Observations from Crete

We're fast approaching the end of our second week in Crete, and I must admit that being unemployed and homeless has agreed with me so far.

We've not been up to a heck of a lot, but I thought I'd record some memories of a few of the things we've done and some general observations of Crete so far:

Souda Bay War Cemetery

We went to the Souda Bay war cemetery last week, where 2000 soldiers (500 of which are New Zealanders) who died in the Battle of Crete are buried. The cemetery was immaculately kept, graves all in rows with freshly cut grass and ach grave having individual plantings. Most of the graves are unmarked, with the inscription: "A soldier of the 1939-1945 war - known unto God"... All very sobering.

Today we indadvertedly retraced the route that allied forces took when retreating when the Germans started to overwhelm them on the north coast, from Chania to Hora Sfakion. An amazing drive that quickly climbed 1000m into the white mountains before descending down to the coast on the other side. The roads were fairly decent, albiet very windy - but it's hard to imagine making the same journey on foot 70 years ago, with the Germans in hot pursuit.

Knossos Palace

Earlier this week we too a trip east to Knossos Palace, a 4000 year old Minoan palace built by King Minos - probably most famous (at least to me) for being the setting of the minotaur in the labyrinth story.

The site was discovered 100 years ago by an English archaeologist called Arthur Evans, who excavated it, and then went about restoring it - including adding whole floors to building, painting frescos, and generally making it easier to appreciate the scale and grandeur of the complex.

I'm sure that some creative license would have been used, and I'm not sure that you'd get away with reconstructing a site like this these days - but in my opinion it made the visit interesting on two fronts - firstly, it offered some insight into this fascinating ancient civilisation, and secondly told the tale of when archeology was really in it's hey day - in my mind I imagine the Evans bloke probably being a bit like Indiana Jones - hopefully with a whip and everything - all very interesting.

Cretan Fire Water

The LPG (lonely planet bible, as it was disparagingly referred to by a disaffected hotel owner in Turkey once) has a whole section dedicated to Ouzo; where it comes from, how it's made, how you should drink it etc. It also briefly mentions that you won't see much of it in Crete, where they drink Raki instead - the only description they offer Raki is three words: cretan fire water.

As it happens, I've managed to drink my fair share of Raki whilst being here - as it is common practice to deliver a small bottle filled with the stuff along with the bill when you've had a meal out (dinner and lunch, doesn't seem to happen with lunch for some reason? I might write a letter).

The drink itself is probably an acquired taste, but I quite like it - it's peppery, a little like tequila, and is definitely best sipped. I'm not sure that I'd go as far as to recommend it, but definitely worth a try if you ever find yourself eating out in this part of the world.

Greek Drivers

I'd read online that greek drivers were the worst in Europe, and having now spent over 2 weeks driving amongst them - I'm happy to report that this isn't the case.

Having said that, they do seem to operate under slightly different rules to the rest of the motoring world, I'm not sure if they're officially the road rules, but everyone seems to abide by them.

On the open road, the verge is used almost as if it was an additional lane for slow traffic. If you are going slow (or at least slower than the car behind you) it is common practice to pull over onto the verge (without slowing down) and allow the car behind to pass without having to stray too much into oncoming traffic.

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to completey stay out of the oncoming lane, so conversely when driving along not only do you need to be prepared to pull over to allow faster traffic past, you also need to be able to get out of the way of oncoming traffic who are overtaking in places where they really shouldn't be.

It all sounds quite chaotic, but it seems to work - I'm doing my fair share of overtaking as well as being overtaken - and have taken to driving like a Greek with gusto.

Jet Fighters and Submarines

We've seen some fairly impressive military equipment whilst being here, we've seen one submarine, one aircraft carrier, and the frigate in the picture above - which appeared to be carrying two smaller boats on it - all sail in and out of Souda bay.

In addition to this, there seems to be an airstrip on the opposite side of the bay which is constantly in use - with fighter planes taking off and landing all throughout the day.

We've questioned a few locals as to what all the activity is in aid off, and it turns out there is a NATO base in Souda bay, and it's where they're flying the planes that are bombing Libya from.

Ironic that the airstrip must be only a couple of miles from the cemetery mentioned in the start of this blog - will we ever learn?

This is the life

Just stopped in at our local taverna for a beer and icecream... I could get used to this!

