of every match and a prize-giving and bbq to follow. Then on Sunday it was the adults' turn, except that some of our juniors are now so good that we have promoted them to play in the adult event as well. After three hours of mixed (sometimes very!) doubles, we had two pairs ready to battle it out in the final. And battle they did - it took a tie-break to conclude matters with Mrs Broccoli and the singing dancing doctors' son coming out on top.

Half an hour and a shower later (of the bathroom variety) and we reconvened at Mr and Mrs Bonjour's house for a splendid bbq cooked by chaps who all mysteriously turned up in blue shirts (why?) and the children who ranged from five to eighteen played rounders all together with great spirit - partly perhaps because of the number of beers they had consumed and, for clarity's sake, I refer here only to the teenagers.

So one more summer weekend gone, packed with memories to be stored up and revisited in the long, cold winter months. One more weekend to go before the holidays proper start but the highlight of that will no doubt be the Burty Cup - a limited over, 6-player cricket event named for the late, lovely Neil Burtwhistle who was so encouraging to number 3 child when he first started playing adult cricket. And yes, I'm baking again!

Why would you ever want to live anywhere else?

The boys in blue!

Living the Life of Riley at Villa 775

I am not ashamed to admit I have been living the life of Riley for the last few weeks. First, we went to the all-singing, all-dancing wedding in Saint Tropez - as if we do that kind of thing all the time! Then we took number 2 and her partner to London for the first day of Queen's to watch plucky Brits do what plucky Brits do best at tennis (apart from Murray obviously) and factored in a glass of wine or three on the 32nd floor of the Shard and dinner with number 1 and her partner at Malmaison along the way. Then last week, I skipped off to the Algarve to have a sneaky four days in the sun with my dear friend and Acorn supremo, Louise.

Villa 775 has been the backdrop for a number of hilarious girly tennis trips over the years but sadly those came to an end when it became apparent that I am the only one who still plays tennis. Anyway, fabulous memories of Umpa Lumpa dancing at Maria's, far too much 'drink it, it's only fruit cup' Sangria/Pimms and laughing at, and with, Alex and Rosie until I wept. So when I got the text from Louise inviting me to join her for a few days 'chillax', as the Barnsley lodger would say, I negotiated a pass-out from my beloved, numbers 3 and 4 (cries of "you're going on holiday again!") and the intrepid granny who was swanning off to Ibiza herself and the Jet2/Ryanair bookings were made tout suite.

Arriving at Leeds Bradford early on Sunday morning, there was a large group of tattooed men in matching t-shirts already drinking at the bar. Thinking: 'I hope Deano's stag weekend is somewhere other than Portugal', I checked in and, boarding the plane, was delighted to see that nobody was sitting in my row or on the other side of the aisle, nor indeed in either the row in front or behind. Marvellous, I thought. And then Deano's stag party boarded... next to me, in front and behind. Just me and eighteen jolly stags. Actually they were very polite and once we had established that I was not the stripper, they offered me champagne (too early) and only held my hand on take off and landing - because they were nervous, rather than me!

Met at the airport by the lovely Richard, the only difficulty we encountered was getting out of the car park. The barrier had broken and was being manually operated by a befuddled fellow who, at one point, was the recipient of some serious advice delivered by an enraged Richard who felt we had queued for long enough and stormed out of the car and gave the chap a proper talking-to (think Percy Sugden in Coronation Street if you get my drift).

Back at the villa, we waved off Stephen, Helen and Richard back to sunny Yorkshire and settled down to some serious relaxation. Louise admitted to having done virtually no exercise during her first week's sojourn, but, because I am a bit of an exercise-junkie, all that was about to change. Day 2 and we set off to sort out the bikes. No hire car so bikes and feet were our only means of transport. Having walked most of the way round the resort and organised bikes, I was then ready to organise a little light tennis. "I am digging my heels in!" said Louise as we walked past the Praca. Apparently only so much actual exercise can be done without stopping for milk shakes/pancakes/pina coladas - though not all at once!

The bikes were delivered by the delightful Riccardo (obviously the Portuguese equivalent of the recently departed - in the airborne sense - Richard) who was very proud to tell us that one of the two bikes (I suspect he says this to everyone) was used by Jason Isaacs - cue production of the autograph of Jason Isaacs alias Lucius Malfoy. He also gave us an excellent cycle route which took us through glitzy Quinta Do Lago, which has grown enormously over the last few years, and on to a nature reserve track which finishes at the end of the runway at Faro. Nearly three hours of cycling done and yes, it's milkshake time!

