It is with regret that I must now state that Doctor Who is no longer a flawed but awesome show. As of this past season, it stinks.

I will now tell you why.

1. The Doctor. I don’t like him. It’s hard to know where to put the blame for this. Pinterest is full of that quote by Lynne Thomas: “Eccleston was a tiger and Tennant was, well, Tigger. Smith [is] an uncoordinated housecat who pretends that he meant to do that after falling off a piece of furniture.” Yes yes, ha ha, but that’s a problem. The Doctor is supposed to be competent. He’s not supposed to flail around wildly without a clue. When his companion asks him “What’s the plan?” and he says “No idea”, you’re supposed to believe he’s about to extemporise a brilliant one, not be saved by dumb luck. This latest Doctor genuinely doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, and rather than making him seem appealingly vulnerable or gritty or whatever Moffat was going for, it just makes him look pathetic. And kind of evil for taking innocent young women into dangers from which he has no particular eptitude to save them.

So whether it’s a case of the writers writing to the natural vibe of a hopelessly miscast Doctor, or Matt Smith’s inability to pull off the “I have something up my sleeve” aura, I don’t know. But it seriously weakens the show. People watch shows about awesome, competent people in the hopes that they will indeed be awesome and competent. It’s comforting to know that House is going to diagnose the not-lupus, that Scotty will fix the warp core. Yes, the Doctor is supposed to dash recklessly into danger to some degree, but at a certain point it stops being devil-may-care and just comes across as slapdash.

2. The companions. Apparently they’ve coalesced into a formula: basically “take the things everyone liked about previous companions and bypass character development in the hopes they’ll be an instant hit”.

It’s lazy. Start with Rose (yes yes, I’m talking about New Who, hush up.) The in-universe consensus was that she was special - particularly loyal, caring, peace-loving, brave and so on. This was considered to be a Rare Thing. Then we got Martha, and admittedly nobody liked her; but on paper, she was just the same - they didn’t feel they could go for a character who was not brave, tolerant, loyal and so on, so they gave her most of Rose’s attributes as well. Even Donna, who was something of a risk, had the same traits under her mouthiness - Ten told her one time not to go “eww” to an Ood, and from then on she stepped up and became as neatly, instantly, protectively accepting of other lifeforms as Rose ever was.

Come Amy and Clara, they’ve got it all figured out. A companion must be cute, perky, not intimidated by the Doctor though having a deep, intense respect and loyalty to him; sassy; inclined to boss him about; ridiculously unfazed by any situation which ought to necessitate culture shock or basic caution; physically brave; twinkly-eyed; and so on.

It annoyed me with Amy, but at least her relationship with Rory (despite the obnoxious lucklustre-engagement-retconned-into-sublime-Forever-Love thing) gave her something to go on. Clara? Nothing. She is entirely uninteresting, not because she’s not technically awesome, but because awesome is now passe. There’s nothing to her except her standardised Awesome Companion Attributes. She has no room for character development, because the writers wanted to reassure the audience that she’d be just as cool as the last companions, so they made her perfect from the get-go. So instead of character development they had an arduous, drawn-out, supposed-to-be-tantalising “impossible girl” plot which resulted in no emotional payoff at all - just an “Oh, that’s how it happened. Huh. K.”

And in a recent episode, the demand that Clara remain flippant, unflappable and perky made her come across as kind of psychotic. Remember when the Cybermen had the kids she nannied brainjacked? She made a couple of offhand remarks to the Doctor about it, he assured her they’d be fine, and she proceeded to completely ignore them. That, dear Moffat, is not how you create a sympathetic heroine. If a woman entrusted with the care of minors forgets to glance their way every now and then when their lives are in danger because she’d rather flirt sassily with the Doctor, she is not adorably chipper. She is a sociopath.

3. The plots increasingly make no sense. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this; anyone who’s watched the last season without going “Huh? But isn’t she - wait a minute, how can they - but that makes no sense” at least once an episode needs to take papers in elementary logic and remedial continuity. To be fair, this isn’t a super-new problem. “We must leave Rory and Amy in the past forever because the time rift at that particular time and place is all oobly”, anyone?

