One of the things I do occasionally to while away a child-free hour is a spot of paramotoring or powered paragliding as a tandem passenger.

This is something that Roald Dahl didn’t invent but should have done: you attach a 4ft propeller to a lawnmower, tie it to a parachute, strap it to your back and then sprint across a field flapping your elbows like a chicken at a rave.

Once airborne, you’re in James And The Giant Peach territory, with pinprick children waving manically as you meander serenely over the heads you know from bath and bedtime. It’s a step away from the everyday world and therefore totally magical.

Roald Dahl had a shed in the garden where he used his pen so that he could step away from the real world and his own squealing brood. The Youngest has recently read a couple of the Roald Dahl classics and pestered me to trek over the Buckinghamshire border to two smashpoppling museums that pay homage to this late genius. And as I drove, picnic-packed, I explained patiently that no, ‘late’ in this case doesn’t mean his time-keeping is poor.

Although Roald Dahl wasn’t there in person, we still had a fantastic day in Aylesbury and Great Missenden. The Youngest headed home happily with Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory under his arm, flat-packed Ikea style. And here’s the warning: don’t ever be fooled by paper engineering kits. When they say age 8-88 they aren’t describing the age span of people who might enjoy the activity. Rather the age an eight-year-old will be when they finish it. And “No glue required”, my asterisk! This innocuous book of cardboard pieces took three rolls of sellotape and the patience and dexterity of an ancient Swiss clockmaker.

Sometime later we (that’s a royal ‘we’: The Youngest was now nowhere to be seen) were on stage 30 of the instructions, slot 732B. Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory has buildings on stalks on top of other buildings, fluted balconies and twisty pipes from one wing to another that had to be completed by six o’clock so we could eat on the kitchen table.

I finally emerged as if by Great Glass Elevator with a construction that bore more resemblance to a cardboard recycling plant than confectionary heaven. But The Youngest reappeared with his eyes round like gobstoppers.

In The Minpins, Dahl wrote “and above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it”.

And after 48 testing pages of monstrous modelling, The Youngest and I found Mother’s Day magic among the sticky tape and paper cuttings without any need to rise above the real world.