Beverley and I had a lovely day up in Glasgow with my daughter's Lucienne and Sasha yesterday. Two very different girls but lovely in their own ways! Phew, it's easier defusing a bomb than talking about your kids where they can all see what you are saying! Cut the wrong coloured wire and BOOOM!!!! I do feel a bit gifted though when it comes to my kids :-) xxx

Letter 2 of 4 (from me to Daniel aged 12)

Dear Daniel,

Next month you will go to a swimming pool for the first time. The people are what is called ‘treading water’, but you will think that they are standing on the bottom of the pool and jump straight in. They won’t notice you at first because you go under so fast and you will be what is called, ‘drowning’. Your life will flash before your eyes; it won’t take long because you haven’t really had much of one. You'll enjoy the experience; once your lungs have filled with water you will stop choking and just relax as you drift away. You will then be rescued and revived at the side of the pool; it will be the first, but not last time that you vomit and go to the toilet simultaneously (sorry, that means 'at the same time'). Also this will be your first experience and last of touching lips with a man. Yuk! He’ll be trying to save your life but you’ll be scared of water forever, even preferring a shower to a bath.
Don’t get into the back of that ammunition truck when you are 19 and serving in the Army, travel up front. It crashes and you lose a testicle (ouch!) but you’ll still have 3 lovely daughters from the other one. You will travel to Guatemala and bring back two other daughters and the experience of that visit will change your outlook on life, helping you to appreciate everything in what becomes an increasingly selfish society. You will have a son when you are very young but you will marry too young as so many do. Try and stay closer to him because bonds are important and hard to retrieve if lost. You’ll ask permission to go on leave to get married and your Sergeant Major will tell you that he will grant it, but that he would be doing you a favor if he locked you in the guard house for a month until you have come to your senses. Go with him on this, he knows what he is talking about; and what's a month in the guardhouse anyway? You have already been assaulted by the school dentist, I mean your teeth have; it gets worse. Brush your teeth twice a day from now and save yourself a lot of money and grief. Also beware of Solicitors, Estate Agents, Insurance Salesmen, Funeral Directors & anyone promoting weddings; you are about to be pillaged throughout life by these people.
The smoke filled rooms that you hate and have to live with now will be gone one day, but not until you are 50 and you will pioneer this change by creating the first ‘all non smoking pub' in Scotland. Yes sorry, you do have to live in Scotland for a while, but it will stop you supporting them as your second team, when you realise that they want England to lose no matter who they play! We win the World Cup in 1966, so enjoy it because it hasn’t happened again since. Those people that everyone call ‘queers’, get renamed ‘gays’, and most of them are really nice people and produce some of the best music and art that you will ever come across. The Golliwog on the jam jars gets banned because people won’t be allowed to call black folk ‘Wogs’ anymore, which is good hey? And you know your teacher told you that one day there might even be black guards on duty outside Buckingham Palace? Well there is now a black president of the United States!
Dad is telling you not to bother practicing the Guitar but ignore him, practice like hell and try to learn to sing. If you can meet a drummer and two other guitarists you’ll make a fortune. Call yourself ‘The Beatles’ now and copyright the name; oh and change your hair to more of a fringe look! You know those signs on the pub doors which say ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’? Well eventually they let everyone in and now the Irish pubs are the best ones. They even let kids in but they’ve banned dogs again and people who smoke. Sad to report that the Queen is still in place, and would you believe, Prince Charles marries the best looking woman in high society, has an affair with someone who looks like Princess Anne’s horse, the secret service bump his wife off in Paris because she is pregnant by a Moslem guy, so that his new bird can now be Queen! Well there are other theories! You will meet a guy in the company of two beautiful Italian twin girls on the way home in Harrogate when you are about 25. He offers you one as a date because he ‘has his hands full’, and you say ‘no thank you’. You may want to take more time over this decision! It will live in your ‘regrets’ file forever. Mum keeps telling you that ‘honesty is the best policy’, well let me tell you now, my young empty headed pilgrim in the past, it’s sure as hell not! Society is now even more built on greed, and treachery lurks everywhere, with people at the top getting rewarded even for failure.
In the early 60’s we land a man on the moon, but it’s not made of cheese and there was nothing around the other side of it!

Catch you again tomorrow but don't tell Mum or Dad about this. You could warn Dad about nailing the toilet seat to the ceramic bowl, because nails into ceramic don't work. It splits the toilet in half and you all have to go in the garden all week.