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He who hesitates

Apple opened its doors for iPad pre-orders in the UK on Monday, promising shipment by May 28th. Fool that I am, I deliberated, cogitated and digested, confirming in my own mind that I really did need - okay, really, really want - one, and then mulling over Heather's offer to defer purchase until my 40th birthday in September. (I did give that some consideration. Really I did. I even went so far as to agree to wait, although I must admit I was 95% certain she wouldn't take me up on it.)

Anyhow, I finally got round to placing my order this afternoon - the 32GB Wi-fi only model, in case you were interested - only to discover that, yet again, demand is far outstripping Apple's ability to manufacture and distribute the hardware. As a result of dithering for 48 hours, I now find that Apple have shifted shipping dates on new orders back ten days to June 7th. That's 26 - count them, 26 - days of waiting.

It's like the bad old days of the 70s/80s, when mail order companies would routinely advise you to "please allow 28 days for delivery".

What's the old saying about "he who hesitates is lost"? Or, at least, majorly incovenienced? Idiot, idiot, idiot. Why didn't I place the order first thing on Monday morning?

Yes, I know I'm being pathetic and childish. I know it's only another ten days, when I knew I was committed to waiting over two weeks anyway. But the whole point of being an early adopter and accepting that you will be paying a premium - for the initial version of a gadget which will be superseded within months with a vastly improved model anyway - is that you're, well, early. It's like paying for front row tickets on opening night and then arriving half an hour late and sitting ten rows back.

Now if you don't mind, I'm just going to sneak off to a quiet corner and throw a toddler tantrum Zac would be proud of.

Election 2010: the morning after the night before

After two hours' sleep, I would be lying if I said I was at my sharpest at this moment, but let me try and work out what's happened since I went offline at 4am.

The consensus opinion appears to be that we are heading for a hung Parliament in which the Conservatives will have the most seats, but not necessarily the keys to the kingdom. Forecasts project that David Cameron will fall around 20 seats short of being able to form a majority Conservative government. But such are the vagaries of the British electoral system that Cameron may find himself frozen out of Number 10 by a potential Labour/Lib Dem coalition. Whether Gordon Brown would stay as Prime Minister in such a scenario remains to be seen - the possibility of a palace coup should not be ignored.

While it hasn't quite been a bloodbath, there have been a number of high-profile casualties. Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson was an early victim, as was Lembit Opik. The public paid for Jacqui Smith's husband to watch two porn films on expenses, but the former Home Secretary has ultimately paid with her seat. Other Labour ministers and senior names have also been removed by the Tories' 'decapitation' strategy, although Schools' Secretary Ed Balls survived by the skin of his teeth to hold onto his seat in Morley & Outwood, denying writers a plethora of pithy headlines such as "Labour loses its Balls" and "Balls castrated". (His wife, the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions Yvette Cooper, retained a large majority in the neighbouring constituency of Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford despite a double-digit swing to the Tories.)

As became clear early on, the Lib Dems' opinion poll gains from the three televised debates largely dissipated when push came to shove at the ballot box, with just a 23% share of the popular vote, and as many - in fact slightly more - losses as gains in what has been a topsy-turvy and largely disappointing night for Clegg's party. Opik is gone. So too Evan Harris in Oxford West & Abingdon - a safe 7,683 majority over the Tories being overturned as he failed to gain re-election by the narrow margin of 176.

The Green Party will be celebrating as leader Caroline Lucas earned their first ever seat in the House of Commons with her win at Brighton Pavilion. However, BNP leader Nick Griffin flopped in Barking, seeing his party's share of the vote in that seat fall compared to the 2005 election. I'm not shedding too many tears about that one, I have to say.

Okay, I think I've caught up on the headlines. Over to the live coverage.

6:33am: At long last Sheffield Hallam, Nick Clegg's seat, finally declares its result after a long, chaotic and controversial night, returning the Lib Dem leader to Parliament. With 85 seats still to declare, the running score is: Con 271, Lab 220, Lib Dem 47, Others 27.

