Following the World Cup - by Dea Birkett

I have a nine-year-old boy who doesn’t like football. (I also have a nine-year-old girl, his twin sister, who doesn’t like football either, but somehow I feel no need to apologize for her.) So this forthcoming football frenzy with the World Cup leaves us cold. Despite all the tempting discounts, we feel no urge at all to visit South Africa. At least, not until it’s free from groups of grown men running around in matching t-shirts on patches of green.

So I flinched when my son was bought a book called 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa Activity Book. (They could have thought of a shorter title.) I knew he’d have to feign interest. He smiled politely – his mother has raised him with the very best of manners – and thanked the donor. Then he did something very odd. He sat down and began to read it.

‘It has all sorts of stuff about different countries,’ he said. ‘Like the flag of Slovakia.’ In fact, it has the flags of all the participating teams, usually as stickers so you have to guess which goes where. What a great game for a travelling family.

When I was about my son’s age, I had a poster on my wall titled Flags of the Commonwealth. It was my favourite possession. My friends and I used to test each other. How many stars on the Australian flag? Name two African countries whose flags contain the same colours? Flags are fabulous things.

So we’re following the World Cup by flag. We want the country with the most colourful to win.

2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa Activity Book is published by Carlton Books £3.99

The Utlimate family day out with a teenager - by Dea Birkett

You might not even know if from this blog, but I have a teenager. And the reason you don’t know it is because she doesn’t like going with me anywhere, anywhere at all. So when I’m writing about my family’s travels, it’s usually about the nine-year-old twins. Teenager rarely gets a mention.

But I’ve found a trip  - well, an outing really – that we can both enjoy. It only lasts a day, so the chance of developing a full blown fight and not speaking to each other for the rest of the week is lessened. And there’s no overnight involved. If she comes with us to a hotel, the first argument is always about which bed she gets. As a family of five, we usually have two rooms – one for the kids, one for the adults. But the teenager insists she’s too old to sleep with her siblings, demanding our room with its big double bed. I do wish hotels could figure out some clever bit of design that took into account families these days can have quite big age gap between their children, often due to a second relationship. There must be some way in which ‘family-friendly’ could take this modern family into account, and not presume we’ve all got two kids with just 18 months between them.

But back to going out for the day with the teenager. We’re going to the Clothes Show. It’s been in Birmingham and now it’s coming to London next month. As well as loads of fashion and cosmetic displays, there are catwalk shows and appearances by famous people in the fashion world. We went last year, and it’s a great day Mother and Daughter day out. It’s also good for the generational balance; my daughter was the knowledgeable one, as I’d never heard of half the brands of designer make-up we could try out or the names of celebrities who were giving expert advice. She knew them all.

But this year I might have the upper hand. This year’s show will recreate Carnaby Street to celebrate the iconic street’s 50th anniversary. I bet she doesn’t know anything about that. Not that I want to have a fight….

Clothes Show London 25-27 June

Train your dragon by Dea Birkett

My nine-year-old twins love Cressida Cowell. We’ve read the book and seen the film. We’re completely fired up by How to Train Your Dragon.

In a recent interview, the author said she was inspired to write by spending summer holidays as a child on a small, uninhabited Scottish island where there was nothing to do. So instead of kids clubs, water slides, soft play areas, rooms with play consoles and activities, activities, activities, she spent her holidays ‘drawing and making up stories’.

Like the Cowell family, we go on regular holidays to a small island, not off Scotland, but off County Mayo, Ireland. But we stash the car with so many of our urban belongings that now we have to take a trailer, to accommodate everything we think we might need. We always go by ferry – we abandoned flying some time ago, having discovered if we book a cabin on the crossing from Holyhead to Dublin, we get a couple of hours kip on the ship and are all prepped up for the six hour drive the other side.

But we haven’t discovered how to divest ourselves of all our worldly goods. It’s curious how it’s far easier to abandon them when going somewhere hot. We don’t mind if there’s nothing for the kids to do on a tropical island resort except splash about on the beach. But if the temperature isn’t dragon’s breath, we feel we need to take loads and loads of stuff to keep the kids amused.

But inspired by the Cowells, we’re going to pack lightly this trip. No more essential toys, essential games, essential bits of electronic kit. (Although persuading the man to leave behind his laptop and iPhone won’t be possible.) We’ll take paper and pencils, to draw or write with. I’ll report the results back to you. Fingers crossed, one of us will pen a bestseller.


Irish Ferries has regular sailings from Holyhead to Dublin

Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon, is published by Hodder Children’s Books.

The film How to Train Your Dragon is on general release.