by Janet Harris

Created on: January 20, 2009

I am not very good at toy building or any kind of building come to that. For a start I am hopeless with instruction leaflets and can never fathom out push C into D until it clicks into place and then attach E to D with tool provided'. It might as well be written in Swahili for all I know and understand.

So, like all Mums, I tend to leave the toy-building to the boys', and back in 1990, when my son was 6 years old, I had two such boys to build toys. One was my husband and the other was my Father. Both had years of toy building experience behind them and that natural ability to muddle through and somehow get it done. My son was quickly learning these skills as well, so when he asked for a huge Lego Pirate Ship for Christmas, I didn't bat an eyelid because I knew that I wouldn't have to do anything except perhaps serve cups of tea and biscuits at regular intervals on Christmas Day.

This pirate ship was huge and it had lots of fiddly bits and pieces to it as well such as flags, cannons, little treasure chests not to mention all the Lego pirates and there seemed to be hundreds of them. My husband and my Dad were in their element, I could almost see them salivating as they tipped the massive box of lego out onto the floor and begin to study the instructions. My son joined in too, making his contribution and soon the three of them were engrossed, fitting bits together, consulting each other and then the instruction leaflet. My son couldn't wait to play with the finished article as I seem to remember he was going through a bit of a pirate phase at the time. I suppose he felt that it would be a huge achievement to play with something he had first seen as a pile of bricks and bits and pieces and then to contribute toward the end result a large, intricate pirate ship with loads of hours of fun to look forward to.

I served Christmas Dinner but instead of the usual after dinner slump in the armchair, the boys got straight back to work. They were having a fantastic time. Mum, my daughter and myself had the slump in the chairs instead and ate lots of chocolates because watching all this activity was making us hungry. I served Christmas tea, and after all the sandwiches and sausage rolls and trifle, it was back to the comfy chairs and the TV for the girls and back to the ship-building for the boys.

When it was time for bed, my son made me promise not to touch anything. It was really beginning to take shape and actually look like a pirate ship. Dad and my husband managed to tear

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