RAINY days. What a joy they are! It got to the point last week that Ben thought he was doing the hokey cokey with his arms in and out of a waterproof every five minutes.

Nothing wrong with a bit of rain, of course, in fact I find it quite fun and Ben loves a bit of puddle action.

But it is the ten minutes after the deluge with a sopping wet two-year who now doesn’t really fancy plodding around in cold wet shoes that puts me off.

His mood quickly changes from ‘never been happier’ to ‘why have you exposed me to such misery, why? why?’.

So when the Met office was predicting a non-committal ‘changeable’ forecast, I made the early decision to have a stay-at-home day.

I snapped into creative mode and set about scraping together various paints and brushes, laying the table with newspaper before crossing myself in a silent prayer that my carpet would survive.

We were creating along quite merrily with Ben simply piling up blobs of paint on his paper, before the idea struck to dispense with the brushes and opt for the old hand-printing technique.

Great fun followed with the budding Picasso slapping his hand down with such flair I thought we could be on for the Turner Prize this year.

After a good hour he was creatively spent and we began packing up.

By this point I would say there was as much paint on Ben’s face, arms head and hair as there was on the paper.

He was not so happy about me wiping it off. Neither was I, as I began to have some serious concerns about whether the paint was indeed as ‘washable’ as it stated on the pot.

A baby wipe certainly didn’t do it, a flannel tried and failed and, in the end, it was one of my washing up sponges that stepped up to the mark.

I chose the one I use on my non-stick pans, but stopped short of a Brillo pad. Such is the kind and thoughtful mother I am, I didn’t want to replace the paint with patches of red raw skin.

Anyway, an extended bath session later and we were pretty much there, apart from the faint tinge of green on his little palms.

Oh well, it is a small price to pay, particularly when his work of art is displayed proudly on the fridge.

However, I’m not sure he is even that impressed with it.

I saw him casting a critical eye over it before pointing and saying what sounded like ‘rubbish’.

These arty types – so temperamental.