Island life

We've now been in Crete for almost a week, and we're starting to acclimatise to island life.

Our routine goes something like this:

• Go to the bakery to buy fresh bread for breakfast
• Have breakfast (bread, tomato, olive oil)
• Do one or all of the following till lunch: play with Milly, go to the supermarket, or go for a walk.
• Have lunch (either eat in or eat out - depending on budget)
• Put Milly down for her afternoon nap
• When Milly wakes, go to the beach for a swim
• Have dinner (eat in or eat out)
• Put Milly to bed
• Watch TV or read a book
• Sleep

Not the most arduous life, I'm sure you'll agree - it's funny in that we're actually doing so little, but time is flying past - almost too fast, slow down a little time - we're not in a hurry to get anywhere.

Our apartment is lovely, as mentioned previously - it's actually two single room apartments with a shared entrance way - together they are bigger than our old flat in london, although we're mostly living in the front apartment, and only sleeping in the back one.

The apartment has a lovely big breezy "indoor terrace" - which, as you can see in the picture above, has amazing views of the harbour - and the boats coming in and out into Souda port - which is good for Milly, as she has a fascination with boats and loves to point them out and count them - lucky old her.

We've spent a lot of time in the indoor terrace, it offers shelter from the sometimes overbearing sun (I'm not, nor have I ever really been a big sun fan - although I am working on some sort of tan, only so that the Europeans don't point and laugh when I take my shirt off at the beach, like they have on previous holidays) and is close enough to the nightlife that Claire and I can feel like we're amongst it, with a glass of vino in hand and music on the stereo, once Milly has gone down for her night sleep.

Almyrida is also lovely, it's quite small and seems to be almost exclusively setup to cater to the tourist crowd. There is a single road that runs parallel with the beach, with accommodation on the mountain side of the road, and tavernas and bars in the strip between asphalt and sand on the other.

The power has gone out twice in the evenings in the past week, once when we were at home (thank goodness for the macbook battery life) and again last night when we were out for dinner. It must be a fairly regular occurrence, as it was greeted with a cheer from our fellow dinners and the restaurant switched over to generator power within a matter of minutes.

We've been going for daily swims, well trying to at least - it seems that Milly has no real desire to go in the water - and is quite insistant that she shan't go in - she had been quite stubborn about the whole thing - I wonder where she gets that from?

Wednesday was somewhat of a landmark day though, Claire and I managed to coax her into the water and then we spent 15 minutes splashing in the surf - something that we repeated yesterday, and will be looking to do again this afternoon.

Speaking of Milly, her talking is really coming along now - she's pretty good at letting you know what she wants these days, and can respond with an "OK daddy" or "no daddy" when asked if she wants something, and every now and then will chime in with a "thank you daddy" when given something, all very cute.

Today we're going to head back to Chania - a town 30 minutes up the road, and the capital of this particular area - we went the other day and noted it had a beautiful Venetian port, an area we're going back to explore.

We're also going to try and seek out the Battle of Crete cemetery, which is somewhere in Souda and where Greek, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died 70 years ago attempting to stop the Nazi's invading are buried.

Trip in numbers so far:

average temp in over the past 5 days: 32°C

number of clouds seen since arriving in crete: 0

approximate beard length: 3mm

approximate time that Milly wakes every morning: 7:20 (despite all our efforts to make her sleep later, including letting her stay up at night, reducing her daytime naps - little minx!)

And, relax.....

Since my last posting, we left the lovely Ioaninna - a city in our opinion that is well worth the visit.

We then headed 3 hours east, to Larissa - Greece's 4th largest city.

We'd put our hotel's address into our GPS and when we arrived we kept getting directed down pedestrian streets. Having circled and tried several different routes I was about ready to throw the GPS out the window. The hotel website cited on site parking, how could it be in a pedestrianised area?

I parked up. left Milly and Claire in the car, and set off on foot - GPS unit in hand. It turned out the hotel was in the middle of the central town square - and it did indeed have parking. When I questioned how one might park, I was simply instructed to mount the pavement and drive slowly - only in Greece, ay?

For what we saw of Larissa, it was a lovely city - the central area is completely pedestrianised (other than people trying to find their hotels) and almost entirely made up of cafes and bars, which the Larissans sit around at drinking iced coffee, which appears to be the drink de jour in Greece so far.

