Thursday 21 September 9:30pm

I didn’t know school had written to Mum with advice on parental supervision for pupils with school laptops. The reason there wasn’t any post today was that Mum had met the postman as she was going to Mrs Ramsbotham’s for a PCC Caucus Strategy Meeting and had stuffed the letter in her handbag.  So when she got home and said “Well, where is then, Barry? This new lappie of yours? Have you broken it yet?”  It was a bit of a shock, and I had to pretend that I had completely forgotten about it in my desire to cook Mum a sumptuous meal of microwaved toad-in-the-hole (Sainsburys, £3.49, sell-by 21-09, use-by 24-09).

It seems that Mum has hidden talents, no doubt acquired at her Women’s Group, for within seconds of my retrieving* it she had it going and she was playing a card game called Solitaire.

I was genuinely impressed, for after all Mum is but a woman.  “How did you do that?” I inquired (well, gasped, really).

“I plugged it into the mains”, she replied somewhat tartly. “It is a convenient and widely understood method of making laptops work when some half-baked incompetent has drained the battery.”

Then she started rummaging about in the bag.  “Where’s the router?” she inquired.  “Surely you haven’t lost it already?”

She explained impatiently that without a router thing we wouldn’t be able to Serf the World-Wide Web, and school should have given me one if I am to send in my homework by Electronic Means.  I haven’t a clue what she is on about, but I’ll ask Simon tomorrow.  I’m sure I’ve seen a cupboard in the Woodwork Lab with a label saying “Chisels and Routers.”

*those gerunds again! What a fruitful lesson with Mr Grudge it was!