THIS week I have been an absolute wizard in the kitchen, and I don’t mean feasting like Nigella, though I can lick a chocolatey spoon with the best of them.

It’s all very well being able to whip up a lime gazpacho with salmon croutons from first principles, but true culinary magic is the creation of an adequate meal from nothing though I’d never make a restaurateur.

The Children have a running joke that the phrase 'packed' lunch box is a misnomer given our Mother Hubbard cupboards and that I should be arrested under the Trade Descriptions Act.

It’s charming to hear young children’s dreams for the future – to be a TV chef or an astronaut, a fire-fighter or a policeman, and I recently overheard The Youngest’s friend say that when he grew up he’d like to be a head-hunter.

For a moment I was impressed he’d considered his options so thoroughly at such a young age.

I quickly realised, however, that he wasn’t thinking of sympathetic interviewing and careful person placement into the workplace.

He’d been listening to the story of Guy Fawkes at school, and it was the traitors’ ignoble end with their heads-on-stakes that had inspired this child’s career choice’ Although the boys can be disorganised I worry they’ll forget their own heads sometimes, they will remember that today is bonfire night, and so we’ll be standing in a muddy field wrapped against the cold like a family of guys for the bonfire, for a fiery celebration of deliverance from Guy Fawkes’ 1605 attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

And with hot dogs dripping with red sauce and round-headed potatos armoured in tin foil, it’ll be a little like a mini civil war.

And as The Boys plan to draw faces on their Marshmallows before impaling the on sticks in the fire, there’ll even be politicians getting a roasting. Some things never change!