The next day, we set off again for what was our final car journey before our first extended stop. The GPS (we're friends again) was telling me that it was 3 hours to the port in Athens, and we had 7 hours to get there - which meant we stopped a couple of times en route.

The drive itself was interesting, we ended up driving through the mountain pass where Leonardis and 300 Spartans died trying to hold off he Persian army - as immortalised in the Frank Miller comic 300.

We also stopped in a little coastal town who's name we did not catch (all the roadsigns are written in Greek, which has a different character set which I have not yet managed to master) - which was hosting a world rally championship race that day - the race of the gods apparently? lots of noisy cars and sweaty men tinkering with them - very exciting.

That evening, we approached athens at approximately 6:30pm, and inadvertently got caught up in rush hour traffic - which was like nothing I'd seen before - 3 lanes of chaotic traffic undulating, merging and swerving, whilst idiots on motorbikes with no helmets zigzagged through the cars.

When we finally reached the port I could not believe that we'd made it without a scratch, never again - or at least not for a couple of weeks.

The ferry ride was fairly uneventful - we sailed at 9pm and went to bed not long after that - to be rudely awoken at 5:30am when the ferry docked.

Our apartment is a 20minute drive from the ferry terminal - we'd arranged with the owner to collect the keys from George, the person who ran the taverna situated below the property.

When we arrived in Almyrida, George was not there - hardly surprising as it was 6:30am.

We spent the next hour and a half kicking a ball around on the beach, before making our way back to the apartment, collecting the key from George, and letting ourselves in.

One final car unpack, and we were here - it was a strange feeling, for the last two weeks - or even longer - we've been working hard at finishing work, or packing our house, or driving across Europe - it was a strange feeling not having anything that needed doing - it was finally time to relax.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach - I was pleased to see that there were other German and English visitors, so I wasn't the only translucent person trying to catch a tan - phew.

This evening, we've just put Milly to bed and I'm sat in the front room looking out the window at the Mediterranean wash in and out on the beach and the hubbub of the people in cafes and restaurants on the street.

I can feel the light tingle of sunburn on my skin, nothing particularly painful - just my body letting me know that I'm alive - and life is good.

It turns out that our two bedroom apartment is actually 2 one bedroom self contained units with a shared entranceway, so if anyone out there is at a loss for things to do in the next three weeks - come on over, one of the budget airlines flys to Chania, and from there I can pick you up in our car - life doesn't get much better than this, but don't take my word for it - find out for yourself.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 1986.8

Not hot heat

Well, we've made it to mainland Greece - hooray! It turns out the Greeks are revolting - literally! Albiet most of the protestations are occurring 300 miles away in Athens... if your not sure what I'm talking about, turn on the news!

Since my last blog post, we've left Trieste - we meant to stop in to Miramare Castle - but Milly fell asleep on route - so we decided to make the most of her slumber time and pushed on for our next destination - sorry Eugenio, next time!

Some four hours later we arrived at Camping Panoramico on Fiesole - just outside of Florence. This was a last minute change to our itinerary - as we'd originally planned to go through the Baltic states, but had a change of heart having read some grim stories of terrible roads and crime in Albania.

We'd actually stayed at this camp site in Fiesole once before, back in 2003 - and had said at the time that we'd like to come back at a later date with kids - and here we were, keeping true to our word.

We'd noticed the first time through that the camp site offered cabins, which were cheap and offered all the things that we look for in accommodation - EG have beds and somewhere to wash. Being a campsite, it also had bonus facilities that a normal hotel wouldn't - such as a laundry - which we made full use of!

We were booked in to stay in Fieole for two days, so we headed down to Florence on the second to remind ourselves of what it had to offer.

Having been here before, we had no burning desire (or money) to go to any of the museums, but we thought we'd just pop down and soak up the atmosphere - which we did, as well as leak money - it seems that your average Florentine (is that what you'd call someone from Florence?) is adept of separating stupid foreigners from their hard earned euros.

Having arrived back at the cabin that evening, we settled in to our dinner of bread and cheese - which has become a bit of a staple during this trip.