4. That episode with the grumpy sun was abysmal. What. What was the point of that. Maybe David Tennant would have had the gravitas to carry off that limburger of a speech about how Old and Mighty and Deep his memories were, and how Much he had Lost; maybe he would have sounded like a self-important blustering buffoon, like Eleven did. And what else did we get out of that episode? Oh, Clara’s compassionate and nice to children. Gosh, just like every other companion ever. Pity she forgot about that when children for whom she was directly responsible were in mortal danger. But hey, she can crinkle her cute little nose!

5. “All of time and space” is getting narrower and narrower. This has always been a problem, but there’s way too much Victorian London floating around at the moment. Steampunk is nice, but so’s variety. When’s the last time we saw a really nifty alien landscape? The abandoned theme park was a cool idea, but underused.

In short: yes, new Who has always had problems. It’s always been inclined to schmaltz. It’s always had characters with unlikely personality traits. It’s always glossed over some of the problems of acclimatising to space/time travel, presumably because there are only so times “it’s bigger on the inside” is new news (or funny, Moffat, even self-referentially); ditto with “I’m the last of my kind”, the Time War, the Doctor’s age and so on. Perhaps that’s a good reason to keep companions round for longer than two seasons. If the Doctor explains basic facts about himself, it’s a rehash which gets boring fast; if he doesn’t, the companions have to just magically be a perfect counterpoint to his angst without actually knowing why, and that doesn’t work.

And now it’s not getting away with its flaws. I don’t find it lovably patchy any more, but genuinely idiotic. I’m keen for the 50th anniversary special, mind you; and hopefully things will pick up with a new Doctor; but I don’t think I want to be strung through another tedious season waiting for the high-concept plot to get to its big reveal. And if we’re introduced to another companion who absorbs the revelation of alien life in half a second flat with a wink and an in-joke about running, so help us all.

Here is our newest, cheapest, fluffiest family member.

Her name is Cecily. She is three and a half weeks old. We like her exceedingly.

That is the good news.

The bad news is the reason for her appearance. In short, Abby’s guinea pig Ertha is no more.

It was not my fault. I stress this.

One day she was chillin’ around guinea-pigging, and the next I noticed she was considerably smaller than Gretel. Investigation revealed she could not eat. Further investigation revealed an enormously long lower tooth projecting tusk-like into her lip-cleft. (Is there a name for that?)

Accordingly, and over the protest of Helpdesk Man who loudly evaluated her monetary worth, I took her to the vet. A blonde young vet-nurse chipperly agreed that she did indeed need a bit of a tooth-trim, and did the deed in about four seconds flat. She also informed me that Ertha was not in fact skinny; rather, Gretel, whom I had brought along for comparison, was a bit of a heffalump. Lalalalala, thunk I, what an awesome guardian I am, taking them to the vet and everything.

After that, Ertha seemed to perk up for a bit. I never actually saw her eating, but she wasn’t nosing fruitlessly at blades of grass any more; she just didn’t seem interested. So I assumed I was just catching her at moments of fullness. Until one morning I found her sleeping in her bedroom, which seemed suspicious; and a few hours later, she was looking distinctly un-snortly.

So I called the vet and made an appointment a few hours away, and then called back two minutes later in a panic telling her we were coming in now, sirens blazing. The snortlepig clutched the cage anxiously all the way, peering in through the bars periodically and saying “I think she’s dead!”, which was less than reassuring.

When we got there I was half-hoping to be met by a crack team of ER vets, with a tiny stretcher and a wee oxygen mask and the hint of exciting interpersonal relationships crackling from behind their masks. Instead, we stood awkwardly at the front desk being clucked at by a sympathetic receptionist until an elderly vet wandered out. He whistled vaguely through his teeth, removed poor Ertha from her cage, plopped her on a towel and gave her a dubious prodding.

“Mmmyeah, there’s nothing I can really do,” he said, sounding not at all remorseful about the fact.

“Oh,” I said. “Um, why not? Do you know what’s wrong?”

“Nah,” he said.

“She’s really skinny,” I said helpfully.

“Nah, she’s in pretty good condition,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I said. “I’m pretty sure she’s lost weight since a few days ago.”

He gave her another squooshing and said in mild surprise “Oh yeah, she is skinny. Yeah, she’s really skinny. Mm.” We stared at her for a while.

“Did you say she’d had her teeth trimmed?” he said. “Miles too long.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “Well, if you clipped them now could we still try to feed her?”

