Better to bare your chest than your butt.

DEAR SPOOK, we woke to quite a hard frost and your daughter was out at 7.45am trying to coax a sledge down the field. It wasn't for sliding, so she gave up and defrosted the car for me. Fortunately, you don't get fined for a patch of frost left on your window in the morning, as you do in NZ, but I think they would have something to say about only a patch of unfrosted window, as could happen to me if I leave for work 10 minutes before I am supposed to be there.

We put some new lights on the kitchen window and when we looked up at the house on the way to Meg's running club, they looked really sparkly. Of course, that reminded me of the year you hung lights all around the house and were so proud, you made me go to the bottom of the road to admire them. It was a windy night and I couldn't be bothered, so I drove down. As I went down the drive, a car pulled up at the layby at the bottom of our field. I waited until it went (which it did quite quickly) and then drove down and looked up at the house. Yip, it was very pretty.

When I got back to the house you were giggling. You asked if I had seen you. I said, no, but the light looked lovely. You had seen the car pull up at the bottom of the field and assumed it was me. You bared your butt at the bedroom window, which possibly explained why the car had driven off so fast. Of course it wasn't me, and I had missed the show. Unlike the occupants of the car. I imagined a father and child stopping to look at the pretty house and the father driving off fast before the child saw the nasty man.

Finn went to rugby training and enjoyed it as usual. Then he had English homework to do. It is such a pleasure to be able to help him with subjects I am comfortable with. He had to read a passage from Dickens, (Christmas Carol, of course) and write 5 questions for the rest of the class to answer. When he first read it, it was gobbildygook, but as we went through it and pulled out questions, he began to understand. Give me English any day. How can you pour over maths and it start to become clear? When I don't understand it, I don't understand it; end of story.

Quite fancy you in that photo.