Tuppence a bag....

Picture the scene:

It's Sunday morning, everyone is fed, watered and is in the process of finding something to hold their attention for a little while. Daddy is working on his computer at the kitchen table, Mummy is drinking coffee and reading The Telegraph online, Finn is nattering away to anyone who will listen, and Meg is.......

Well, the last time I saw her she was sitting in her cardboard box, sorry, her boat, colouring it in and talking to the birds squabbling over the feeder in the front garden. We have big windows in our dining room so it is possible to sit in one's boat and still see out into the garden. "Meg, don't bang on the window," I casually cast in her direction at one point. She stopped. End of. Back to the paper.


I was vaguely aware of some bag-rustling noises at one point, but no-one's life seemed threatened so I let it go.


Then, after a little while (a couple of articles and a mis-direction onto some rubbish) I heard her.

"Open door."

It didn't quite register, after all I wasn't going to open the front door for her, it's still quite chilly out in the mornings.

"Open door, please."

This time my ears pricked up a bit. Something was......

"Open door, please Mummy."

Then I really started to take notice. She sounded muffled. Quiet. As if she was speaking from the other side of a door.........

I leaped to my feet and rushed for the front door - which was open, but the storm door, heretofore believed to be child proof, was well and truly shut. Phew!

But this is what I saw on the other side.......





It would appear that Meg, on spotting that the bird feeder was getting low on supplies, had decided to take action. She went to the boot room and put on her boot (she could only find one but she had put it on the correct foot) then she took herself to the pantry which, incidentally, is in the kitchen where her Father was working: he didn't notice his diminutive almost-2 year old daughter lugging a 5 pound bag of bird seed out of the pantry, through the kitchen and into the playroom. Which is as far as she could manage before abandoning it in favour of carrying handfuls of bird seed into the garden. She opened the front door and the storm door and deposited the seed at the base of the feeder. Then hit a snag: she couldn't get back in.

"Open door, please Mummy!"