6.40am: Clegg talked about patience and the need to get the 'right' government in his acceptance speech. From that, I'm assuming there will now be several days of behind-the-scenes negotiations as Clegg angles for Cabinet seats and promises of electoral reform. It's beginning to look like we may not know the final outcome of this election until next week, and there is no guarantee that we will not require a second general election in short order if the situation cannot resolve itself.

7.04am: Gordon Brown arrives at Downing Street looking somewhat the worse for wear, and is immediately bombarded with the question "Are you going to resign, Mr Brown?" The Prime Minister, who is staring at projections of having two million fewer votes and 46 fewer seats than the Conservatives, chooses not to answer. Can't imagine why.

7.15am: I wonder how the series of conversations between Clegg and Cameron and Clegg and Brown might go. "Hi, Gordon, Nick here. I think Home Secretary would suit me well, don't you? And then I want half a dozen other Cabinet posts for Lib Dems, I get to pick out the curtains, and for God's sake try to smile a bit. No? Hang on a minute, I've got David on the other line - I'll get back to you."

7.30am: Update on my watch-list:
- Newbury: Conservative hold, with increased majority
- Oxford West & Abingdon: As mentioned above, shock gain by the Conservatives from the Lib Dems
- Corby: Labour majority of 1,517 overturned by the Tories' Louise Bagshawe, who becomes the new MP for Corby with a majority of nearly two thousand
- Brent North: Safe Labour seat, not expected to declare until at least 9.30am (evidently everyone fancied a bit of a lie-in)

7.37am: Okay, bored now. Paxman talking to Michael Gove, Shadow Schools' Secretary, who is trotting out the Tory party line of thinly-veiled disgust - actually, make that not at all veiled disgust - at the notion that Gordon Brown has the constitutional right to attempt to form a coalition government, despite being roundly thrashed in the parliamentary vote and being forced to sit in the corner wearing a conical hat with a big 'D' on it. Many viewers waking up to this will be wondering how the bloke who finished second gets first dibs ahead of the chap who beat him. To be honest, even those of us who have some working knowledge of parliamentary politics are pretty confused.

7.49am: And now it's the turn of Mandelson, Prince of Darkness to peddle the Labour position. Paxman is exercising his full repertoire of eye-rolling, grimaces and eyebrow-raising - impressive stamina at the fag end of a very long night. Mind you, the over-the-shoulder shot that shows Jezza's expanding bald spot does him no favours at all.

7.58am: Zac has just marched into the living room and demanded that he be allowed to watch ZingZillas. Who am I to say no? Not much is going to happen over the next few hours in terms of resolving the big picture, so I guess it's time for a cold shower, some coffee and then drag myself into work. As I switch over to CBeebies, the current state of the parties is: Con 286, Lab 235, Lib Dem 50, Others 27. Byeee!

Election night: 3.00-4.00am

Okay, one more hour ...

3.05am: A bit of a lull in proceedings. Results continue to trickle in at a fair clip, but the narrative isn't really developing much at all. We think the Tories are doing quite well, but no one knows if they're doing well enough, despite the frantic spin being peddled by the various talking heads.

3.15am: Current state of play: Lab 89, Con 87, Lib Dem 13, Others 23.

3.17am: David Miliband is a slimy weasel, isn't he? Paxman utters my word of the hour: "king-maker". Let's go!

3.20am: Paxman to Liam Fox, Shadow Defence Secretary: "It's twenty past three in the morning. Can we just have a straight answer?" Oh, really, Jeremy? You know you're not going to get anything other than evasion and obfuscation. Why not just ask him whether he has ever led prayer sessions to 'cure' homosexuals, like Philippa Stroud?

3.23am: A thought. Wouldn't it be funny if Nick Clegg had turned his phone off, or was in a spot with no mobile reception? Can you imagine what that would do to Brown and Cameron's blood pressure?

