If I only had wings of a little angel, don't you know I'd fly to the top of a mountain

Young Ben and I went to the park on Saturday. He has reached an age where he likes to walk everywhere so I made a fatal error in judgement and left his buggy at home. I was already carrying the new football I had purchased in the morning and I knew my attention span and physical dexterity would not cope with a walking toddler, a football and a passenger less buggy.

I tried to explain to Ben that I would carry the ball until we reached the park as I was not prepared to abandon him to chase after said ball once he had launched it in any given random direction just for the fun of it. This meant that any garden we passed along the way was taken by Ben as being a park and he would wander in and wait for the ball to be thrown to him. Fortunately we were not in a hurry.

He also decided that any form of plant life from flowers to weeds to whatever was growing out of the pavement should be picked, sniffed and kept to take back to his mum. He is a thoughtful child that way.

We eventually reached the park and the ball was finally given it's freedom. Being of a certain age now the game consisted of me booting the ball up a slope and Ben chasing after it and kicking it back vaguely in my direction. This was frequently interrupted every time a dog came anywhere near our vicinity as Ben would then amble off to have a chat with his canine friends. He has an affinity to dogs which leads me to believe he must be distantly related to Mrs Woodhouse somehow

He latched on to one particular poor dog which was minding it's own business basking in the sun. Young Ben was not happy with this lack of activity and found a stick which as we all know dogs are obliged to fetch once thrown. The strangely unobliging mutt tried to find refuge under a picnic table but that did not deter the intrepid youngster who soon flushed him out of there. Only after the dog had gone off and hidden in the trees did Ben finally abandon his pursuit and we adjourned to the play park

It was in here that we experienced a national incident. Young Ben was on the swings so I placed his ball next to the railings. Another young visitor to the play park, whose name I discovered was Lucas, took quite a shine to Ben's ball even though he had one of his own under his buggy (his mum was, not surprisingly, a lot smarter than me and had brought return transport to the park).

This was not causing any problems until an older girl (there's always an older girl, isn't there?) decided she would return the ball to Ben. She was obviously on a day off from her job at the U.N. Diplomatic Corps and informed Lucas that he could not steal other people's balls. This did not go down too well with Young Lucas. I offered to swap balls with him but his mum said he had to learn that he can't get everything he wants. Young Ben has not quite grasped that concept yet, nor have his mum and dad, or his grandparents for that matter, but I digress.

It all ended in tears. Lucas was upset. Ben was upset because Lucas was upset. I was upset because I realised the Cup Final had kicked off and we still had to walk home. The older girl was not upset and wandered off to help resolve some other major conflict in the play park

So, offering Ben a bribe of stopping at the shop for 'goodies' we eventually set off for home. This was when my earlier misjudgement came back to haunt me. Ben decided he was now bored with walking and stood with his hands raised and a pleading look on his face. I managed to carry him as far as the shop and then put Plan B into operation. After we had bought a bottle of water and a packet of Wotsits and Ben had left the shop looking like Rome after a visit from the Vandals, Operation Hansel and Gretel was put into action. After giving him a Wotsit I walked a few paces ahead and offered him another which he toddled along to collect. This worked for a little while until he realised what his devious old Grandpa was up to and that it was more comfortable to be carried and munch Wotsits at the same time

By this time we were almost home anyway and I was optimistic of catching the second half of the Cup Final. Unfortunately Curious George was on a different channel and this battle for supremacy was only going to have one winner. That inquisitive monkey does get into some strange situations

Worn out from his exertions of the day Young Ben was asleep long before his mum and dad came home and when I finally returned home to my own house and switched on the highlights of the Cup Final I found myself asleep almost as quickly as the Liverpool defence

All in all I had a much better day than Mr Dalglish.