We also did a more challenging - hill and traffic-wise - cycle to the beach at Quartiera where my companion had previously road-tested the best chicken and chips in the area and we managed to sleep off our Sangria on the beach before wobbling back to Val do Lobo for pancakes and pina coladas (more of "I'm digging my heels in!" from Louise).

The highlights were definitely two meals at Maria's on the beach which has been transformed brilliantly and has changed hands for the better. We were looked after on both occasions by Matthew - there'll be a Portuguese spelling of that, but Lord knows what it is - and we managed to walk off our squid and wine on the way back to 775.

There was, of course, a brief trot round a tennis court but the Tennis Centre was very quiet and is definitely in need of rejuvenation. Shame though. It is definitely a case of faded glory now.

So a thoroughly relaxing few days in the sunny Algarve and back to reality and rather a lot of work over the next few weeks. Louise and Meme (and Richard, of course) - thank you!

 Here we are at the end of the runway...

 Louise definitely dug her heels in about sharing her banoffee pie!

And this is what those bad boys got up to whilst we were away - beer with champagne chasers at The Who concert with Skip and Mrs Broccoli!

Saint Tropez - Yeah Baby!

I freely admit to having been a bit 'bah humbug' in the weeks approaching our recent trip to Saint Tropez. I've lived most of my life in Yorkshire and strongly suspected that we (my beloved and I) were about to visit the Rip-Off capital of Europe. As I said, I have lived in Yorkshire for too long not to expect something approaching VFM (Value for Money) in all things - a concept as foreign to Saint Tropez as Yorkshire pudding.

We had been invited to attend a wedding celebration in Saint Tropez with an itinerary of events across the weekend, so we set off on Friday from Leeds Bradford, an airport joyously rejuvenated to make it look even more like a motorway service area than ever and about as comfortable. The plane had a goodly number of wedding guests plus two couples who were not connected to the wedding but were old friends of ours so once we were airborne, I was allowed to nap whilst my beloved 'worked' the plane - something which probably irritated the air hostesses no end but left me happily in snooze mode nearly to Nice. Once safely in our hire car, we sped towards Saint Tropez using the sat nav on the phone rather than the one in the car which wished to address us in German. Of course, my beloved can only follow instructions for so long before going off-piste which he did, ignoring directions as usual but we did, nevertheless, get to our hotel in plenty of time.

The hotel was a fine example of a good idea taken to extremes. Called The Kube, everything was cuboid - right down to the loo seat which did not make for a comfortable ride and therefore did not impress my beloved. The famous Ice Bar wasn't there - presumably melted, unlike my croque monsieur which was the temperature of ice cream in the middle and hot on the outside. But otherwise, it had a couple of very beautiful (though cold) pools and somewhere to lie in the sun so it fitted the bill. Actually it didn't fit a bill that any Yorkshireman expects to pay because just parking the hire car in the hotel car park was 40 euros a day - ouch!

With our friends who were staying in the hotel with us, we made our way into town for the Friday night drinks event with the bride and groom and very nice it was too. And then, we headed off into the centre of Saint Tropez to find somewhere to eat. We can never resist a place named after us so Beaux Arts or BA BA (I know, it's a stretch) as it was signed outside seemed the right choice and we made our way past the bouncers into a very chic restaurant where all the beautiful people seemed to be eating steak or sushi and drinking champagne. We ordered (not champagne which started at 125 euros a bottle) and sat and people watched. Within minutes the music was cranked up to high volume and we were surrounded by people dancing on chairs and in the small spaces between tables. You didn't need a partner, you just danced and yes, my beloved did just that. Brilliant!

Saturday morning and the sun lounger has my name on it. Meanwhile our lovely friends who'd been in the hotel gym by the time we got out of bed had headed off into town to see the sights and eat a delicious seafood lunch (of which more later). We slobbed by the pool until it was time to put our glad rags on for the next part of the wedding celebration - the reception at a beach restaurant. There was a strict timetable for this, but being France, everything ran about an hour and half late. But the wine flowed, the sun set romantically across the bay and there were speeches and dancing till the small hours when we walked, shoeless, back to the hotel to get a few hours shut-eye before the next event.

