"Why did God invent head lice?" asks small child

"I have no idea" Say I

"I don't think God would have invented head lice" continues child

"I think maybe a scientist did"

I can see his reasoning; looking at all the truly irritating things in life, most are created by the hand of a human. You may find ipods, computers, mobiles and printers truly fabulous but I find them intensely, intensely irritating. The printer breaks every single time I need to use it. I have never had time to read the instructions for the ipod, the mobile phone can make Lattes and I still can only manage dial outs and text - I have considered asking the manual to bed with me but by the time I have mastered the many assets it clearly has, the children would have broken the phone.

Life is full of things you don't need and none more so than terms and conditions. It seems that every policy taken out has to come accompanied with a 1cm thick manual on all of the reasons why something wont be covered. I binned the lot. Half way through binning the lot, I got bored of reading the policies - so I binned them to.

Then I binned all of the old stuff relating to the house, and the house before and insurance claims, planning, mortgage bump, valuations. As I type this, my wood burner is wading through 2.5ft of paperwork.

In amongst this purge I came across a whole host of bumph relating to my wedding day. 17 years since and I still had all the cards, the table plans, the correspondence and the thank you letters. How strange that I held onto those things when I didn't need them (after all, when you are actually married, what proof of the event do you need?) and yet when your marriage is over, it simply becomes even more redundant. So I burnt most of that too.

So the filing shelf is now lighter and more coordinated, having decided that matching boxes are better for Karma than an array of clutter. There is now one small corner of the house that is vaguely tidy.

Parents evening this evening. Middle child's report and personal statement is available for viewing. Apparently he enjoys Kayaking every two weeks, from one local town to the next. This came as a surprise to me, as I can only recall one occasion where he has ever floated anywhere. Middle child adamant that since he was asked what he would like to do this weekend, rather than what he was planning on doing - then his response was entirely appropriate.

The small ones had their first sports day this week. I cried (discretely) like a big girl simply because they were unbearably cute and this is their last first sports day. One of mine tried so hard to kick the football but missed on almost every attempt; overshot, slipped on the ball and landed bottom and face down in the grass. He was a little mortified.

Still, I got some great photo's. There are some memories worth keeping.