Spanish Secrets: Perfect Children
Never, never give a four-year-old a hosepipe and turn your back on him. Craig Briggs and his wife Melanie have some damp fun entertaining English friends with young children.
Over the last few days we have been lucky enough to have had some very good friends from England staying with us, Richard and his wife Yvonne and their two beautiful children Mason who's just turned four and Erren who's one.
For reasons which my wife Melanie still can't quite understand but feels very honoured to be, they chose her as Erren's godmother.
Fortunately the weather has been excellent, temperatures in the mid to high thirties and some lovely sunny days. A week earlier we were praying that the few days' rain we'd had would clear and the temperatures rise again.
Having decided ourselves not to have a family - primarily as our children may well have been ten plus before I'd been home from work early enough to see them awake and secondly that our dream of living here in Spain would be just that, a dream - parents throughout the world may not understand why I find children so fascinating.
Before our guests arrived we had obviously spent time tidying the gardens, making sure the pool was clean and generally giving the house a thorough clean throughout.
Things that had never crossed my mind to do though included putting the potted tomato plants out of reach, because as every good parent knows when your one year old daughter finds the wooden beads on the kitchen door fly screen too hard to eat the soil in the potted tomatoes is much easier to digest.
Also never tell your inquisitive four year old where the hidden compartments are on your rented people carrier, as the remainder of your journey, and any subsequent journeys, are spent listening to the constant thud of the door as it is repeatedly opened then slammed shut.
As for watering the gardens with a hose, always leave this task until the said four year old has gone to bed and not just after he's had his bath and is in his dry pyjamas and never, never, never give this said four year old the hose and turn your back on him to turn the water off.
Until this week I hadn't realised the mental torture a four year old can inflict on his patient, loving and almost saint like parents. His sole purpose for living revolves around seeing how far he can push his parents without getting a reaction.
Both Mason and his sister Erren are like huge sponges for knowledge, everything is an adventure, everything is new and life is embraced without fear or prejudice.
Of course for willing parents the benefits of children and parenthood far outweigh these minor drawbacks and having this special family as our guests has been a real privilege and enjoyment, but for me the perfect children are still those, that at the end of the holiday can be handed back.
I will look forward to their next visit and be a bit better prepared for this life-changing event.