He looked even vaguer. “Nah, it’s too late. She’s… well, she’s dead.”

She was clearly not dead.

“She’s still moving,” I pointed out.

He looked at me with a tired effort at sympathy. “Yeah, that’s just a reflex. She’s basically dead. I couldn’t hear a heartbeat.”

“But-” said I, and then we stood awkwardly and watched her. I tried to explain to the snortlepig that the squirming guinea pig on the table had passed on. I convinced neither of us. Several minutes later Ertha was still opening and shutting her mouth and moving her legs in an undeniably non-dead-looking way. The vet looked bored, then shifty, then guilty. Finally he sighed, and said unenthusiastically “I suppose we can take her out the back and keep her warm and try to get some fluids into her. She’s dead, though.”

“Um, thank you?” I said. “It would be wonderful if you could do anything. She’s my sister’s guinea pig and she loves her very much.”

He sighed wearily again and wrapped Ertha up in the towel. Completely. I gave him a startled look, and he reluctantly unwrapped her head.

“I’ll call you after I do the autopsy,” he said, and disappeared out the back, presumably to bash poor Ertha over the head with a brick.

A suspiciously short time later, we got the call. Allegedly, and I use the term with high dispicion, he found a centimetre-long growth at the back of Ertha’s throat that had been preventing her from swallowing. The vet also assured me that while her teeth were too long, he’d seen guinea pigs with worse teeth who weren’t dead. I got the impression that if he could have summoned the oomph, he would have asked me not to sue them for shoddy vetsmanship.

And thus passed Ertha, a sweet and pigly creature who had given great joy to the world, and deserved a nobler passing.

After that, of course, I googled guinea pigs and found that they are social creatures, and without a hutch-mate are liable to depression and bulimia and bad poetry and dying of ennui. And the last thing I wanted was for Gretel to perish of loneliness. But Abby, not unnaturally, preferred to select her own replacement guinea pig. So we decided to find a short-term companion - a Donna, if you will - for the remainder of my family’s trip to England; after which the snortlepig would assume custody of it and purchase another friend beside, and Abby would be free to find her own, as it were, auxiliary pig. Savvy?

And here we are. Cecily and Gretel seem to be getting along - on their first meeting Cecily burrowed underneath Gretel and hid there with her head sticking out one side and her rump the other, which didn’t bother Gretel at all. That bodes well for a harmonious relationship, don’t you think? Apparently older guinea pigs tolerate the introduction of babies quite well, but you have to be careful when introducing two pigs of similar ages. They rumblestrut. This is a thing. Rumblestrutting. Isn’t that awesome? It means waggling one’s back end while purring to assert one’s dominance, and from now on I intend to do it at all social functions.

They also have been known to scratch each others’ eyes out, which is less adorable; but that’s mostly boars, and who wants those anyway? Nobody, judging by the price difference. $5 instead of $15. Srsly. Feminism.

So there that is. I am sure Abby would be happy to accept donations to a suitably noble cause in lieu of flowers.

1. Smokey: “Tell me a story about guinea pigs and shmallows.”

Pig: “Talking shmallows?”

Smokey: “If you wish.”

Pig: “Okay! Once upon a time there were three guinea pigs. Their names were Toby, Hansel and Gretel. They were very happy together. One day, Hansel got sick. But he didn’t die. He got better and they got married again.”

Smokey: “…Who got married again?”

Pig: “Hansel. Then one day, a shmallow came walking out of the forest, with eight little baby shmallows walking behind her. And Hansel wanted to show them the church, because he wanted to show them the church. So - hang on, I have to change my dress. It’s too poofy.”

[Two minutes, later in pyjamas]

Pig: “And then Hansel showed them the church. The end. Now you tell me a story about a snake and a shmallow.”

2. Pig: “Ooh, Mummy, I know! If you died, before you died you could make Daddy a Prince Charming costume, and then like if you had cancer you’d get very sick, and after you died, he could go to Disneyland and he could find a lady dressed like Cinderella and he could marry her in his charming prince suit, so they’d be Prince Charming and Cinderella!”

3: Miles: “Wazzat?”

Smokey: “It’s a quiche.”

Miles: “Izza very cute quiche.”

