In a shocking blow to the ego our darling toddler Little Miss declared that dear old dad ‘isn’t pretty’.

As we often do we were running through the members of the family last night after bath time while drying off. We just run through asking questions like ‘What is your name?’, ‘What is your mum’s name’, ‘Is your nanna you’re mum’s mum?’ etc.

Added to the selection of questions last night was the following, ‘Is Wife pretty?’, ‘Is Usurper - the baby - pretty?’, ‘Are you pretty?’.

According to their responses they were all pretty, in fact they were declared ‘VERY PRETTY’ with great enthusiasm.

Then I asked a very foolish question, leading to the following conversation?

‘Is Daddy pretty?’

‘No’ was the response - which was made all the worse by the fact she actually paused for a moment and looked me up and down before answering.

‘Is Daddy even a little bit pretty?’

A dismissive laugh as if the very concept was ridiculous, ‘No!’

‘Poor Daddy’ I replied, only half jokingly. Although part of me secretly wondered whether Wife had been overheard talking about me at mothers group.

She just laughed even harder thinking the whole concept of Daddy having the audacity to believe for a moment that he could be anything other than the most hideous of monsters.

Maybe she saw the look in my eye, maybe she saw the tear forming in the corners of them, maybe she could hear the choking sob catch in my voice as I put on a brave little smile so my darling little toddler wouldn’t realise that she had broken my heart. But then she at least took the edge of the whole thing by pointing out to me that ‘Daddy can’t be pretty - he’s a boy!’

Phew - I had gotten off on a technicality! Of course I wasn’t brave enough to ask the obvious follow up question of whether or not Daddy was handsome.