"Yeah, I'll wait in your house for the cleaners. I'll have The Kid with me, but he'll be fine..."

By Laura Yates on Nov 9, 09 07:57 PM

The thing about not having a job is you're always around to help your mates out when they need something but they're stuck at work. Last week I assisted my good friend Auntie Claire in just such a way. She needed me to wait in her house while some men came to clean the settee after she'd had a flood.

Now, Casa del Claire is an un-childproofed establishment, but I was fairly confident that I would be able to occupy The Kid for the few hours that I'd be there. I was equipped with an array of paraphernalia with which to entertain a toddler; little cars, trucks and toys. I'd reasoned that giving him lunch would keep him still for half an hour so I'd brought a tin of raviolis and some raisins.

It took me about 30 seconds after walking through the door to deduce that the next couple of hours were not going to be as straight forward as I'd first anticipated.

Straight away The Kid used his built in chocolate detecting radar to locate a tin containing Milky Ways. After five minutes of wrestling I eventually prised it from his grasp. As I was putting it out of reach he got hold of a cookie jar. By the time I got hold of him he'd shovelled two biscuits down his neck. I had to all but surgically remove the jar from his grasp, then waltz around him as he stampy danced his way around the kitchen. During the chaos I tried to fathom the cooker. I plopped the Raviolis in the saucepan then ran off after The Kid, who had headed off into the living room in search of more biscuits.

I caught up with him and saw that Claire had a little portable telly - yay! I thought, even better when I found that she'd got Cbeebies. 'Perhaps there is a god after all!' I mused as I went through the channels, a thought I quickly rebuked when I got a whiff of the burning smell wafting from the kitchen.

I binned what was left of the raviolis and set about scraping the charred blackness from the bottom of Claire's nice stainless steel saucepan. As it turned out, ruining my mate's cookware was to be the least of my worries. How silly was I to think that The Kid was going to sit nicely in the living room watching Mr Maker while I was in the kitchen.

He'd got hold of some painted glass decorative stones, and was having great fun throwing them into the cat's water dish, along with a few good handfuls of the cat's food.

"What are you doing?!" I screamed, and dashed out of the kitchen towards him. He grinned at me and tipped his creation all over the carpet.

I'd just begun to pick the smelly, slimy chunks off the floor and off his hands when there was a knock at the door. Bugger. "Hold on!"

I got to the front door, but it was stuck and took a while to open. While I was struggling with it, The Kid had gone in search of the cat. I turned and saw him heading off towards the bedroom.

I don't know what the men standing outside must have thought, first being kept waiting after my feeble attempt to open the door, then a load of crashing, banging and the noise of a screaming child emanating from within. When I eventually opened the door I was smothered in cat food and holding a dishevelled Kid under my arm like a rugby ball. They smiled politely as they came in, regarding the puddle around the cat dishes. "Where's the damage then? Is that it?" they asked, pointing to the sodden carpet.

I was tempted to say it was, but confessed that it was act of toddler and showed them into the living room.

The rest of the time there was a blur of me chasing The Kid round, getting him down from things, taking things off him, sweeping things up and putting things back. I don't remember ever being able to have 'things'; Auntie Claire's home was all very civilised until a terrible two year old was unleashed upon it.

I think our visit caused more damage than the actual flood, so much so that I think Auntie Claire may decide to invest in some childproofing measures. Namely a big sign that says: 'NO KIDS!'

And I honestly wouldn't blame her.