I look at him. ‘Matthew, you look knackered. Take some time off. Put a week in the diary in June, the weather will be good and we’ll take the children to the beach and do some fun stuff.’

So he did. And now we have a week of rain stretching in front of us.

So yesterday, because the safari park or beach were out of the question, we searched desperately for rainy-day outings, eventually settling on the InTech Hands-On Science Centre in Winchester. The roads were flooded, the baby threw up and then cried the rest of the way, I felt in a vague shock-like, caffeine-deficient state from two nights of not getting to sleep before about 4.30am (due to the poorly baby), the main route was blocked with all the in-need-of-a-bath rock-lovers making their way back from the Glastonbury Festival, causing us to take a 40 minutes detour and so I grumbled pretty much all the way that the place had better be good. Because I’m that kind of good-time gal.

The centre was okay. The children were a little bit too young to really learn anything useful but they loved running around touching everything (so many germs to pick up! so little time!) and I was at least able to envisage a quiet journey home where they all slept from exhaustion and therefore I could too. The centre is obviously a good choice for a place for schools to take their students but it was like wandering amongst feral animals at a zoo: if they were learning anything I would have been amazed. There was pushing, shoving, shouting, rudeness and generally running about like they owned the place. Ben was knocked down by one child who didn’t even stop to apologise. There were two flights of stairs which Ben ran towards everytime he got bored and most of the displays were too high for him to touch without being lifted. That’s not my idea of a fun time.

Rainy weather + lack of sleep = grumpy mother.

Husband in London for work today on our holiday week + rainy weather + further lack of sleep = even grumpier mother.

Husband taking children off mother’s hands for an hour tomorrow? + new book to read = happier mother.

What are the chances do you think?