1. On Sunday at church, Tiny Miles spied a woman who had changed into her running clothes so as to jog home. Her top, while eminently respectable, was sleeveless. Miles took one look, pointed at her upper arm and squealed, “Naked!”

We’re Reformed Baptist, dude, not Closed Brethren.

2. “Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.” Henry Ford. Sooth.

3. On the internet today someone advised the wives of the world to show appreciation for their husbands by pre-toothpasting their toothbrushes for them, to give them a little frisson of Caring and Thoughtfulness when they stumble into the throom of a weary morning. Now, I realise I am not the veriest paragon of a wife, and therefore my opinion counts for little: but nevertheless: Que?

4. Last night we had the fire going, and I asked the pig if she wanted to roast some shmallows. Always alive to the romance of a situation, she was very keen and insisted we find a blanket to snuggle under for maximum cosiness. “Mummy, this is so beautiful and nice,” she sighed rapturously as I opened the “Reduced to Clear 99 cents” Pascalls retrieved from the dodgy bin at Pak’N'Save.

I put a shmallow on the skewer and handed it to her. She extended it cautiously towards the flame and tossed it in. Puzzled, I retrieved it and toasted the shmallow. I then handed it to the pig.

Whereupon she gasped and said “You can eat them?”

Me: “…Yes? What did you think you did with toasted shmallows?”

The pig, shrugging: “Just burned them up, I guess.”

Homeschooling.

5. Yesterday we went to the zoo. It was fun. It was long. By the end of the trip we were all a bit past it, and dragged ourselves round the supermarket wishing we were elsewhere. Especially Miles. As I was searching the likker section looking for $6.99 plonk for the lamb chops, he started to throw a tantrum and loudly wailed to the world “Whissskeeeeyy! Whissskeeeeeeey!”

6. Just heard Miles crowing “Bad baby!”

Helpdesk Man and myself, in unison: “What did you do?”

Miles, smuglier still: “VERRAH bad baby!”

Still haven’t found out what he did. Ah well. I’m sure it’ll make itself hideously obvious at some point, like the pens he posted into the grille of the fireplace.

7. This morning in bed Miles crawled over, gave me a big sloppy kiss and then shouted fiercely “SO! CUTE!”

8. A question for the single ladies. Or gents. (Hey! You should meet up.)

Would you choose to meet and marry a woman (or man) of stunning beauty, impeccable intelligence, functional but not obtrusive fertility, a clean police record and comely financial prospects, with a wonderful sense of humour, cleanly in habits, domestically gifted, politically sane, etc, etc - in short, the perfect woman (or man); if you knew that after 40 years of blissful wedlock, he or she would suddenly flip out and kill you?

I asked Helpdesk Man this question and he said “Sure”. “What if it was me?” I said, and he went “Ehhh…”

I cry at night, sometimes.

9. Dammit! As I was typing this, Tiny Miles fossicked through my bag and found my lip balm, which he has been strictly forbidden to touch on account of he pokes his fingers in it, and if a girl who wears neither makeup nor heels and has never had a massage, facial, manicure, pedicure or more than a triannual freakin’ haircut can’t have a nice smooth unmolested lip balm surface with which to caress her cragged and strinky lips, what is the point in being a woman?

Anyway, so rather than trucking off with it sneakily like a regular baby, Tiny Miles put the whole thing in his mouth like a cigar, made sweet hooty noises until I looked at him, then beamed and went away. It took my typing-addled brain a full two minutes to catch on; whereupon I tracked him to his sister’s bedroom. He was sitting, pantsless, in a little wooden wagon, beaming with delight and holding the unopened lip balm out to me. He is a bad baby.

10. In a fit of health, I just made Baked Cauliflower Poppers. Tastes just like French fries, she said. She lied.

Helpdesk Man’s favourite winter top got big holes nibbled out of its front by mice.

I fixed it.

Tonight, as part of our International Star Wars Day celebrations, the pig watched A New Hope with us. She has watched Star Wars before, of course, but not recently, and she’s fuzzy on it. As such, her opinions had a certain untainted innocence; and I noted them down. For your edification:

On Threepio: “His mouth is like a piggy bank.”

On Tatooine: “This is much nicer than the ship bit. It’s all beachy.”

On Obi-Wan: “I think he’s quite nice, actually.”

