One woman's dream of a ball pit should inspire all parents

A seven-bedroom Victorian house in Birkdale, Southport, is for sale complete with its own ball pit.

- Lucy Mangan

Monday

Its owner, Julie Williams, says she was inspired by the model Cara Delevingne, who installed one in her LA home on the grounds that "you can't really be sad in a ball pit". Wise words, Cara, albeit ones suggestive of a life blessedly free of the experience of dragging screaming pugilistic toddlers apart at a soft play centre.

Anyway. Julie had a spare room and, suddenly, a dream. So she bought 11,000 plastic balls and fulfilled the latter by filling the former with them. "It's great," she says. "This is the new relaxation method for mums and dads. Get a ball pit and hide away from the children." I had thought my admiration for a woman who builds her own ball pit could not increase but to find that she did it and shuts the kids out so that she can enjoy it? This is next-level living-your-best-life stuff and I could not applaud it more.

Tuesday

The new editor of Vogue has been announced. I won't keep you in suspense: it is not me. I'm afraid the era of bobbled cardigans and Sainsbury's leggings is not yet here. Instead, the job went to American Vogue editor Chloe Malle, daughter of director Louis and actor Candice Bergen (who once played the magazine's editor-in-chief in Sex and the City with many nods to Anna "Nuclear" Wintour's tyrannical regime, which no doubt helped seal the deal for her offspring, given Wintour's legendary sense of humour).