Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

My sister, who has been a kindergarten teacher for many moons, has a fund of stories which she will happily regale you with after a couple of wines.

The one of these that I like the best is about "mat time". The kids all sit on a mat and everyone briefly tells the others about something that happened in the last day or so. The parents are usually standing around the walls at this time, waiting to take their little bundles of horror home ...

One day, a four-year-old boy used mat time to state "My mum told my dad to 'Fuck off and never come back' last night. And he did!"

Mum, of course, was standing there, presumably wishing that the earth would open up and swallow her ...