I am the best bubble catcher in the house, but rubbish at Hannah Montana songs.

But we'll get to that later. As I told my friends in chat last night I was pressed into service at short notice to be responsible for Caitlin and Hannah. Me responsible! the thought, normally that word doesn't get used in the same paragraph as my name. So I managed to drag my weary unrested body from the pit on time and the girls were delivered to me right on the dot at 8.30 as planned. Whatever happened to the son who couldn't be chiselled off the mattress in time for the school bus?

There are plenty of reasons I am out of the habit of minding small people, the practical one being that I live too far away to of much day to day use as a baby sitter. But the one of most concern being that I do not 'do' substances that are ejected from small crying bodies, it doesn't matter which direction they emit nasty stuff from, I tend to be the bulls eye. But Hannah is now fully house trained and has a certificate to ease my worries.

Another thing I don't 'do' is the G word - or the U(ncle) word. I've heard all sorts of comments about how terrible that is but there is only one reason, because I think it puts a barrier between us, they know I am dad's dad and that's all that matters. Normal grandads - damm! I said it, have moustaches, musty cardigans and sit in an armchair reading seed catalogues and smelling of farts. Not me, I'm Bren and I'm lying the floor asking for the yellow crayon and working out how many pairs of size 1 boots a spider has to get in the sales at Asda, and they don't ever see that they have been learning 2 x tables. Hannah draw a picture of me, for a 3 yr old to capture the Picasso style is very clever, if his is deemed good enough to hang in national galleries than hers can certainly be hung on my fridge.

After a hard mornings work colouring and drawing we muffled up for the trek to the shop for more supplies of kids stuff like magazines and lollipops, and on the way we found a lovely frozen puddle with a dusting of fresh snow. Caitlin wrote nearly all her name with her toecap in the snow, she couldn't quite finish it and had no room for the i and n. If she had used Hannah's foot it would have fitted. But Hannah is only 3 and can't spell yet.

The shop is run by an Indian family and one of the brothers gave each girl some little toys as well as the books we bought, they both got a set of the clacker type things that were the rage a little while back, Caitlin got a ball and hannah some bubble blowing stuff. I walked back with them viewing the world a little better with this man's kind gesture. So the afternoon was a combination of catching bubbles on our hands without them bursting and learning to use the clackers. We had Youtube on, playing Hannah Montana videos and I must admit I can't take Lucky Lucky You any more after 17 times yesterday.

I tend to get bouts of interest in things that are brought to my attention, and recently, thanks to our friend Maureen from Canada (Maureen60) it's been Leonard Cohens work. I had printed out the lyrics to the song Hallelujah and Caitlin was looking at it and reading it, for her age she is a very good reader. I explained what it was to her and we read through it, she only needed help with pronouncing a couple of the words. Almost straight away she found a rhythm and spoke it as a poem. Then I got it playing on Youtube and she followed it as KD Lang sang it. Hannah found a magnifying glass on the desk and wandered here and there seeing everything turning into giants with her 'miggle finder' glass then we all looked at the spikes on a cactus that's growing nicely on my window ledge.

Colette arrived to pick up the girls at about 3.45 and we had a few cuppas and the girls watched the Blue Elephant on the laptop.  Conclusion: what a lovely day, but my back is paying the penalty today with the walking and bubble catching. I tried an alcohol rub on it last night to ease it but not sure if I did it right. A liberal application of 13% proof red wine taken internally.