3:30am: No one's rising to the bait. Everyone's studiously avoiding the use of the word "king-maker". Boo! The BBC studio panel is starting to repeat the same talking points they were discussing an hour or so ago. It's like watching Sky Sports News, but without the 'goal of the week' competition.

3.31am: Andrew Neil is now talking to Al Murray and Bill Wyman. That's my cue for a toilet break.

3.35am: Alastair Campbell's bad week continues, as the Lib Dems take Burnley from Labour.

3.38am: Back to Fiona Bruce in the vertigo-inducing BBC studio attic. The poor lass has to tell us in a slightly-but-not-at-all-different-really way that she thinks we're heading for a hung parliament, but nobody really knows. The latest scores on the doors are: Con 122, Lab 107, Lib Dem 20, Others 24.

3.41am: Dimbleby does his best Murray Walker impression as we await the result from Carlisle: "Anything could happen tonight because anything is happening." I have to take my hat off to him, though. A couple of missteps, but he's done incredibly well fronting a live, unscripted and wholly unpredictable programme for nearly six hours (so far). I'm having enough problems operating a keyboard in the privacy of my living room. Incidentally, the Tories take Carlisle from Labour courtesy of a 7.7% swing. That's a big win for the Cameron Crew - it must have been quite a long way down on their list of target seats.

3.45am: Rumours of a recount at one of the seats on my watch-list, Oxford West & Abingdon. Could be a big shock for the Lib Dems, as Dr Evan Harris's majority at the last election was a healthy 7,683. It would be consistent with the current trend though, which seems to indicate that the Tories are doing rather better in the south of the country than they are in the north.

3.53am: There were reportedly three hour queues at polling stations in Sheffield Hallam, Nick Clegg's seat. That's not a minor misjudgement: it's a gross error.

4.00am: We now have declared results from nearly half the parliamentary constituencies, giving us the following clear-as-mud picture: Con 148, Lab 121, Lib Dem 23, Others 25.

Right, I'm off to bed for a couple of hours. Kids permitting, I'll be back around 6am.

Election night: 2.00-3.00am

Right, I'm armed with one final coffee. Pretty sure this will be the last hour for me before I need to grab a bit of sleep.

2.05am: The sense I'm getting is that the Tories are doing a lot of damage to Labour, but perhaps not enough to secure an overall majority. And the Lib Dems are doing no damage to anybody. Beyond that, I'm committing to nothing. How's that for in-depth analysis?

2.15am: Toby's grizzling in his cot upstairs. I know exactly how he feels.

2.20am: Of the four seats I have a personal interest in, Newbury has already declared as a Tory hold with an increased majority, Oxford West & Abingdon is forecasting a declaration around 3am, Brent North at 4am and Corby at 5am. How the hell am I supposed to plan my sleep around that lot?

2.25am: Toby now crying. Time for another feed. Now I mention it, I'm feeling a bit peckish too. Oh, hang on, another big name casualty: Lembit Opik's out on his ear. I'd forgotten he was an MP; I thought he'd become a professional Z-list celebrity dater.

2.41am: Um, some stuff is happening. A run of three results in which Tories capture marginal seats from Labour. It's not looking good for Gordon.

2.48am: Jeremy Paxman unleashes attack-dog mode on Lembit Opik. Clearly not much love lost there.

2.57am: Over to Witney for the declaration in David Cameron's seat. Oh, this is brilliant. Not because there's any doubt over the result - we know he's going to win with an enormous majority (nearly 23,000 as it turns out) - but because we have a proper line-up of candidates. Ten in all, including candidates for the Monster Raving Loonies and the Wessex Regionalists. No surprise as Cameron's opening salvo gently implies that the earlier polling station fiascos are somehow Gordon's fault personally. The BBC studio pundits had been predicting a fairly equivocal speech from Cameron given that more than two-thirds of constituencies have yet to declare, but his words are fairly strong without being complacent: "I believe it is already clear that the Labour government has lost its mandate to govern our country. What is clear from these results is that the country wants change. That change is going to require new leadership." The cameras cut away at the end of the speech, so we don't get to see whether Cameron's next move is to speed-dial Nick Clegg.

