Midlife dilemma of the day: how long are you morally obliged to stay on a trip to the park?

When you first take your first child to a park, there is indeed a certain magic in it: seeing their little face light up as they clamber up the steps of the slide, then elbow another toddler off the top... But by the time that child is eleven, the novelty of taking subsequent siblings has worn off and you realise that parks, at least the ones with playgrounds rather than ornamental gardens or contemporary sculpture, are just really dull.
So how long should you be expected to sit there, staring at the sky, hoping it will rain and give you a legitimate get-out? 15 minutes? 20 minutes? A whole hour? Is there some sort of equation whereby time spent in this grassy purgatory must be directly proportional to the sum of the activities on offer and distance from your house, multiplied by the square root of the ambient temperature and number of snacks you remembered to take? And does it make you a bad parent if you refuse to go in goal, or tell them they are old enough to push themselves on the roundabout?

Midlife habits: Sentimentalising decrepit toys

Meet Pandy. He's 38 this year. And he doesn't look too bad, not when you consider how many repair jobs I did on him as a child. If you look closely you can see the enormous double-thread stitching on his arms. I learnt to do that at Scouts. I learnt others things at Scouts, too. But let's not think about them now. This is a blog for all the family. 

I considered giving Pandy to my own children but decided against it on the grounds that he might, like the skeletons of disinterred plague victims, contain spores of old illnesses they wouldn't be resistant to.
 

Midlife album of the week?

Suzanne Vega Close Up vol 1. Released today, 25 years after her self-titled debut (yes, it really was that long ago). Includes reworkings of 'Marlene on the Wall' and 'Small Blue Thing'. Featured this weekend in the FT, and on Front Row. She’s 50, touring Europe, and played a blinding gig at the Orange Prize a few years ago. Rock (cakes) and roll!

Life, death and nostalgia at the car boot sale

I thought car boot sales were just about getting up too early on a Saturday and making a quick bit of cash. Turns out they're rites of passage - philosophically charged exercises in self-examination and relationship diplomacy.

First, the big clear-out - and a trip to the money-draining storage unit. Inside are A level notes, old letters (remember when people used to send those?), vinyl I never got round to eBay-ing, a hand-cranked Singer sewing machine… you get the idea.

continued…

Midlife heroes #1: DCS Foyle from Foyle's War

Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle was born in 1893. He fought in the trenches and married several months before the armistice in early 1918. His wife, Rosalind, died in 1932. So Foyle is 46 when the Second World War begins – a fine age. Did we mention he brought up their son, Andrew, all by himself? Well, we’re mentioning it now.

Foyle’s ‘beat’ is Hastings. (You should go there, it’s nice – apart from Warrior Square, which smells of wee.) He can drive but chooses not to because he wants Honeysuckle Weeks to drive him instead. This is because he likes the way she drives – the way she kicks down on the accelerator pedal with her heavy black boots; turns the steering wheel with a great sweep of her Land Girl arms; sings ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’ in a lusty contralto while shaking her hair free of its simple metal clips so that it CASCADES like a waterfall of pure hair down her slender (but not too slender) khaki shoulders.

Since when did gamekeepers eat fruit cake anyway?

Now, this may look like an ordinary tin of Fortnum & Mason Gamekeeper's Fruit Cake. But remove the lid and... it's a change pot! That's right - a pot in which loose change might, once it has accrued, be kept. So you don't have to leave coins in unsightly piles on furniture, mantelpieces and what have you.

Perhaps other readers have images of change pots they might care to share?

Beatles anger aversion therapy

It's natural as you get older to waste energy you could be channeling into important activities like baking or spiritualism resenting people who have achieved more than you. Like The Beatles. This is foolish, clearly, because The Beatles were and remain an anomaly. And you can't compare yourself to an anomaly.

But look LOOK: George Harrison was 26 when The Beatles split. Paul McCartney was only a year older at 27 (though this didn't stop him calling Harrison his 'baby brother'). John and Ringo were both 29 - Ringo was older than John by three months.

Anyway, the point is, you'll feel a whole lot better if you remind yourself that, on the admittedly rare occasions when they had off days, no-one had off days quite like the solo Beatles. To wit: