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An extremely loud meltdown after lunch (over using the toilet) meant that her mum intervened and put R to bed for a very long afternoon nap. I had selected castles for the theme of the week, so O and I watched a good English Heritage video series on life in the olden days, including one about life in a castle and one about Henry VIII, a favourite character of hers because of the head chopping (learnt all about this at the Tower). The videos were presented by two children, a boy and a girl, which O really liked but it was a pity they were all white and flaxen haired. Brown and black children enjoy history too so I’ve written to ask English Heritage to take that into account if they make more videos.We clearly could have gone on watching YouTube history videos for the rest of the day (despite advice from the scary Netflix docu ‘The Social Dilemma’ not to pick from the YouTube selection). But we switched off to make our own castle out of a sheet of bendy card and the usual cutting and sticking equipment: scissors, Prittstick and coloured crayons. One side of the castle had to be reserved for the dungeons and one of the characters we drew and cut out – the servant – had to be put in chains (and later had his head chopped off). Mmmm, I’m not sure I might soon get the sack…

As well as the Tower of London, we also visited Harlech Castle in the summer – in a gale so strong, the battlements were closed and O nearly got blown out to sea! I’m cheating a bit to mention this here but we bought a fantastic Usborne lift-the-flap book in the castle shop which has given hours of pleasure: Look Inside a Castle. Then when we got home, we used the wonderful b small book: Make Your Own Castle to make our own castle. This book really deserves the fact that it has sold around a hundred thousand of copies and been translated into 10 languages.