Okay, that's 3am. Now what? This is quite good fun, this. Not quite the same as doing live text commentary on the football or cricket, but fun nonetheless.

Election night: 1.00-2.00am

Okay, it's 1am and I'm still here (just). Not sure how long it will be before I fall asleep over my keyboard, but anyway ...

1.03am: The Tories win their first seat, gaining Kingswood from Labour with a 9.4% swing. Now that's interesting, because it suggests that the prospect of a Conservative majority government remains very much alive. Way too early to tell one way or the other, of course. I suspect the word of the hour will be "bellwether", which is what Kingswood is.

1.08am: "Downing Street source - Brown to seek coalition if hung parliament." No surprise. So Gordon will not be going gentle into that good night, then. Is that the sound of scraping fingernails I hear? And Neil Kinnock has just used "bellwether" too.

1.14am: The Tories hold Putney with a significantly enhanced majority over Labour in this marginal - 10,053 versus 1,766 in 2005, a swing of 9.9%. I suspect the mood in Conservative Central Office is currently considerably brighter than it is with their Labour counterparts.

1.20am: If you're a geek like me who's into the nuts and bolts of an election, Wikipedia is a wonderful source of information. I've got Wikipedia and BBC tabs permanently open on my browser to dive into the detail of each constituency as each result is announced

1.21am: Alastair Campbell really being made to squirm by Andrew Neil. Pretty sure I can see Neil's teeth marks in his neck. It's not been a good week for Tony Blair's former king of spin, what with Burnley being relegated from the Premier League too.

1.26am: As has just been noted on the BBC coverage, every Labour talking head is saying lovely, fluffy things about the Lib Dems and gently hinting (in ten foot high pink neon lights) that they will be more than happy to offer a coalition deal to keep Brown in Number 10. I now have two horrible images in my head: (1) Noel Edmonds putting down the phone and saying to Gordon, "Deal? Or no deal?" and (2) Brown pulling down his trousers and bending over. Not good.

1.27am: Oh dear, I think Dimbleby must be getting tired, as he's just misread the swingometer twice in a row (declaring swings from A to B when it's actually B to A).

1.32am: City of Durham is, we're being told, the Lib Dems' top target against Labour. Get on with it, will you? Instead we switch over to Kirkcaldy, where Gordon Brown at least has the satisfaction of holding on to his own seat. Has any reigning PM ever been unseated at a general election? I don't know. After some frantic bashing of the F5 key, Wikipedia is telling me that Labour has held Durham with an almost identical majority to 2005. That's got to be bad news for the Lib Dems; Durham was, I believe, Nick Clegg's last campaign stop.

1.36am: It's all happening now as results start to come in from some of the tightest battleground seats. Battersea turns from red to blue, with a Labour majority of 163 becoming a Tory one of 5,977.

1.41am: Actually, I take back what I said earlier about bad news for the Lib Dems. As it stands, it looks like Nick Clegg has a fair chance of being in the position of king-maker later today, and if he ends up being courted by both Cameron and Brown he will be in a very strong position, even if the Lib Dems end up with fewer seats than 2005. Oh, the oddities of the British electoral system.

1.45am: Sadiq Khan holds on to Tooting, despite a 3.6% swing to the Tories.No joy for Wolfie Smith and the Tooting Popular front, either. (If you're under 40, that's a reference to the old BBC comedy Citizen Smith.)

1.52am: Times columnist Caitlin Moran on Twitter (@caitlinmoran) has just come up with the most succinct and accurate election analysis so far: "My professional view: absolutely fucking no-one has a titting clue what the pissing screw is going on."

