Once all the bubbles are popped, does bubble wrap just become wrap?

Genevieve headed off to school for the day while James was with Grandma Margaret and Grandad Stephen. Grandma was preparing for a virtual Scout camp being held at the weekend and James was to play a very important role – he was chief tester for the marshmallow and spaghetti tower building challenge. The objective was for the Scouts to build as tall a tower as possible using just spaghetti and marshmallows.

The resulting construction was, shall we say, somewhat abstract, but it remained standing which is rather impressive. It probably wasn’t helped by the number of marshmallows that ended up in James’s mouth. They were crucial building materials James!

Funnily enough I did the same challenge on my two-week residential induction course when I started training as an auditor (way back in 2005). I was so sad at the time that I’d researched the prior year’s induction and had seen photos of the marshmallows and spaghetti challenge, so I arrived with a piece of paper with detailed construction notes. It turned out to not be such a mental idea as the actual challenge was to build the structure without talking. So I whipped out my pre-prepared notes and started writing “triangles are the key” enthusiastically on the paper. Yes, I was (and still am) an utter nerd.

Having had his fill of marshmallows, James had fun in the park with Uncle Henry. Sadly I’m not particularly into watching football, and on the odd occasion that I do play I’m less than good. However, I’m enthusiastic and my friends always say that “I ran around a lot”. So I won’t be able to pass a fervent passion for football on to James like many fathers do, but perhaps I’ll just try to instil a persistent mentality and hope that he learns that having a laugh with his mates is the most enjoyable bit.

In addition to football, James also had fun rampaging around the park and generally causing mayhem. Boys will be boys!

Once they’d got back to Grandma and Grandad’s house, James started decorating biscuits with chocolate and mini-Smarties. In a similar vein to the marshmallows earlier, I’m not sure how much ended up in his mouth rather than on the biscuits. I do know, however, that he still had the remnants of chocolate around his face when he got home later in the day. So, all in all, I’m pretty sure he enjoyed the experience.

Genevieve did so well at school today. It was the end of “sports week”, the culmination of a week of various physical activities. Genevieve arrived home and presented me with her “Shining Star” award for outstanding effort during the week. This was accompanied by a stunning page of photos detailing everything she’d over the past four days including yoga, ball skills and dance. As exceedingly proud parents this brought joyful tears to Megan’s and my eyes. And the icing on the cake was another page with a beautifully handwritten account of what she’d done during the week. Another week of school done for Genevieve – in fact her penultimate week before the summer holidays.

But our bubble of happiness was abruptly burst by Genevieve and, ironically, some bubble wrap. While Megan and I had been enjoying and re-reading Genevieve’s summary of the week, she’d sneaked in to the front room and had discovered the bubble wrap we’d left for her and James to play with together. Before we knew it, she was skipping (with an actual skipping rope) across the bubble wrap, as well as stomping and dancing over every inch of the air-filled surface.

We swiftly removed and binned the remnants of the bubble wrap (or should that just be “wrap” as all the bubbles had been unceremoniously popped) before James arrived home. Had he seen what he’d missed out on then there would have been trouble!

From hereon in it was a fairly standard evening – dinner and then bed for all. Day 37,911,201 of lockdown – done.