Over the course of the two days, we got to know the couple staying at the cabin next to us quite well - their names wer Balint and Nora, both from Budapest - funny, I thought my days of spending time with Hungarians were sadly now over - but it turns out this wasn't the case - they were very impressed with my Hungarian vocabulary: hi, thanks, and cheers! - non of which I can spell, so I won't bother here.

Having said goodbye to camping panoramico (we'll be back, again!) we set off towards Ancona and our ferry to Greece.

Another 4 hour drive, and we seem to have stumbled upon a pattern that is working for Milly - set off about 11, and she'll sleep for the first hour, then Mickey Mouse and Handy Manny for the next 90 minutes followed by a stop for lunch, and a final 90 minutes in the car - by the end of which she's just starting to grumble and we're reached our destination - hooray!

We jumped in the ferry, and after a small delay we were off! On the boat we bumped into a large group of elderly english gentleman wearing heavy metal tee-shirts. Having struck up a conversation with them it turned out that they were Iron Maidens roadies - who had set out in advance of the band playing in Athens in two nights time (the band flew separately).

The all seemed like nice guys and were impressed that we'd driven so far from London - having chatted to them I did wonder if I'd missed my true calling in life - I like wearing band tee-shirts, drinking beer, and plugging in musical equipment - maybe I should have been a roadie? maybe a career change I can think about upon arriving back in NZ.

That brings us to today, we were awoken at an unreasonable hour by a "hiya" from the wee one who must be obeyed, after an expensive breakfast of dry croissant and cold coffee we packed up our cabin and awaited being let back into the car to disembark.

Once back on the road, we had a short one hour drive to where we are now, Ioannina - which seems like a holiday resort, but one that is deserted at the moment due to it not being school holidays?

We checked into the hotel (with free WIFI - hooray!) and then headed out to explore the city - had lunch on the bank of lake Pamvotida (more bread and cheese) and took a boat ride out to the island in the middle of the lake - which was your stereotypical greek village, with small cobbled streets and white washed buildings - nice to be able to tick that box so early into the trip.

For a while now, I'd been concerned about the temperatures in Greece, specifically driving in them in our little car with no air conditioning - but so far all my fears seem unfounded - whilst it was quite warm when we arrived this morning, it wasn't anything that an open window couldn't handle - and this afternoon we've been subjected to torrential rain! which has certainly helped to cool things down a bit.

Everywhere we've been today, the news has been on the TV - today is a day of national strikes, and it seems there are major protests going on down in Athens - it doesn't seem that there's anything similar going on in Ioannina - other than locals watching what's happening on TV with interest - but it does make us feel pretty lucky to have arrived today, as apparently all the ports are closed?

This evening we decided to go out to a Greek taverna and treat ourselves to a meal that wasn't cheese and bread. We had a lovely dinner - greek salad, fried local cheese and courgettes, chicken souvlaki, and grilled trout - but you'll see by the picture above that Milly only had eyes for the chips! a girl after my own heart.

Trip in numbers so far:

Miles since n15: 1613.8

Length of beard: must be almost 2mm now? I've got no real way of measuring

Meals of cheese and bread since we left the UK: too many!

Not sixteen, nor going on seventeen

I'm not really much of a sound of music fan, so it might seem strange to folk that I've partaken in a fair amount activity that you would normally only do if you were a SOM fan - for example, I've been to see a sing along version, I've been to Frohnburg Castle - the building they used for the exterior shots of the Trapp family mansion, and on this trip - I've been to see the gazebo at Hellbrunn Palace - where the love scenes from the film were shot.

The day started off well, we packed and headed off about 10 - it was a two hour drive to Salzburg and Milly slept most of it.

It was a lovely day when we arrived at Salzburg, so we parked the car up and headed into the central city - with the intention of going to the information center and asking about where we could go out of the city that had nice grounds where we could have a picnic and Milly could have a run around.

When asking the attendant, Claire also expressed an interest in Sound Of Music sight seeing tours, so the person recommended the aforementioned Hellbrunn Palace - a 30 minute drive in the right direction - we needed no further encouragement, off we went.

The grounds of the Palace were indeed lovely, we had some bratworst that we'd brought at the grocery store - so we fried that up and Milly and Claire had that whilst I was relegated to cheese and bread, the sacrifices a veggie makes, ay?

The gazebo was in the grounds, and does look like the one from the movie - we needed to join an orderly queue of American tourists to wait our turn to get our picture taken - luckily one of them offered to take a picture of us, this is what you see above.