1.57am: Oh my God. I was predicting the Conservatives' Richard Benyon would increase his 3,460 majority in my home constituency of Newbury, but over 12,000? I'm with Caitlin Moran on this one. Despite all the pseudo-statistical prognostications by the 'experts', it's very clear that the only thing predictable about individual results is that they are totally unpredictable. So there.

1.59am: I'm a bit disappointed that the early "bellwether" flurry didn't develop into anything more. Oh well. Four hours down, 90% of seats still to declare. Another coffee? Or admit defeat and go to bed? Decisions, decisions ... maybe 20 minutes more ...

Election night: In the midnight hour

It's shortly after midnight as I start writing this pseudo-live blog - barely two hours since the polling stations closed - and there are already several major talking points developing as the outcome of the 2010 UK general election slowly unravels. I have no idea how long it will be until I run out of steam (and caffeine) and crawl into bed, but here goes anyway.

To start with, I was switching back and forth between the BBC TV coverage and an episode of the HBO vampire-based series True Blood. On the one hand, a load of blood-suckers; on the other, True Blood. (It's late, I'm tired - if you want decent jokes, go watch Jimmy Carr on Channel 4's Alternative Election Night.)

I'm trying to ignore the exit poll, which predicts the Conservatives will have the most seats in Parliament, 19 short of an overall majority. For all kinds of reasons, these are frequently inaccurate - most notably in 1992 when all the exit polls seriously underestimated John Major's share of the vote. The last hung Parliament was in 1974, and lasted just eight months.

The word of the night - at least on the BBC - is clearly "caveat". I wonder how many people watching actually know what the word means?

There is clearly going to be a big controversy - possibly even a legal challenge - about the fact that long queues formed at some polling stations shortly before they closed at 10pm. In some cases, people were shut out; in others, people were allowed to cast their votes after the official closing time, by which point it would theoretically have been possible for people to have heard the result of the exit poll. Such scenes are unprecedented, at least in this country. Did I fall asleep and wake up somewhere in Africa?

Statement by the Electoral Commission: "The Electoral Commission will be undertaking a thorough review of what has happened. There should have been sufficient resources allocated to ensure everyone who wished to vote was able to do so." Looks like someone will be getting a bit of a kicking in the morning!

The first three constituencies to declare were the three Sunderland ones - two of which were Labour strongholds. The scramble after each one to interpret the results "if this was repeated across the rest of the country" and attempt to predict the national picture is laughable. I imagine mathematicians everywhere will have been tearing their hair out. Except for the bald ones, that is.

12.15am: Toby crying. Time for a feed. Back soon.

12.25am: Feed done. Nothing appears to have happened in the meantime. Ho hum. Oh my God, now David Dimbleby is attempting to sound knowledgeable about Twitter and Facebook. Oh dear.

12.30am: Nearly an hour and three quarters since Houghton & Sunderland South became the first seat to declare, and we still have only three results (all in Sunderland), none of them in the marginals which will be key to the outcome of this election. I'm filled to the gills with coffee, and I'm getting bored of all the talking heads. It occurs to me that this whole process would be much more civil if (a) results could be spaced more evenly through the night and (b) we got to see the marginal seats first so we could all get more than two hours' sleep tonight. I know it's impracticable. I'm just saying ...

12.45am: Obviously, I'm trying to get a view of the big picture and the race towards the magic number of 326 seats which would give one party an overall majority. But I also have an eye on four seats in particular:

- Newbury, my constituency. The Tories hold a narrow majority over the Lib Dems here

- My parents are in Brent North, a reasonably safe Labour seat

- Oxford West & Abingdon. During my undergraduate days, I campaigned alongside Dr Evan Harris, who is the sitting Lib Dem MP with a sizeable majority

- Corby, where the Tory candidate is the chick-fic author Louise Bagshawe, who I know from her time in Oxford University's political circles. Labour held this seat in 2005 with a narrow majority of barely 1,500

12.50am: The Lib Dems win their first seat in Belfast East, deposing Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson with an extraordinary 23% swing. (The Tories are still seat-less.) It's the first genuine shock of the night; our first genuine Michael Portillio/Stephen Twigg moment. At last, nearly three hours in, it's starting to get exciting.

