Last week I got trapped in a rotary drier – fortunately not the plug-in tumbling type, nor for the whole week – but it was a nasty shock nonetheless.

I have been using one of those three-armed spinning lines successfully in the garden for a decade or more, but The Boys had cleverly re-engineered the safety catch into a Pirates Of The Caribbean death-trap and so, after three minutes of happy hanging, I suddenly found myself pegged to the central pole encased in damp towels.

Amongst billowing sheets as buccaneer sails, the boys have also been squabbling over water guns – a preliminary stage before they can get on to proper fighting with pump-action water pistols.

During the recent hot week, they also valiantly tried to fill a quarry-sized paddling pool this way to avoid arrest by Thames Water for civil defiance with a hose-pipe. After a full day’s sweat, the water was merely skin-deep (they should have waited for the Jubilee rain) and I was on the lookout for a lido. Please take care not to confuse a lido with libido: it’s an easy conversational mistake to make but caused considerable embarrassment in the company of wild swimmers, who love a quick dip in the county’s rivers but wouldn’t necessarily opt for an aquatic outdoor orgy.

Now over in Dorchester-on-Thames of a Saturday dawn, hardy swimmers triangulate the lake with brightly coloured hats like a heaving shoal of tropical fish.

This is followed by a bout of wet wetsuit wrestling akin to fish out of water or early amphibians evolving into cyclists – all preparation for yesterday’s Blenheim triathlon, Oxfordshire’s biggest multisport event. Seemingly half the county crammed themselves into the estate’s lake to perform a giant tadpole re-enactment of D-Day landings – I’m not sure what Churchill would make of it.

For me, Blenheim was gentle rehab, however oxymoronic that sounds.

I’d also hoped to do some sightseeing while pounding history beneath my feet but the guidebook wasn’t waterproof. And if it got too damp, I knew I’d have to brave the rotary drier again, a thought more terrifying than any recuperation triathlon.