On Luke’s lightsaber: “I thought they were green or pink or red or green. Be careful! You could chop your hand off.”

On Luke speeding home in his landspeeder: “He’s gonna waste that petrol.”

On the cantina sequence: “Oh yeah, I remember, this bit’s horrid.”

On Chewie: “You always don’t understand a word he’s saying!”

“He’s got a funny tongue, that lion thing.”

“The lion talks nonsense. Can I call him a lion?”

On Luke’s training against the remote on the Falcon: “Ha! It got his bottom!”

On any ship or Death Star sequence involving Imperial politics: “I want to see Princess Leia.”

On Obi-Wan farewelling Luke on the Death Star: “He looks kind of sad.”

On the garbage masher: “What is this stuff they’re in? Is there something in it? It looks horrible. What about Princess Leia? She would hate it! …Is the wall moving?”

On the sentry on the Rebel base: “How did he get up there?”

On Obi-Wan’s dematerialisation: “He melted! …Did he die?”

On Luke and Leia being shot at after Luke shot the controls that extend the bridge: *hearty giggling*

On the attack on the Death Star: “Mum, who died? Porkins, who’s Porkins? I don’t like him, he’s a nasty one. I don’t like his face.”

“Are they battling now? I want to see the sand again.”

“Haha! He said ’stay on target’! …Someone blew up again.”

“When will the black one be blown up, Mummy, the bad one? I’m happy that Princess Leia isn’t fighting.”

[singing] “The Death Star, the Death Star, the Death Star, the Death Star, the Death Star…”

On Han, Luke and Leia’s triumphant hug after the Death Star blew up: “They’re spazzing!”

___

Luke: “Who is she? She’s beautiful.”

Snortlepig: “That’s Princess Leia! Have you seen a girl before?”

___

C-3PO: “No, I don’t think he likes you at all. No, I don’t like you either.”

Snortlepig: “He used to like him.”

___

Luke: “But they’re gonna kill her!”

Han: “Better her than me!”

Snortlepig: “They’re not gonna kill her. …Oh.”

___

Han: “D’you think a princess and a guy like me could-”

Luke: “No.”

Snortlepig, watching Han: “I like that smile!”

___

R2-D2, watching Han and Luke get their medals, stamping up and down: *beep boo bop boop*

Snortlepig: “Awww! He wants one too!”

___

All of which almost makes up for the fact that she kept asking when the big green squishy monster that talked funny was going to happen.

To the library user who had The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland 2013 on reserve:

I am very, very sorry. Helpdesk Man left his coffee within pig’s-reach, and I left the volume likewise. In retrospect, we ought not to have done these things. I am even sorrier that the copy upon which Miles carefully spooned half a cup of coffee was the sole remaining copy in our city’s public library system.

If it is any consolation, it is a very good book, and worth buying. I happen to know - painfully well - that $32.89 will buy you a copy. You can probably buy it for considerably cheaper, in fact, being in a position to shop around; unlike some.

To Helpdesk Man:

Now we have to go to Disneyland this year.

Our sole remaining chicken, Wingdings the Dogproof of the Order of the Stoopid Hairdo, appears to have lost the plot. For reasons known only to herself she spent Saturday night outdoors in a torrential downpour. Come morning she looked like a particularly repellent pipe-cleaner recovered from the interior of a Sarlacc. She whiled away the hours staggering backwards around the house, scraping her beak along the ground with her head on one side, staring cock-eyed at the world and giving every indication of having already become Chicken Zero.

Helpdesk Man offered a little too eagerly to go all Atticus on her white meats; but by the time we got back from church she had fluffed up and regained some low-level sanity, so we decided to wait and see. I realise that this is the kind of thinking that causes people to shout at the screen; and  sure enough, the next rainshower saw her sopping and crazy again. Today, Wingdings is nowhere to be seen. Humanity, we apologise.

This being our track record, it is a wonder that we have been entrusted with the temporary care and feeding of not only a dog, but two guinea-pigs. The dog is Holly, a mere four-day addition to the household. The guinea-pigs, Eartha (Ertha?) and Gretel, are small fluffy reminders that my ungrateful family of origin is heading off to the British Isles for the next, if you don’t mind, ten weeks. Missing, I might add, two birthdays, a whole term of both violin and choir, and numerous prime babysitting opportunities. Some people.

