It being half term I’ve been able to help out my friend Nicky and look after her son Finlay (9) for a few days.

On Monday I took Fin and his friend to Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands near Weybridge in Surrey. It’s been open a year now and this was our second visit.

You are free to wander around and look at all the cars on display – basically a Mercedes showroom with a few entertaining attractions. It is very good and well worth a visit with what must be at least a hundred different models to admire from the small smooth Smarts to the maybe-if-I-win-the-lottery Maybachs, as well as various vintage vehicles on view too.

The vast majority of the cars are open for you to sit and salivate in, though I have to admit, this was a little lost on Finlay who much prefered to play the game of “How long can I get away with hiding in the boot?”

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Tuesday was cinema day. I took Fin to the Vue in Staines to see Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille.

Fin bought himself some pick and mix, kindly adding in a few milk bottles for me and then chose some white chocolate mice as well. Sadly he didn’t like the mice and since they were on the top, I was instructed to eat them all so he could get to his other sweets with out touching the mice!

Before the main film there is a ‘short’ about alien abduction called Lifted, and I have to say this is the funniest most brilliant peice of annimation I have ever seen. I won’t tell you anything about it – just make sure you see it; you just have too.

Ratatouille was brilliant too. An excellent story with a good plot; very well told and annimated. My only critism was that at 1hour and 51 minutes it seemed a tad too long for the children.

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This morning I had a text from Nicky saying that Finlay was desperate for me to take him out again today. Boy, am I popular! I had a few things to do in Woking so I picked Fin up and he came with me into town.

It was decided that we would have a picnic in the Peacocks Centre, (it was raining outside) and Fin had chosen a tuna and sweetcorn pasta meal deal thingy from Boots.

As I sat and chewed my chicken wrap I was aware that Finlay was shaking the pasta on the end of his plastic fork. Whatever his reasons it seemed to be having the desired effect because after a good shake, the pasta pieces that didn’t fall off (there were a couple on the floor by now) were promptly inserted into his mouth.

I chose to ignore the somewhat odd behaviour as Fin was quite content and seemed to know what he was doing, even if I didn’t.

Finally, having eaten only about half the pasta, Fin decided he’d throw the rest away. I just caught him before his hand had let go of the bowl and he pulled it back from the bin.

‘I thought you liked tuna and sweetcorn pasta, Fin’ I said, not wanting good food to go to waste and more than ready to finish it off myself.

‘Oh, I do’ he said, pointing at the pasta. ‘But it’s infested with green and red bits.’

I spent the next ten minutes frantically fishing for paltry peices of pepper wondering where on earth he’d heard the word infested!