When the cat's away, the mouse will... quietly clean up

The idea of this column is to engage readers with occasionally amusing anecdotes about children.

- RICHARD IRVINE

What's different this week is there are no children because Victoria has left me.

Not for ever, just for a week of the Easter Holidays, although she was considering it on a more permanent basis the day before.

On that fateful morning, we had the carpets cleaned, and in the afternoon, I tripped up the stairs and threw, not spilled, but chucked a large cup of coffee all over the very same freshly cleaned carpet.

In my defence, it was either ditch the coffee, or face serious injury, and I explained this, but the anger she felt at seeing half a litre of dark black coffee sprayed across the hallway, clouded her empathy.

The discussions continued, and I lost track of how many times I had to explain it'd come out with Fairy Liquid, and all the hallway needed was a good scrub to remove the many spots of brown liquid.