Even given my necessarily lax parenting standards (number of kids vs number of arms), I actually found myself so embarrassed by the behaviour of one of the twins today that I temporarily disowned her. The ‘event’ occurred during a garden centre visit to buy a plant. One single plant. At the time I was negotiating with the poorly five year old (yes, I know it is poor parenting to take a poorly child to a garden centre, but he had been given Calpol and frankly, he was going to cry and moan wherever he was so I thought he might as well do it while I did something useful). Anyway, he had persuaded me to increase from 2 to 3 chocolate coins as the price for him to watch the twins feed their snacks to the goats for just five minutes while I chose my Chrysanthamum. 3 chocolate coins is a very high price by my standards. He is a good negotiator.

As we finalised the deal, I heard a little voice say “I need a wee!”. I turned round to find another shopper looking in horror at the twin who had ditched the tights and knickers, pulled up her skirt, and was in the process of peeing in between the reduced plants and goat pen. I looked at her, looked at Mel, and looked disgusted (all genuine). Then, for the first time ever in the history of my being a parent, I looked at Mel and said “How dreadful! I wonder where that disgusting child’s parents are. Imagine leaving her alone like that to wee in a garden centre. Let’s go and tell the staff.” Then we legged it out of sight round the corner until the horrified customer left. We then ran back, and grabbed a twin and older child each and ran for the exit. I was slower as I still had to re-dress said twin but we got out with no-one else seeing (I think).