12.52am: Seriously, why should I give a toss what Maureen Lipman and Alistair McGowan think? Funny that former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil didn't recognise McGowan's impersonation of him, though!

12.58am: At last, the pace is starting to pick up. We now have nine seats declared, with Labour leading the Tories by a 5-0 scoreline. It won't last, of course. We see this pattern in every election, as many of the Conservatives' safe seats are in rural areas who won't declare until much later in the day. I was going to go to bed by 1am, but I think I'll stay up for a bit. Things are just starting to get interesting ...

Election day

So, after three live televised debates, thousands of minutes of television coverage, millions of column inches and God knows how much frenetic online chatter, we finally arrive at the day of reckoning. Today is General Election day in the UK.

This will be the fifth general election since I became eligible and - due to my mildly nomadic existence with first university and then work - the fourth different constituency I will have voted in.

I'll be voting after I get home from work this evening. Newbury is a marginal seat with a Conservative majority of just 3,460 at the last election in 2005, when Richard Benyon (the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) overturned a small Lib Dem majority, so my vote does matter.

In previous elections, I have often stayed up into the small hours until the overall outcome is clear. In 2005, that was 4.28am when Corby in Northamptonshire gave Labour the 324th seat they needed to form a majority government. (Incidentally, the Conservative candidate for Corby this year is the chick-fic author Louise Bagshawe - who famously defected briefly to New Labour in the mid-90s - who I know from her time in university politics at Oxford.)

This time round, with two young children and a full Friday schedule, I'm not quite that committed. My current plan is to settle down in front of the TV after I've voted, see what the (notoriously inaccurate) exit polls are saying, then wait up to see the first few results before heading to bed around midnight. There I'll have the TV on mute to cast an eye on how things are progressing during the small hours.

And tomorrow morning we shall see what we shall see. It promises to be the closest election since 1992 - the last Tory win, incidentally - and possibly the first hung parliament since the ill-fated eight-month Wilson Labour/Liberal government of 1974.

Interesting times.

Swaps!

In yet another instance of reliving my childhood, I bought a Panini World Cup sticker album yesterday - for Heather, not for me, honest!

It brought a load of memories from when I was 11 or 12 flooding back. Buying a new pack or two of stickers from the newsagent before school every morning. The excitement of discovering and then carefully attaching a new player neatly into his allotted spot, mixed with the disappointment of finding that you had just got Ray Clemence again. Clutching an ever-growing stack of 'swaps' (including nine spares of the aforementioned Clemence, say), carefully arranged in numerical order and ready to be bartered in the playground for Little Jimmy's unwanted foil Arsenal badge. Memorising the players of each team on each page and their individual statistics. The pride you felt once you were finally in a position to send off for the last few stickers needed to complete your album.

Ah, innocent times.

These days, there's no need to find a playground to engage in swaps; eBay serves as an excellent substitute (and one which doesn't run the risk of you being placed on the sex offenders' register). But the sense of anticipation which comes when you open a fresh pack of stickers hasn't gone away.

There are many, easier ways of preparing for a major football tournament. And with football websites two-a-penny, there are certainly more accurate, up-to-date and cheaper ways of getting to know the 32 teams who will line up in South Africa in 36 days' time. (Even taking advantage of retailers' multibuy offers on sticker packs, it would cost around £55 to complete the Panini album, assuming no duplicates whatsoever.)

But you know what? It doesn't matter. Whether it's childhood nostalgia or the simple thrill of assembling and then completing a collection, the humble, outdated sticker album still has a place in my heart - it certainly does in my household.

The hard part

After a week away, it's back to the grind of refocussing on what I eat and monitoring my weight and exercise levels.

