We resume with a visit to the confessional...

Father, forgive me it's been, ooh, forever, since i last confessed and I've got plenty of stuff - metaphorical stuff, that is - on my hands that i need to cleanse myself of. Such as this...

Monday just gone and I'm on collecting Olivia from Nursery duty. Cath is going to be at school 'till gone 7 so it's just the two of us for tea. I get stuck in traffic and so don't reach nursery till well after 5. It's another 15 minutes back home and tea takes a minimum of 30 minutes to cook. What to do?

Reach for my trusty 'Bad Parents Handbook' which informs me that it is my duty as a bad parent to take my offspring to McDonalds as regularly as possible. So that's where we go. At Mickey D's i look around at the other Bad Parents, hoping to exchange sympathetic glances in acknowledgment of our mutual shame in not serving our kids organic delights harvested from our own allotmenmts. But this is Westhoughton, not the fantasy middle class enclave i fancifully dream that i inhabit just because i get the Guardian everyday, so they don't really look that bothered about being here.

Neither does Olivia as she detaches the burger from the bun and sets about eating it - a process that takes roughly three hours. Next time it's just the two of us, it'll all be organic. I promise.

How many hail mary's did you say? Now about this other stuff on my trousers, i mean hands...

(I think i've been working in a Catholic college too long!)