So the big trip to Peppa Pig World has been and gone. I even took the kids - in fact - the whole clan was in attendance, my sister and her family, my Mother, my family - poor Peppa's lot didn't know what they were in for. Basically, for anyone not in the know, Peppa pig is a little pig that lives with Daddy Pig, Mummy Pig and her younger brother George and features in various adventures on children's TV shows every morning, pretty much without fail. And with possible parallels to many families (such as mine) Daddy Pig is a bit of a chump but has a go at whatever the rest of the family encourage him to do. And so we all trooped to Paultons Park near Southampton, where they have an adventure themed Peppa Pig World and had in short, a brilliant day. Except I have realised I am now not quite as lithe as I once imagined. In fact I have never been called lithe, hard adjective to really pin down on me, possibly my little finger is lithe compared to my thumb, but that's about it. So as Noah led me up a huge set of metal steps, just scraping the 1 metre minimum height for the Wave Rider, I was instructed to climb into a rubber water sled and hold on tightly to my 3.5 yr old son and grip the edge of the water sled, and it was, how shall I describe it - a bit of a squeeze. 

I heaved myself into the sled and Noah, whooping with excitement, scrambled between my legs and shrieked with laughter. We were racing four other sleds down about 100metres of water slide. I gulped, desperate for the sled to contain us both as suddenly an automatic ramp lifted us up in the air, a light went green and suddenly we were off. And I mean off. 100kg backloaded water sled with minimal weight in the front goes fast. We actually got air on first hump - that shouldn't happen. Noah screamed with joy, I silently screamed thinking as one of the 3 ice creams I'd had to eat ten minutes before (a couple of the children only the wanted the flakes - can't waste quality ice cream like that - principle) - was about to come right back up. We won, by a long way, and we did just stop before the barrier at the end - but only just - other sleds stopped 20metres before reaching it,

Noah whooped, laughing hysterically and my Brother in Law, looked at me as I popped out the sled and said,

"You alright Luke, you guys went pretty quick there!"

"Yep" I managed - just.

"I think Noah took that a bit better than you,"

"Hmmm," I replied, red faced and fighting backdown the ice cream.

And so we staggered off - or at least I staggered off, Noah was running, charging about, wild eyed with excitement and desperate to go again.

"Very Daddy Pig," I heard someone say from a small crowd behind us.

Brilliant, I thought - I've made it as a cartoon character. The pinnacle of every fathers dream - to be compared to Daddy Pig. I would have said something but I knew I would only end snorting so kept quiet. Grappling to find the positives in this analogy I struggled for a moment.

"At least the kids are happy," my Brother in Law grinned at me, reading my mind.

I nodded, definitely time for another ice cream...