During our five days on holiday, I was pretty good but nowhere near as strict as I could have been with myself. Normally I'm terrible when we're away, eating with abandon and expecting to put on weight at around a pound a day. This time, however, I avoided major pig-outs - I didn't single-handedly empty the buffet at Pizza Hut and made sure I had two large plates of salad and a limited amount of pizza - and consumed the grand total of no chocolate, no ice cream and three individual sweets. Sure, we treated ourselves to desserts with dinner, and I snacked more than I normally would (treating myself to nuts and flatbreads rather than sweets), but overall I think I managed to strike a reasonable balance without being too draconian.

The good news is that I have ended the week at exactly the same weight - 16st 10lbs - at which I started it. The bad news is that towards the end of the week, despite not going overboard with the eating, I could feel some of my high-sugar symptoms returning. That was pretty dispiriting, as it showed how little it takes to push me back over the edge, but I suppose now I know what to expect in the future and have a better idea of what I need to do to keep things in check.

It's not that I'm feeling down or demotivated, but a bit of that initial rush of adrenalin-fuelled I-can-do-it optimism has worn off, as it always does. I now know how much - or little - leeway I have to keep my symptoms under control. I'm having to face up to the fact my weight seems to have stabilised, having lost just two of the seven pounds required to attain my target of 16st 5lbs by the end of June. And it's cold and wet outside, which (literally) dampens my enthusiasm for heading out for a brisk walk later.

But I know that what I need to do remains unchanged. I need to go back to restricting what I eat and upping my exercise regime, and stay focussed on driving my weight down. Things were going well pre-holiday and I was feeling noticeably better for it, so it's down to me to just grit my teeth and get on with it.

The honeymoon period is over. Now for the hard part.

The last resort (part 2)

If the sign of a good family holiday is that you're all knackered by the end of it, then Butlins was a surprisingly good holiday (at least, surprising to me).

Having already recorded my initial, positive impressions at the mid-way point of our holiday, and having now been home 24 hours, here are my reflections on what made this a good holiday.

Firstly, it provided me with a timely opportunity to do some father/son bonding with Toby. Having only just stopped breast-feeding, Toby had previously spent the vast majority of his time with his mother. But, armed with bottles of formula and without work impinging on my days, I got to spend lots more time just sitting around with my younger son, communicating with him and just getting to know him a bit better. It's a small thing, but a really important one for me. (Conversely, Heather got to spend some decent one-on-one time with Zac, something she hadn't really had the time and space for since Toby's birth.)

You want cute? I'll give you cute

Butlins' proximity to the beach - literally, across the road from the front gate - was also a big selling point. Zac had loved his previous experiences with beaches, and this was no exception. Whether it was playing in pools of water, wandering out to investigate the sea, or just generally messing around in the sand as kids do, he lapped it up. (Toby, on the other hand, just blinked at the bright sky.)

Watch as I miraculously suspend globules of sandy water in mid-air. No strings, honest!

I'm sure I left the sea out here somewhere ...

Where did he come from?!?

And when the weather wasn't so good, there was plenty of stuff for young kids to do indoors too - stage shows (Zac continues to show a preference for Angelina Ballerina over Bob the Builder), swimming, fairground rides and - Zac's favourite - the amusement arcades. (I found it mildly perturbing that he sussed out how to play the Deal Or No Deal machine within five minutes.)

Faster! Faster!

By the time we set off for home on Friday lunchtime, Zac was so tired he could barely stand up, wandering past the big soft play area he had scrambled up and down so enthusiastically on Monday with little more than a weary glance. I think that counts as a success.

We're already talking about going back next year, by which time hopefully Toby will be mobile and able to start enjoying some of what this type of holiday has to offer. And his brother will be a year older and able to participate in even more stuff. I'm really hoping Zac will take Toby under his wing and show him the ropes; we'll certainly give him every opportunity to do so.

So, Butlins gets the big thumbs-up from me. It may be a touch chav-tastic, but it really was a great place for a toddler to spend a few happy and tiring days. And it wasn't bad for the parents either.

The only problem is that we now all need another holiday just to recover from this one ...