Number 29

We're off for a few days camping. There's a plain cardboard box in the boot of the car, with a folded slip of coloured paper with '29' on it. I open and read it.

Hmm. What could that be? Maybe it's one of these ...

I wouldn't mind, because I've had real problems with stagnation of the liver and hysteria recently. If I'm really lucky, could be a pair of these - practical and eyecatching ...

If it's one of these, I'm not going to use it - my cheek would never go back into shape!

I open the box with hands shakier than a Hamilton Beach Vibrator. Oh, it's a ...

Very unexpected. Never thought I'd own one of these. Although the picture on the box suggests it's a magnet for young blonde women, it strikes me more as something the childcatcher would have kept in his bag if he'd been born in the age of plastic.

I wonder what the suggestions are ...

I will have to play this with caution. At best, I could be treated with the same kind of suspicion as 50-year-olds who hire themselves out for children's parties as entertainers or mobile disco DJs. And using a bubble machine to lure young children into a bush could go quite badly wrong. I'm picturing an ashen-faced jury as a psychiatrist holds up the bubble machine in court (I might suggest that to the manufacturer as an alternative box image). I'll make sure that whatever I do, my wife and microscopic daughter are doing it too.