One thing that always happens to me during summer is of course more babysitting. Basically, everyone decides to just dump their kids on me so they can go and have fun and I just say fine.  To be honest, it’s not very difficult – they mostly just want to play video games all day anyway and I have all the consoles.

I was quite surprised to learn that my niece, age 11 now, has been watching Game of Thrones (although when I was that age and younger I suppose I always got a thrill out of watching the ‘grown up’ movies). I think actually her brother made her watch it and then she started getting into it. She also has a boyfriend now, apparently.

I asked what qualities she would look for in a boyfriend, and she said he had to be kind, have a sense of humour, and not hit girls.

I teased her by telling her these were all lies, which she denied. So I asked her if she had to choose between Jon Snow, a man who let’s face it doesn’t have much of a sense of humour, and Samwell Tarly, who is funny, kind, and I can’t imagine would hit Gilly, who would she pick?

She struggled over the decision for a minute then sighed, ‘Jon’s much more my type though…’

There was no point whatsoever to that story. I just thought it was funny.