Sammy (nearly 3) came over to us for the day. As usual, magic and mystery was everywhere. We counted the six plastic dolphins sitting in their six plastic rubber rings in a large, green, water-filled bucket in the back garden. We kept counting them over and over again, but I still managed to count them to seven, in spite of cries of "No, Grandad!" from Sammy and Grandma. Then Sammy and I decided that taking the dolphins out of the bucket and dropping them from a height into the water would be very effective - which it was. All this time, by the way, the garden was infested with witches and dragons. Eventually, Sammy led me down to the garden shed, where a naughty crocodile was laying in wait, so that I could give it good boot into the air. We both felt better for having done that, and could afford to ignore the naughty (according to Sam) sparrow in the tree.

Naturally, we had to get close to spiders' webs and tease the spiders out to the centre of the web with a blade of grass. This was agreed to be a complete success and good exercise before lunch. Sam had a whole pig for his lunch (egg, beans and toast) and I also had a huge pig (tuna sandwich), and both pigs were entirely consumed. I had to break off briefly in the middle to boot the crocodile who had snuck back into the garden, but he never re-appeared after that.

We inspected more webs after lunch and decided, after some discussion, that dried fox poo in a clump of grass was dirty and not worthy of approval. Sammy looked for bugs on the patio, but it was a barren morning for the hunt. A story is essential before the drive home to my son's house, and we had the usual tales of the snippy-snappy goblin, the dancing dragons, the skeleton whose head keeps falling off and rolling into a pond, the naughty moon (always hiding behind trees) and T-rex (a comparative newcomer). This time, everyone was having tea, the dragons fell fast asleep with their heads on the table - snoring, of course - and T-rex had to go and get some spiders from the garden to put on the dragons noses and wake them up.

The 30-minute drive to Sammy's house was full of incident, with witches' cars (black), teddy bears' cars (blue) and dragon cars and vans (white) to be remarked on at every turn of the road. But we arrived safely and waved Sammy goodbye as he went off with Mum to his elder brother's school and a run in the park.

This wizardry doesn't wear off straightaway - I swore profusely at a teddy bear car on the way home, for example - and the magic lingers a little. Let's hope I have a few more of such mornings before Time takes Sammy into another, plainer world - and me into some other unknown and far more mysterious one!