I may muddle through life without a nanny, and the weekly cleaner is just me in a kerchief, but I do have a secret weapon in my armoury, a right-hand woman who, while I smile around town, is the real power behind Oxfordshire Artweeks.
And not only does The Lynchpin work with the efficiency of a team of finely-tuned huskies, she also has a magic porridge pot supply of chocolate biscuits.
Last week The Lynchpin and I were mapping the many varied and exciting venues for the 2012 Artweeks festival (May 5-27), in which a mass of talented artists and craftspeople across the county welcome you into their homes and studios to show off their work.
Armed with a giant map and 500 multicoloured drawing pins, we spent hours squashing miles of recalcitrant Oxfordshire into a single wiggly line.
This is a challenge equivalent to a major military operation – and I know this from many festive hours at a D-Day Landings board game opposite The Middle One who can now liberate the Normandy beaches single-handed with three dice and a coloured pencil.
The Artweeks map and exhibition listings will provide the basis for a three-week exploration of the creative talent scattered across the county with interesting people and wonderful treasures just waiting to be discovered. It’s a bit like geocaching without the wellington boots.
From bitter experience I know that use of the word ‘walk’, turns the children’s feet to lead.
In contrast, the mere mention of an adventure trail along which you clutch a high-tech gadget (GPS) and scrub about in mud and bushes for a hidden film canister, gets the children seat-belted in the car before I can say ‘Rucksack’.
And so it seems the key to an active family life is hidden under hedgerows and down country lanes.
But as you never know what you might find under a rogue gooseberry bush, with three children already, I think I’ll be sticking to exploring artists’ studios!
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