As I mentioned when describing the Rambo IV/ Burma debacle, I wouldn't necessarily tag myself as a stupid person. But apparently I am. I also wouldn't necessarily tag myself as a neglectful parent, either but... well...

There's been a few moments, I will admit, where I've been doing things like e-drumming, that have led to the occasianal moment where I'll pop a headphone, and realise that that weird sound in the background isn't interference, but is instead my daughter's anguished screams from her cot upstairs, creeping through the noise-reduction padding of the headset (they really are terribly effective in this respect - she has to be going full tilt before I can even hear a whisper). In my defence, she's never been left like this for more than about five minutes, despite the fact that her screams are of the "I knew it! I knew you'd abandon me to starve!" variety. So although I always end up sprinting upstairs and cuddling her back to sleep with a thousand apologies, it's not really that bad.

Until yesterday, when I realised that I'd let her go a bit... mouldy. I was sitting in Costa Coffee with my daughter on my lap, when I noticed a weird smell coming from her head. Tentatively lifting up her earlobe, was what looked like a ragged gash between her ear and her head. She thrashes around in her cot a fair bit so I wondered whether she's pulled her ear away from her head. So it would be - you know - her own fault.

But on closer inspection it turned out that it wasn't a cut or a scar at all, but rather a thick crust of cheesy mould. Whoops! She was whipped home for a new bath, and the parmesan layer was chipped off (the SMELL WAS DISGUSTING) and daddy sat there wondering whether letting your daughter grow cheese, and then go mouldy somehow reflected badly on him as a parent.