Hobbies and pastimes

Heavily influenced by the folk festival and Daddy's musical indoctrination Al is really into singing and playing his guitar. In fact we are the nightmare parents who wheel their child prodigy out to perform whenever we have guests. Al proudly strums his plastic orange guitar and sings his favourite hits for whoever will listen. These favourite hits currently include Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle, This Old Man and Billy Bragg's The Beach is Free.

Again heavily influenced by Daddy, Al is now the proud owner of his first Bristol Rovers "football-baller" shirt. The day the parcel arrived with matching tops for Al and Daddy it was hard to say which of them was the most excited.

Al's other latest pastime, which so far is rather less successful than the guitar, is the potty. We've had it sitting in our lounge for months and from time to time Al will decide to sit on it (usually if there's a few people in the room and he thinks he might get some praise for it). He's more keen on sitting on the loo, usually when we're in the middle of a shopping centre or somewhere else equally inconvenient. Up to now whenever he does sit on the loo or a potty and we ask if he's going to do a wee he responds with "No, I'm just patending" ... we could be buying him nappies for quite some time yet.