Gosh, it’s been ages since I wrote a blog post.

No really, it has.

In the unlikely event you are a regular reader of my writing, you might be under the impression that I’ve been fairly prolific of late, but nothing could be further from the truth.

What is true is that I went through an unusually productive phase during August, a period of time that coincided with me being off work due to my profession affording me the entirety of the eighth month of the Gregorian calendar as paid leave.

Well, the ‘paid leave’ bit is debatable. Some in my profession (that profession being a teacher) would argue that the relatively modest salary factors in the generous holiday entitlement.

And others would argue that just because the students weren’t attending school, it didn’t really mean I could afford to not do any work. Something that was borne out for me in September when I returned to an ‘in-tray’ which might have created significant levels of anxiety in a less experienced professional. But I am not inexperienced. I’ve been ignoring overflowing in-trays for decades.

So I didn’t use August to catch up on my outstanding paperwork. Outstanding in the sense of overdue. Not outstanding in the sense of high quality. My paperwork has only ever been outstanding in the former sense.

I used August to breathe new life into what had previously been an ailing blog. And breathe new life I did. So much so that I produced enough content to keep my blog ticking for all the weeks I was back in work and right up to the next school holiday. Which is now.

I did assume that I would take advantage of this ‘buffer’ to ensure that I never ran out of content again. But I woke up this morning and I had.

Whoops.

Fortunately, I am off work for a few days so I can rectify the situation. I am notionally looking after my children also, as Mrs Proclaims has very much entered the ‘end game’ of her never-ending PhD and it’s been weeks since I saw her. Properly. She occasionally emerges from the tiny boxroom we laughingly call her office to get a hot drink and we do see her at meal times, but she is very much an absent figure much of the rest of the time.

Fortunately, these days my children are getting quite good at entertaining themselves. And mostly they get on, which is a bonus. There have been some falling outs. They are sitting behind me as I write this and I had to intervene a few moments ago to resolve an argument about who called who ‘stinky’ first. It was Mini Proclaims on this occasion. They do have a range of insults, but ‘stinky’ is a popular choice at the moment. Which is quite sweet when you think about it.

When not questioning each other’s personal hygiene, they are currently playing with Lego quite a lot. Little Proclaims used to view ‘playing with Lego’ as commissioning me to make things for her out of Lego, but lately she’s got quite good at making some quite intricate things on her own. Mini Proclaims is less adept at following instructions but has the dexterity to build her own creations, which are not always structurally sound but certainly demonstrate a fertile imagination.

Lego is not a bad activity because it’s quite easy to tidy up.

Yesterday they dismantled the sofa to make a soft play centre in my living room. All good fun and delightful in some respects, but I do quite like my sofa.

As a sofa, I mean.

It is, as I write this, quite a grim day weatherwise, and that has been the case quite a lot lately. It’s been cold and wet. Almost as if it’s October in the UK.

I don’t really mind the weather but it does make entertaining two smallish children for an entire week quite challenging.

As I say, they are quite good at entertaining each other, and thanks to my middle-of-the-range Bluetooth headphones, I can cope for quite long periods of them entertaining themselves.

But I do worry for my sofa.

Do they do Lego sofas?

Perhaps I should bite the bullet and actually take them to soft play.

It’s quite pricey these days though, for what amounts to an hour’s entertainment.

Actually, it does occur to me that my kids find a trip around Ikea weirdly enjoyable.

I can eke that out for more than an hour, and there are loads of sofas there.

The three-seater Ektorp looks right up their street.