Earlier in the year, Charlie was told he could leave his school during lunchtime, but he absolutely had to be back at the end of lunchtime or he would lose that privilege. He wanted to be able to do this and was panicking about knowing what the time would be, so he used his paper round income to buy himself a watch.

Today we did a tour of my in-laws in East Sussex. First stop was the kids’ paternal grandparents. They gave the kids Christmas presents and we said they should open them then so that the grandparents could see the happy smiling faces full of gratitude. Charlie was given a watch.

A later stop was the maternal grandparents. Same sort of deal, same rules… same present – another watch.

One little tradition that Jayne has with her children is to let them open a present early on Christmas Eve before they go to bed – I can’t really see the point since they will have had so many already it hardly seems worth having Christmas on a specific day any more, but thats what she has always done.

I think we all know where this is going.

Charlie opened a present from his Dad and his new wife. It was another watch of course. Poor little sod – three new watches in a day.

For all future family visits he will have to keep changing his timepiece depending on who he is visiting, although he is considering keeping them all set to different time zones and wearing them all like a spiv.