Growing up in a predominantly female household surrounded by hormones and daily arguments about which sister had stolen my hairbrush, I always sort of assumed that I’d have daughters and the whole process would repeat itself.

It came as quite a surprise when we produced not just one, but three of the male variety resulting in a family that is distinctly lacking in pink.

For all my feminist rantings about how important it is not to gender stereotype, it is pretty hard not to see that there is a fundamental difference between the majority of boys compared with girls.

Over the years I’ve come to realise that little boys are like puppies. They need to be fed regularly, exercised as much as physically possible, and although they may look like they're fighting, they’re actually just playing.

Our lives have become attuned to this way of thinking and any time we have free as a family, unhindered by the ties of sports fixtures, we spend according to these rules. Shopping trips are a total waste of time; thank goodness for Amazon and the fact they are more than happy wearing exactly the same clothes every day until they physically don’t fit into them.

My all time favourite way to spend a weekend is, according to the puppy rules: out in the fresh air and with a smattering of fine food, preferably cooked by anyone other than me.

This weekend, we binned the football match, ditched the school rugby tournament and even turned down a children’s party so we could meet up with some lovely friends at the haven of all things middle class – Daylesford Organic Farm, just outside Kingham.

Despite the fact that at heart, I’m really more of an Old Macdonald’s farm type of girl, I put aside my working class chip and tried to see past the car park full of Range Rovers and the carrots that cost £25 each.

Remembering the golden rule of parenting boys, we swept past the beautifully arranged shelves bedecked with enough cashmere throws to carpet a Russian oligarchs house and ignored the fig and ylang ylang scented candles on the basis that no one seems to know what ylang ylang actually is.

There’s no getting away from the fact that Daylesford is a pretty nice place to hang out.

The breakfast was divine, I could tell those chickens live the high life when I tasted the scrambled eggs served with bread that was doubtless kneaded by the hands of 15 vestal virgins. After the feeding, comes the exercise and so we headed out for a seven-mile walk armed with a slightly dodgy map and an even dodgier sense of direction.

With children squeezed into a variety of unsuitable footwear, we traipsed through the most beautiful countryside and by carefully drip- feeding eight boys a variety of sugary snacks, we made it back to Daylesford before dark.

Maybe due to weariness from coaxing my youngest around the last two miles; despite his insistence on walking at a pace that wouldn’t make a snail break a sweat, I softened slightly to the prices in the shop – they do after all put the £5 bread in the most lovely paper bag. In fact there really is nothing at Daylesford that bears any resemblance to an actual farm, it’s an oasis of style and tranquillity, vegetables artfully arranged that wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Homes and Gardens and aroma of freshly printed money and expensive room fragrance rather than manure.

That is until eight small boys return from a muddy walk and proceed to eat their way through the free tasters leaving the designer greengrocers looking slightly worse for wear.

We were never destined to be part of the green welly brigade, the only shooting we know about is done with a Nerf gun and a bag full of foam bullets, and in Essex, my motherland, stewed fruit with sugar is called jam not compote.

Putting all this aside, days like that are what weekends are all about. Fresh air, good food, great friends and overpriced groceries.

If there’s a way to spend a day, this was pretty close to near perfect set off by the fact on the way home the puppies (I mean boys) fell asleep.

But all good things must come to an end, so now it’s back to work, sliced loaves and Tesco veg. And nothing wrong with that.

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