The following morning we had arranged to see my brother - no, not because he lives in France but because he was on holiday fairly nearby and we hadn't seen each other for over six months. He arrived with the latest Doris, which is how he refers to his girlfriends and we had a lovely catch-up by the pool. He had vastly entertained me the previous day by texting to tell me that he had told the Doris in question that he was five years younger than he actually is. Firmly told not to let the cat out of the bag, this, of course, makes me five years younger too and the intrepid granny has subsequently informed me that on the same basis she would like another 80th birthday party!

Our lovely friends in the hotel were ill. They had been ill all night and since the only thing that they had eaten and we hadn't was the delicious seafood lunch in the harbour yesterday we can only assume it was that. So we set off with our other friends, Sadders and Sue, to the bride and groom's lunch at the beach. This was probably the highlight of the trip - sitting just a few feet from the sand, eating really spectacularly fresh fish and watching the sea lap gently on the shore. Except that this was occasionally interrupted by the middle aged (and older) nudist men strutting their stuff on the beach. It's enough to put me off my prawns!

At the end of the celebrations we made our way back into town to find a quiet bar. Walking down a street towards the front, we bumped into chums, Andy and Claire who have a boat here in the harbour, and before we know it we are whisked away for drinks on their boat. Now I know nothing about boats, but... it sleeps eight plus crew, every inch of it is polished to perfection and if I did like boats, this is the one... but we'd have to sell at least one of the children even to pay the mooring fees, let alone fill it with fuel.

So now we're back in Blighty, catching up on work and washing, applauding our children for not having a party whilst they have been home alone and Saint Tropez feels like a distant dream - until we get our credit card bills!

Call me Bradley!

There are some notable events which happen year on year and are not related to birthdays and family celebrations. One of these is the Acorn Bike Ride with which I have a love-hate relationship. Acorn is my charity of choice and I've been involved since the very beginning thirteen years ago when we started raising money for people with dementia and their carers locally, and research into scleroderma at Leeds General Infirmary. One of our big annual events is our 100k (62 miles) sponsored bike ride which takes place each May.

The Acorn 100k Bike Ride is now in its seventh year and I've written about it before (My Big, Fat Biking Blog) and usually I come at this event unprepared, unready and unfit. This year was going to be different.

Firstly, having ridden on begged and borrowed bikes in previous years, this year I purchased a proper road bike. Doing the bike ride on a cycle with big, bobbly tyres and a frame that weighs a ton is simply making life hard for yourself so the new bike (named Alwoodley for reasons too complicated to explain but it is enough for you to know that it's glitzy) weighs next to nothing and has tyres as thin as bra straps. Excellent. And because it is such a sleek machine, I have done proper - yes proper - training, clocking up over 100k every week for the last month or so. Therefore all my body parts which usually take a massive pasting on the day are perfectly honed for the task in hand.

In previous years, my cycling partner has been the lovely Tim who has been happy to chat to me up hill and down dale for the five or so hours it takes for us to do the ride. He has tolerated me stopping to chat to all the marshals I know (that would be nearly all of them) and has joined in my bitter complaints about the bumpiness of Alwark Bridge which comes near the end when one's nether regions have already had enough. This year Tim was unable to ride so the singing dancing doctor, Philippa (the fastest woman on a bike in our village) and her very tall friend Clare agreed to take me under their wing instead. However there were to be no stops apart from lunch. Now this point I had to negotiate. Daughter number two was marshalling and there was no way I could cycle past (on the eve of her birthday) without stopping for a hug. Also my lovely tennis buddy who bravely does a marshalling post near the end and therefore has to sit there for hours deserves a brief pause in proceedings.

The eve of Bike Ride Day is always the big bake. Everyone on the Acorn Committee plus a few chums do a massive cake bake the day before because we give everyone a terrific tea when they get back. But there is usually some small (or big) hitch the day before which, because I live nearest the route, lands in my lap. So I have muffins, Cornish fairings and chocolate rock cakes on the go in the kitchen when the phone rings...

Last year, a lane on the early part of the route was flooded the day before and we thought we might have to change the route at the last minute involving me driving round to find alternatives on Bike Ride Eve. This year, a call had come in to say that part of the road through Boroughbridge (on our route) was undergoing road works and would be closed on the day. Of course, we go through all the procedures with the Police and the County Council to ensure that all the roads are clear and the necessary permissions have been granted. Also I have been riding the front and back end of the bike ride as training for the last month or so and no advance notices of road works have been in place. Hmmm...

