LAST week was half term and whilst I tried my hardest to keep things moving apace in the Artweeks office, children rampaging outside the door was not conducive to top level productivity.

And I can report with certainty that The Youngest is neither fit to be anyone’s personal assistant or able to be quiet for longer than three minutes.

Quite aside from the rampaging of Wreck-It Ralph, the week was as action-packed as a video game.

On Monday, for example, we cultivated the garden with aplomb, which isn’t a brand of spade but a sure-fire way to stockpile aching muscles, and a slash-and-burn technique gleaned from early Neolithic livestock herders.

We also invested in a new holes-in-dustbin garden incinerator that, amidst the damp, wasn’t quite the picturesque chimenea I’d pictured on the patio alongside which to enjoy something tall and stiff.

On Tuesday I found myself walking on egg-shells, more literally than is usually implied by the turn of phrase: The Youngest had drawn faces on Bob, Billy and Boris Eggs and built for them an unboiled Lego world . . . in which they got smashed.

Fortunately for the front room carpet, it was Pancake Day which brought an abrupt end to the lives of their boxed compatriots Bernard, Bertie and Buster, along with the usual scramble of batter-tossing onto kitchen lino and sour lemon faces set against the background buzz of a ceiling alarm which warned that thick plumes of smoke were summoning lifeguards from far-reaching coastlines.

The only lull in the high-energy holiday campaign was a long morning in Mark and Spencers’ fitting room and a considerable wait in an Oxford jewellers doing brisk trade – it wasn’t clever to choose the day before Valentines to pop into town for a small watch repair and to replace a school sports bra for The Daughter.

I’m sure the red heart-encrusted negligee will be a real hit on the netball team, and I hope the women of Oxfordshire weighed down with gold timepieces enjoyed the pleasure of ticking time towards the end of the week.

I’m just happy to have watched the passing of another precious school holiday.