In the grounds there was also a childrens playground area, so Milly had a chance to run around and let off some steam there for a while.

At about 4pm we decided we needed to head off, the GPS was telling us it was a 4 hour drive to Trieste, our next destination, and the hotel check in closed at 10pm - time to get our skates on.

Milly drifted off to sleep almost as soon as we hit the road, and off we went - an amazing drive on a motorway that cut it's way through the Alps - with long bridges and tunnels ensuring that there were no slow windy roads required.

About an hour into the journey, we hit some major traffic - which ground to a halt and sat stationary for about 30 minutes, no idea what was happening but everyone around us all got out of their cars and walked around, stretched, chatted to other motorists etc - making us think it was some sort of regular/expected experience? After a while we got going again with no visible signs as to why we stopped?

Milly woke up during this stop - and was really not interested in being in the car from that point, which was a problem as we had about 3 hours driving left to do.

She's been so good this trip, we have a little portable tablet computer and it's loaded with movies for her to watch, so she's spent a lot of time in the back watching Mickey Mouse or Handy Manny - but even they weren't managing to console here this time.

We drove for a while with a miserable kid in the back seat, eventually stopping at a motorway services in Slovenia to stretch our legs and cook up the rest of the bratworst and some 2min noodle style pasta for us to have for dinner.

Milly loved being out of the car for this brief period, but then hated going back into it when we had to set off again, at this point it was getting quite late and we still had 90 minutes of driving ahead of us.

We pushed on, poor Milly grizzled in the back, and finally we arrived in Italy.

It was funny going through the border controls - both Austria/Slovenia and then Slovienia/Italy - these big imposing structures that you needed to drive through that were now essentially unmanned shells - you'd imagine that at one point before Slovenia being in the EU it would have been a different story.

Trieste is just over the border from Slovenia, so once we were in Italy it was a quick drive to the hotel - we arrived at about 9:30 and were greeted by a pleasant man who spoke very little English - what he did speak he was reading off of a card - but he seemed to know who we were and gave us a room key, so result!

Once in the room we had showers and let Milly play with her toys for a while before putting her to bed, poor little button - we were all so exhausted we all went straight to sleep and then didn't wake again until 7am - which is about as close to a sleep in as we get these days!

Today, we didn't need to drive anywhere as we're here for two nights - hooray!

We went into Trieste on the tram (or hotel is in Banne, on the outskirts of Trieste) and checked out the city - which is very lovely.

We spent the day wandering around the pedestrianised streets letting Milly run and play as much as possible - she seems to love the big Roman style fountains in the middle of the Piazzas - going up and down the steps and running around them - she must have done this for hours.

We had lunch in one of these Piazzas, I had Pizza and claire the Pasta - and Milly shared both of our dishes.

In the afternoon Milly fell asleep in her pushchair, so Claire and I took the opportunity to have a glass of Prosecco each in one of the waterside bars - friends of ours got married today in the UK - so we felt that something bubbly was in order, and Prosecco, the town that the wine comes from, is just up the road - so it seemed like the right thing to do.

Tomorrow, we've got another 4 hour drive ahead of us, to Fiesole near Florence. This time we're going to try not stopping and heading straight there - hopefully making the most of Milly's nap times - we'll let you know how it goes.

Trip in numbers:

Number of miles since N15: 1100.2

Length of beard: 1.5mm

Number of countries travelled through on 10/6/2011: 4 (Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy)

Vegetarian in Bavaria

Having left Antwerp, we headed for Cologne - Milly slept for about an hour but then woke up screaming, I'm not sure she's enjoying all the time in the car - poor wee thing.

After another hours driving we arrived at Cologne, managed to find a park right near the city centre, paid for a couple of hours parking and set off.

For what we managed to see in a couple of hours, Cologne appeared to be a pretty city, with an amazing cathedral. We ended up spending most of our time walking over and then returning on a railway bridge - taking our time to point out all the trains and boats along the way.

We then jumped in the car and headed to Mainz, not much to report about from here - our hotel was on the city outskirts and we never left it to look around.

Probably the only two things worth mentioning was that the hotel appeared to be exclusively occupied by tradesmen (other than us), and that the lobby vending machine served beer! result, I love Germany.

