Here is another project to keep the tinies occupied during the summer holidays.

Get your pippy bag, and cram it full of kapok. Using a length of butcher’s string, or an old bootlace, tie the pippy bag tightly closed so that none of the kapok will fall out. Now stick innumerable pins into it, and voila! you have a splendid homemade pin cushion.

It may be that your interests do not run to needlework or embroidery, in which case you will not find much use for a pin cushion. So let me show you how easy it is to turn it into something far more exciting!

Fashion a few pipe cleaners into the basic shape of a human body – arms and legs and torso. Then poke this into your pin cushion, which serves as the head. Depending on the size of your pippy bag, the proportions will be all wrong, and it will look a bit like a three-dimensional stick person with a huge bloated hydrocephalic head, but don’t worry about that. Think of it as a voodoo dolly.

The next thing you need to do is to force your mind into believing that the dolly is genuinely imbued with the spirit of a real person, just as Francis Galton convinced himself that Mr Punch was a god. Bear in mind that the dolly has innumerable pins stuck in its head, which almost guarantees that the person you choose, whether it is David Blunkett, for example, or Gore Vidal, will shortly afterwards have their actual head attacked by a swarm of bees.