I have mentioned before that the kids love hearing stories from when they were tiny. Well Nick reminded me of one that I had completely forgotten. When Jack was around two years old, he attended a pre-prep (posh nursery) called Ravenstone House. We had chosen Ravenstone (in spite of the fact that it was ruinously expensive) partly because of the small class sizes, but mostly because the staff seemed cheerful, unlike the staff at the other, much cheaper, local nursery where the staff looked like their feet hurt and their husbands beat them. Each class of 8 children was housed in a self-contained miniature classroom, with French doors out onto a central garden (actually a deconsecrated graveyard – Jack learned to ride a trike on paths created from the fallen headstones of the long-departed). In hot or muggy weather, the staff would open the French doors for ventilation but close child-proof gates to stop their little charges escaping willy nilly into the garden. So far so good. Now Jack was a late developer in terms of gross motor skills, and at 2 and a bit, had only just progressed from bottom shuffling to tottering around holding onto the furniture, but all 7 of his little classmates were confident walkers. Childproof locks, however, held no challenge for him, and the staff (miraculously still smiling) reported that several times a day Jack would shuffle over to the gate, pull himself up on it, undo the childproof catch and hold the gate open while all his little mates escaped.