Well, it's only taken twelve years, but Smaller Son has finally made up for losing his pants down the changing room drain.

You forget, don't you, what small children can be like? Our friend Steve forgot. He and his children were staying with us. They were eight and eleven - quite grown up compared with Smaller Son who was only four at the time. Steve was taking his children swimming. In a moment of utter folly, he offered to take Smaller Son too.

Now at four years old Smaller Son swam like a fish. His little trunks were weighed down with badges. His legs were still too little to reach the bottom of the shallow end, but he could do a few lengths, dive in the deep end, swim underwater and do tumble turns. No problem in the water at all.

What he couldn't do was get dressed quickly. He would put his head through his jumper and then go into a total daydream before putting his left arm into the sleeve. And by the time he'd got his right arm through you'd probably have had a philosophical discussion on the Nature of the Universe or Arsenal's chances in the League. Or whether the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were better than He Man.

Steve couldn't cope with that and tried to hurry the lad along. Fatal. That's when the pants went down the drain, shortly followed by a sock. The shoes seemed to have vanished but eventually turned up ten minutes later at the far end of the changing room. Steve's kids by now were showered, dressed and onto their second Coke in the cafe while Smaller Son was still hopping round half dressed.

At which point Steve - really a very patient man - picked up Smaller Son and brought him home as he was, still carrying his shoes, one sock and the soggy pants he'd fished out of the drain. Then he collapsed, exhausted. Funnily enough, he never took my baby swimming again...

Last month Steve was 50. We bought him some nice bottles of wine and thought it would be fun to make special labels for them. You know the sort of thing - a picture of Steve and much description involving things like "mature", "full bodied," "well rounded".

Smaller Son's the computer expert in our house so we set him on it. Bless him, he spent hours on the job. He tried the picture all ways, fancy borders here, different type face there. He made it bigger, smaller, printed it up. I thought it was great. But, being a perfectionist, he didn't, so went back for another few hours adding and adjusting. Until finally, a bit like Michelangelo when he'd finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling, he declared his masterpiece complete and fitted the labels oh so carefully to the bottles.

Steve was chuffed to bits. The labels were much admired. He would, he said, keep the bottles long after the wine had been drunk. We explained how it was really all the work of Smaller Son. "That makes up for the time you took him swimming." I said.

"Yes." said Steve, brimming with birthday good humour.

Then I could see his face clouding over. I could see him remembering the lost shoes, the soggy socks and pants, the fishing expedition down the drain, the sheer physical effort of getting someone else's stubborn four-year-old dried and dressed in under half an hour.

"Well, almost....."

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