Scalectrix

Sebastian has slowly been acquiring a substantial collection of Scalectric which is no small financial investment. Most of it has been from generous friends and family as birthday and Christmas gifts. And it just broke my heart when he couldn't play with it. Not because he couldn't but because his mummy is a big mean control freak who hates mess.

Now before you yell and scream at me for being so mean, just imagine the gigantic health and safety risk of tripping over the track in the middle of the night and destroying the child's favourite toy.

So we weighed up the benefit of not destroying it by keeping it put away or driving me insane by having it out all over the place. And we came up with an altogether absolutely brilliant solution. actually, it wasn't my idea at all. It was my husband's idea but don't tell him I told you he had a brilliant idea. It will just go to his head and I'll never hear the end of it. And I really couldn't bear that.

The solution was to clear out the loft of our garage, lay down some carpet off cuts and lay out a huge track which would be guaranteed to provide hours of uninterrupted amusement. This led to the inevitable problem of realising that clearly we didn't have enough track to build the dream track and we set off in search of building what appeared to me adequate set into a more extensive and seriously over the top set.

All that matters though is the children quite happily set off with Marc several hours ago for the garage loft and I haven't heard hide nor hair of them since. And my house is neat and tidy.

Scalectric, in case you live in a cave (or outside the UK) and haven't had the opportunity to appreciate the finer points of cruising round the track at full speed and sending your cars careening off the edge, is an electronic race track which can entertain children (and men - same thing) for hours and hours and hours allowing mummy to enjoy her bath and several good books with a large glass (or perhaps the whole bottle) of a glorious white burgundy wine. Cheers!