We are suffering what the French call a canicule down here at the moment: intense, dry heat coming up from the former French colonies, which then mixes with cooler, wetter Atlantic air to create the climatological equivalent of a Chinese laundry going at full pelt following a mud storm.

The term is a rare example of French understatement, in that it translates quite neatly into English as ‘Can I cope?’ One sits deathly still in a crypto-Zombie state, keeping conversation to a minimum for fear of drowning in one’s own facial sweat. Walking carefully into the swimming pool, the effort expended can dehydrate the human being, and top up the pool. Eating is a particular hazard: producing the saliva to enjoy a meal may result in emergency hospital treatment involving several days on a saline drip.

The friends and family who arrived last week to share this punishment cell with us must have left wondering why on Earth we had chosen to live in Europe’s only Congolese mini-climate. From Saturday to Saturday we were nine, including three children, and I’m here to tell you that for much of that time, there was visceral fighting in order to claim the cooler parts of the pool. But being blessed with four good cooks and small but unfussy kids exhibiting healthy appetites, a great time was had by all.

No matter how good or crap you are as a parent, the period between 0-5 with kids is profoundly challenging. Between zero and three they cry or smile unaccountably, leaving the parent utterly confused as to whether it was the thunderstorm or the chocolate mousse that evoked the response. After that age, the questions never stop until thirteen, at which point they know everything…..and waste no opportunity to make this universal wisdom clear to you, the brainless dolt who spawned them.

For as long as the littlies fail to grasp the correlation between warnings and water flows, almost the entire conversation with one’s recent offspring revolves around bodily evacuation: ‘do you want to, have you, might you want to poo, wee-wee or be icky-picky’. Unaccountably, the answer “N0” is always followed by anything from projectile vomit to complete sewer failure. Doting parents who greet this kind of inaccuracy with tolerant giggles drive me to distraction, but luckily in this case the mum and dad were far too grounded and in possession of ironic pessimism to indulge the culprits. When our guest Dad said “Whoa, how clever was that Eve?” neither the kids nor the adults were in any doubt about how quickly he wanted the behaviour to end. Most of the time it cracked me up. If you don’t take them too seriously, small kids are great. Give them too much freedom of choice, however, and they will get confused…while you will go mad. Tory economics are for adults, not four year olds.

Small children have no way to deal with penetrating, wet heat. Well, they do – if you count yelling inappropriately as dealing with something. This is because they feel like sh*t, and have no idea why. It’s a case of “I have a headache, I feel like a jar of Brylcreem, my skin hurts, my eyes ache and they get sore too when I go in that pool”. Nobody can make head or tail of your speech patterns, so yelling a lot seems like the only alternative: it is the frustrated infant equivalent of rioting. And unlike the pillocks who looted the week before last, it is entirely understandable.