Mr Mechanic had a little 'chat' with his boys.

'How would you feel if daddy married Lu?' He asked in the car, on the long journey to come over to us. Nowadays we spend the weekends together, and have synchronised the 'having the children' rota.

'That means that Pest n.1 and Pest n.2 would become our brothers?'

'Yes.'

'Ye-ey! Great!'

Mr Mechanic's first born, after a pause: 'I think you should live together for a while, and then decide.'

He is not nine yet.

Obviously he goes to a school which does not teach number tables, but certainly equips for the ways of life.

Mr Mechanic laughed. I was not amused when I heard the story.

'Why did you put the question like that?' We are not getting married.'

'Oh, it was to make the question easier for them to understand. It does not stop here.'

'No?'

'No. I then asked whether they thought mummy would marry her beau. They said they did not think so.'

'Why not?'

'Because they said that mummy and the beau argue all the time about THE OTHER GIRLFRIEND.'

'What other girlfriend?'

'I don't know. I think he is married already.'

Last year I thought that family cobwebs were a million light-years from me. Nowadays I am not too sure.

And I have not even started weaving in Mr Mechanic's OTHER ex-wife's story. Or the story pertaining the mother of his third child.

Mr Mechanic's first child - let's call him Mechanino - is wrong, of course. I reckon that the only way is not even living together... it is to live as far away as possible.