Baking paused, I hop in the car and drive to the aforementioned spot and yes, there are a dozen or so workmen, numerous bits of machinery and three-way traffic lights. I parked up and found a helpful workman to talk to and he explained they were subcontractors and were not working the following day but another subcontractor would be on-site to surface dress the road involving complete closure for the whole of Saturday. He helpfully took me to the supervisor who was asleep in his van (it was lunchtime after all) and he promised to have someone from the main contractors phone me back.

Meanwhile, the formidable Louise, who is in charge of us all at Acorn, was taking another form of action and had contacted our signage friends, HACS who have close contacts with the County Council.  Well, the man from the contractors never phoned but I tracked him down anyway and the long and the short of it was that the roadworks were postponed to the Sunday to allow our 650-plus cyclists through. Phew...

So back to the actual Bike Ride and once my pre-ride duties with our brilliant photographer Giles Rocholl had been completed, the foursome (singing dancing doctor, fast Philippa, very tall Clare and I) set off. My fears that I wouldn't be able to keep up were unfounded. Despite a brief stop and hug with daughter number 2, we arrived at the lunch stop at 10.15am, two hours from the start and nearly halfway! And we made it to the end with only one minor collision (note to self: don't stop suddenly, even at water stops), to be greeted by fast Philippa's husband - Il Presidente of the Cricket Club - and number 3 child at 1.15pm (on their way to cricket) which means that, discounting half an hour for lunch, two negotiated stops and the minor collision, we completed the route in 41/2 hours - my fastest ever!

Not only that, but, because apart from sore knees, some fatigue probably caused by staying out till 1.45am that night carousing, I think that if it ever stops raining I might go for a cycle later. Now that is a result.

Postscript: The Acorn Bike Ride 2013 raised an amazing £50,000 - wow! A huge thank-you to everyone involved: bikers, bakers, marshals, registration team, car park team, lunch crew, signage and food sponsors and our fabulous main sponsor Tim Naughton (loving those socks, Tim!)

Cycling and waving... who'd have thought I could do that without falling off!

Seventeen again... again!

'Mum of four seeks counselling to survive seventeen year old twins'. Imagine that in an agony aunt's column. Someone must have written it, surely?

Well here we are. The twins (numbers 3 and 4 for new readers) are seventeen today. Adorable, sociable, well-motivated (and that's just me!), they are a pleasure most of the time when they're not grunty, grumpy, unreasonable and gobby. And outside in the yard there is a gleaming, fully-airbagged, not-too-nippy car ready for them to learn to drive. Lucky them! I have felt the need to remind all my children that no such new car greeted my seventeenth birthday morning and even though they are sharing, they are very fortunate!

I do, however, remember the other two reaching their seventeenth birthdays and, more particularly, the process of them learning to drive. Number 1, who was just about to enter her 'wild child' phase, was exceptionally challenging because, in order to hear what I (in the passenger seat, gripping door handle with one hand and the hand brake with the other) was saying, she had to take her eyes off the road to lipread - unless I shouted, which I did, a lot. On the morning of her test, she drove to school with me in the front and her three siblings in the back and managed to lodge the car on the stone gatepost of the school. Through gritted teeth, I told all of them politely to get out of the car whilst I managed to reverse the vehicle off the aforementioned gatepost in front of a crowd of students, teachers and parents. Later in the day, number 1 texted me to say that she had passed her test. Words failed me...

Then number 2, always in a hurry with life (she has unfortunately inherited my impatient streak) always drove too fast, was determined to pass her test first time like her sister and turned into our lane far too quickly with me (gripping on both sides as per usual) shouting to her to slow down. We nearly made it round the bend ... but not quite. She went on to pass her test first time as well.

So, imagine my utter delight when our dear Irish friend in the village announced that he had enjoyed teaching his two daughters to drive and he would happily take the twins out practising. My gratitude to Declan O'Kidney knows no bounds! And number 4's godmother has also offered and she can remember what the first two were like so she is probably aware of the terror in store.

There is, of course, the possibility that I am just rubbish at being their co-pilot/driving instructor (although getting two through their tests first time may suggest this is not the case...) but I am more than relieved that I probably won't have to do too much of the white-knuckle stuff this time.

So, if you are out and about on the roads of North Yorkshire and you see a rather smart (currently), black Kia with L-plates: dive in the hedge, park up off the road and breathe deeply whilst thinking sympathetically about the adult in the passenger seat with nerves of steel.

Yes, these two - but not the one in the middle, obviously!