If I can impart one piece of advice to you, my faithful followers, it would be this: don’t watch The Shining, by yourself, at night, in an empty house. Ever. Ever ever. NEVER ever. Stupid, stupid, young MoVo. Scarred me for life, that did. I still can’t stumble around a maze in the snow without imagining Jack Nicholson behind me. And not behind me in a good way, neither.

Kids are scary. Kids are farking nightmares. Take the boy in The Shining, and his weird dead twin harem. That’s farked up. I will not allow Moo to be friends with ghost twins, just in case they try to tempt me into an elevator filled with blood or summat. Think also: Children of the Corn. The kids in The Others. Damien in The Omen. Scary head-twisty girl in The Exorcist. Farking WRONG.

Twice recently I have described Moo as a ‘horror’, to two separate people. This isn’t really fair. She’s all right. Most of the time. But those stroppy tantrums are creeping in and becoming more frequent, and my nerves are getting more frazzled and worn. I get the same queasy-stomach-and-shite-my-pants feeling that I had when I saw Jack Nicholson typing furiously in a big, empty hotel, and suspected that he wasn’t working on his fluffy chick-lit novel.

Seriously, she is 18 months old in a few days time, and the realisation that I’m kind of stuck with her for the long haul is sinking in. When do they stop being terrors? Like, in a few months’ time? Years? Fark – no, wait – not till they’re TWELVE OR SOMETHING??

*shriek*

Is it OK to send her off to boarding school…?

Have you got a little horror? And short of hiring a priest to fling holy water over them, how do you cope?