3:30 PM: Snortlepig: “Miles! Don’t sit on the guinea-pig! What were you THINKING?”

7:00 PM: Miles, towering over Holly, who was lying meeky on the floor: “Sit down! Doggie! SIDDOWN DOGGIE! SIDDOWN DOGGIE!”

9:30 AM: Miles, shouting inches from Holly’s (silent) nose: “Hush you dogs! Hush you dogs! HUSH YOU DOGS!”

1:14 PM: Snortlepig: “Ooh, you know what we could do? You could make Miles a dog costume, and me a bigger dog costume, and a fat one for Daddy, ’cause - you know. I’m not saying he’s fat, because that’s rude. And we could all wear the costumes, and then when Alison came to pick Holly up, she’d be all concerned and say “Where did all these dogs come from?” … We probably better not.”

Daddy: “Oi.”

Snortlepig: “I didn’t say you were fat, Daddy.”

4:30 PM: Snortlepig, shouting across the orchard: “Mum! Holly’s met Macy!” [Macy is the orchard dog.] Pause. “They’re BEHAVING!”

4:45 PM: Smokey to visiting small child: “She likes you? …Mm. No no, we won’t pull her hair out. Guinea-pigs look better with hair. No, we won’t poke her eyes. Don’t squeeze the head! That’s important. Squeeze the other end. Oop! Careful with the eyes. Do you think she likes that? Hmm, I think she’s looking a bit sleepy. Maybe we’ll put her back for now.”

5:02 PM: Helpdesk Man: “OK Miles, time to sleep. Night-night! Kiss for Mummy… kiss for your sister…”

Miles: “Kees a doggie?”

6:12 PM: Miles: “Hi doggie! I’m naked!”

6:35 PM: Smokey: “No, Miles, that’s your toothbrush! Don’t brush the doggie’s… give that here.”

6:37 PM: Miles: “I bash a doggie!”

Smokey: “Miles, no! Give me the fork.”

6:58 PM: Smokey: “Miles, don’t feed your baked beans to the doggie. Doggies don’t like baked beans.”

6:59 PM: Smokey: “…Well, maybe doggies do like baked beans, but I said not to feed her. Those are your beans.”

7:00 PM: Smokey: “Miles! Don’t! Feed! The dog!”

It is now 7:43. Smeg. I forgot to feed the dog.

1. It is the season for mice, apparently. The orchard dog has been joyously snapping them up among the apple trees; the orchard pigs have been spotting them by the dishwasher and squealing “SO CUUUUUTE!” repeatedly.

Helpdesk Man being less impressed, we have been loading a lot of mousetraps. Most commonly, the mouse licks the peanut butter off the trap and prances away smugly; less often, the thing works as advertised and Tiny Miles gets to admire the corpses up close before we fling them over the fence. And then there was last week.

Before bed: a trap, peanut-butter-baited placed enticingly by the open door of the pantry.

Come the dawn: a mouse lying dead with a bloody nose in front of the pantry, and no trap to be seen.

We still haven’t found the mousetrap.

Chilling, no?

2. Here are my two latest cakes. The first was for a two-year-old nephewpig, who wailed at it like an ingrate. The second was for Helpdesk Man’s 30th. He did not wail at it, but he did fail to finish his piece in favour of someone else’s trifle; so it’s been a pretty psychologically taxing run, cakewise. I should write a book on Suffering.

3. This past weekend, we loaded up the pigs, a sword and a bow and arrows and went to Wellington so Helpdesk Man could attend a martial arts conference. I was a little apprehensive about the prospect of two days in a strange city with no car, two pigs and a foreboding weather forecast - to say nothing of the eight-hour trips there and back - but I’ve been lobbying for a return to Wellington since our honeymoon, so it seemed silly to pass up the chance.

It wasn’t too bad, actually. We rented a tiny house, which turned out to have one bedroom fewer than might be desired and was located up a perilously steep hill, accessible only via numerous ramps and flights of stairs. Still, clean and cozy, a proliferation of spare towels, and a kitchen well-stocked enough to make nachos and ravioli, so we didn’t feel we should quibble - especially after Miles throomed on their duvet.