We're currently in Munich, about to start the now familiar routine of packing up and loading the car.

We went into Munich central last night and had a look around, we ended up in the hofbrauhaus - the most famous beer hall in Germany - with litre steins and oompah band and everything - see Milly and I 'Cheers'-ing in the picture above.

We treated ourselves to a bought meal (we've been surviving on bread and things we can cook on our camping stove up till now) - claire and Milly had bratworst and I had kasespatzle - a sort of macaroni cheese - the only vegetarian item on the menu, I think I'd struggle spending more than a day here, if I wanted to have any variety in my diet!

Today we're making our way over the alps to Trieste. We're going to stop in Salzberg along the way and see if the hills really are alive with the sound of music.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 785.5

length of beard: 1mm

Three countries in one day

We're currently holed up in a budget hotel in the docks area of Antwerp.

Yesterday, we left Crescent road for the last time at about 10am, and hit the road headed for Canterbury - a lovely city that seemed to be overrun by teenage Europeans.

The drive was fairly short, so we had some time to look around the city centre - Claire wanted to go to some farmers market at the north of the city - but it turned out to be closed on Mondays - great timing!

We then headed back to the hotel - a travelodge which was a unique combination (for travelodges that is) of being in a characterful building and right in the centre of town.

That evening we attempted to go out for dinner to celebrate the sale of the house, which had just completed that afternoon - but were somewhat thwarted by a screaming 1 year old throwing a tantrum. Non-the-less we persevered and had a somewhat hurried meal at a restaurant specialising in pies - I had the fish and claire the chicken - a fitting last meal in old blighty.

The next day we rose before 6 to pack the car and drive the 25minutes or so to Dover - we were booked on an 8am crossing and I didn't fancy missing the ferry.

Milly loved the ferry crossing, she seemed to particularly like being outside - like in the picture, where you can see us on deck with Dover castle in the background.

An hour later we arrived at Calais and headed of towards Belgium.

This was my first time driving a right-hand drive car on the right side of the road, but as yet no major concern with this - albeit most of the roads so far have been motorways - so it would be pretty hard to accidentally end up on the wrong side of the road.

We arrived in Antwerp at about 2pm, checked into our hotel, and were pleasantly surprised to see that the room had it's own shower and toilet, we were expecting shared washrooms - as is fairly common in France. I'm sure that when booking some of the hotels it mentioned that they had this, we must have that to look forward to.

Having checked in, we then proceeded out to explore Antwerp, we took the tram into town and went to a coffee shop that had been recommended by a friend, before wandering around the old town for an hour or so.

Most of the stops between here and Trieste have been selected because they're approximately 4 hours drive in a straight line from where we've come from to where we want to get to - so it's been a pleasant surprise to find that Antwerp is a lovely city, and well worth the visit.

This evening we cooked ourselves a cheap dinner, pasta and pesto - which Milly ate with gusto - before settling down and watching some TV on the computer.

Tomorrow we're headed for Mainz, but we think we might stop over in Cologne for lunch - to break up the trip a little.

Finally, our trip in numbers:

237.5 miles travelled since we departed N15.
0.5mm the length of my new beard.

Last night in London

Well, we're all packed up, the house is all clean and tidy, and Claire and I are now sat on camping chairs in our front room making the most of what's left of our reliable broadband.

It's been a whirlwind few days since I left work - lots of catching up with friends, packing possessions into boxes, getting rid of furniture items via freecycle and scrubbing the house from top to bottom - positively exhausting and I'm now definitely ready for a holiday.

Tomorrow we'll do one last journey to the recycling centre, a quick whizz around with the vacuum cleaner, and then we'll hit the road - a relatively small drive tomorrow - only 90 minute or so to get to Canterbury - if we time it right Milly might sleep the whole way - strangers things have happened before.

All packed up

After a late night furiously filling boxes with all our earthly possessions, I think we're finally done packing everything that's being shipped back to NZ.

16 boxes and 8 odd shaped packages later and that's about that, still loads of stuff still cluttering up the place, spose it's all for the tip now?

Right, better get on with tidying and packing the bags we're taking around Europe with us.

PS: I hate moving house... never again!

Packing is for chumps

Milly has decided that packing is for chumps. She's going to leave it to mummy and daddy and concentrate on watching telly instead...