Digested week: Avoid batrachoidal bums and gift a heated throw | Lucy Mangan

Thankfully the 12-year-old survived five nights away but there’s still the gas bill to worry about

The child returns home today from his first ever school trip away (which is also, because we are useless, at the age of 12 his first trip abroad). He has been away for five nights, which is five times more nights than he has ever been away from us before (see uselessness above) and I have coped extremely well. Yes, I could periodically be found lying prostrate on the sofa or staring white-faced at a wall, praying to a god not to let him be kidnapped, lost or killed while my husband futilely attempted to console me with the thought that school trips are not like they were in our day. “They chip them and rope them to a teacher at all times now. They probably don’t even go on the trip. They’re probably just in a room on a Luton industrial estate with some convincing holographics on the wall all week. He’ll be fine.”