On Day 1 we went to the zoo, where Tiny Miles confounded me somewhat by his attitude to the beasts. His invariable first question - “Izza cat izza dog?” - made sense, but when he followed it up with “Eyebrows?” I was frequently stumped. Does a cheetah have eyebrows? I guess, kind of. But an otter? A porcupine, of which only the hinder end is currently visible in any case? Deep stuff.

Wellington Zoo is a nice little zoo - by no means spectacular, as there aren’t any elephants and the Little Blue penguins had done a bunk. But there was a Giraffe Talk, at which the pigs were given sprigs of browse and allowed to feed the beasts. The snortlepig kept shying away at the critical moment and dropping her leaves - Miles, however, suffered no such qualms and happily let himself be licked all over while the giraffe attempted to wrest the leaves out of his chortling paws. At the end of the encounter Miles waved goodbye to the giraffe’s retreating head, and then sighed with beatific content: “Cat!”

On Day 2 we went to Te Papa. This is a museum - apparently a good one. We studied it in the only history class I took at Uni, which despite being called Communication In History: From the Printing Press to the Internet and being taught by a rabid Tolkien fan, was mind-numbingly dreary. What museums have to do with the history of communication, I never did find out: but we learned that Te Papa is a respected, highly up-to-date and progressive institution.

Which is all very well, except that

a) I have a phobia of museums

b) I have a phobia of stuffed, skeletonised and otherwise corpsified animals

c) I have a phobia of large aquatic life

and d) Te Papa is an a) filled with b), some of which are c).

Despite this, I have been twice - once on the initial horrifying trip that cemented a) and involved me being literally dragged, sweating with clenched eyes, round a bunch of taxidermied stags by my two heartless sisters who kept saying things like “Ooh, let’s take her into the Marine Mammal Skeleton room!”, while a museum assistant looked on with mild interest and said “Is she all right?”; and once to see a display of LOTR movie props, which just goes to show that Geekdom Conquers All.

As do drugs, apparently. This third trip wasn’t planned, but after waiting for a bus which didn’t come and walking all the way into the city, trying to persuade the pigs that the shops were interesting enough not to whine about visiting them, but not so interesting that one needed to escape from one’s pram and destroy them - well, any remotely child-friendly space was appealing, be it ever so festooned with the scaffolding of plesiosaurs.

So we went in, and I averted my eyes from the giant creepy anchor that looms in the foyer, and asked the information lady which pig-friendly areas could be accessed without passing beneath a fibreglass reconstruction of the Kraken - which she took rather well, even advising me to go down this side of the lifts because there was the skeleton of a famous racehorse on that side (side note: why? WHY?); and there we were.

The areas we visited were on “Pasifika” and “Invention”, and they were moderately well-done; but I spent most of my time gazing in fascination at my son and heir.

Miles is not a shy child. Where the pig saw Things to Do, Miles saw Friends to Make. His modus operandi was to find a baby, walk over to it, kindly but firmly appropriate its toy, and then make its parent play with him. And they did.

If he happened to come across a temporarily babyless adult, he would instead break the ice by thrusting out a foot and saying “Izzabzzagllbta BOOT!”, or perhaps pointing and saying “Lady!” repeatedly, until the parent admitted to being a lady. At one point he brought a hand-puppet goat to a man and said “Wazzat?”, and when told it was a goat decided the man was a zoological authority and brought him a possum, an octopus and a parrot for inspection while the man’s neglected daughter played by herself in a corner.

He was only snubbed once - by a pre-pubescent, shy-looking Asian boy who tried to brush him off with a vague smile. Miles, being immune to the concept of a brush-off, continued to attempt conversation for a good two minutes while the boy shifted from foot to foot and cast occasional nervous glances in my direction, as if to say “Call off your baby, woman, it thinks it’s human”. I probably should have, but it seemed a shame to deprive a forward-thinking museum of such a compelling anthropological performance piece.

On the way off the bus home, Miles cheerfully shouted “Thank’oo! See’oo! See’oo! Bye-bye!” to the bus driver. Giggles from every adult in the vicinity. I don’t know where he gets it from. Some recessive non-recessive gene, I spose.

And I did not have a panic attack, even when the corner of my eye caught the grinning front end of the racehorse (who was looking far smugger than circumstances warranted.) All hail Big Pharma. Srsly.

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