Anyone patient enough to have read this post I did in January will know I’m no great fan of Jack playing with guns. Well, as I tuck into some humble pie, I have to confess an exception to that rule emerged with this weekend’s hot weather.

I had the genuine fortune and pleasure of taking a half day on Friday so I could look after Jack for the afternoon.

Having been baked half to death in the office all morning, it had occurred to me that the sunny weather was perfect for having a water fight.

So, as soon as the clock hit 1pm, I rushed off to the shops to pick up a selection of cheap water pistols – or ‘squirters’ as they are known to Jack – so we could indulge my very childish imagination.

Jack was appropriately wide-eyed and excited when I met him from nursery, and he quickly got into the spirit of things and talked of little else except ‘squirting daddy in the head’ for the entire walk home.

After two hours of spraying plants, trees, windows and (of course) each other, I realised what a great idea buying these water pistols had actually been. Not only did Jack not mind having water being squirted back at him, he enjoyed this particular kids’ game as much as I did.

It was only during our fourth – or maybe fifth – variation on the spray-each-other-until exhaustion-game that it occurred to me what a hypocrite I was going to sound like.

How could I be so quick to judge about letting Jack ‘poink’ people with a toy pirate cannon on the one hand, yet actively engage with and encourage shooting each other with water pistols on the other?

Fortunately, I wasn’t allowed to dwell on this question for too long. Jack, seeing I was momentarily distracted, dived out from behind the upturned trampoline he’d made into his ‘base’ and squirted me several times in the face.

Shocked out of my moral stupor, I picked up where I’d left off, shoved my ethical qualms aside and engrossed myself in getting my revenge…