I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago (Sun 6th Dec) when my wife and I took our two girls (4 years 357 days old and 3 and a half) ice-skating. I am a complete amateur, and hold onto whatever I can in order to stay vertical, whilst my wife whizzes around generally having a ball. This year we hired a “penguin” which children can hang onto as they get familiar with the whole slippery floor experience, and for fun my wife whizzed them around with it one at a time whilst I edged cautiously around the perimeter wall.

At one time, I was holding my eldest daughter’s hand as we crept gingerly around and I said to her that “daddy was useless at this skating lark”, her reply almost floored me there and then “imagine that you were good at it daddy” she said – how good was that? At least I didn’t fall over (SWMBO did though).

No children or adults were hurt during the telling of this short story.