Who dressed these children?

In the words of Shaggy....It wasn't me! Indeed they chose their own clothes today, which is always entertaining.

The photo was taken at Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire. where today my eldest lied.

That's right, blatently lied and it was a true poker face moment.

It started when I heard a plop sound coming from the river while we were walking along the embankment. It went something like ..... pppppplopppppp!


I turned around and noticed that my eldest no longer had the branch that he had been holding.

I also noticed that there was a branch in the middle of the river, yes a branch that was surrounded by ripples, freshly made ripples, all rippling out in a rippling kind of fashion heading towards the river bank.

There was no one else near the river bank.

So.... members of the jury, I put it to you that this 'ere six year old lad had deliberately ejected the said branch from his hand and launched it into said river.

I posed the question...

"Did you just throw that branch into the river?"

He answered...

"No"

Hang on....Did he say no? It was so obvious that he had!

So I asked "If you didn't throw it in the river, what exactly did you do with the branch?"

He kept his straight face and replied "I threw it in the bushes".

Hmmm, he was 3ft from the river and 10ft from the bushes. He is only 6. He can't throw far and there were still ripples in the water.

Now, clever 21st C Dad was listening with a big frown on his face. He really should be in CID. He broke into the conversation and said...

"Well in that case can you go into the bushes and get the branch".

Haa haa. We got him. He went into the bushes and looked and looked and looked but couldn't find it...

...because it was....getting wet in the river of course!

Terrible thing is...the case would get thrown out of kiddie court on the basis there were no witnesses.

Even the eyes in the back of my head had failed.

But my ears were working and on the basis of the evidence, surely he is guilty as charged!

I am pleased that I later got a confession and an apology. He had learned a big lesson from the experience in that it is better to tell the truth than to continue to lie and get into deeper trouble.

I've also learned that I need to work on my questioning technique. Perhaps I should have said.

"Wow, that was a good throw, where did you learn that?"

Now that would have got the result within seconds!

But while I enjoy the results of my very own lie detector test, I hope you enjoy some of the photos from our otherwise lovely day out.