So the plan was hatched.  By the time Ethan reached 7 years old he would have to have a tree house.  Even though we live in the Suffolk countryside, life is still not as free as it was back in the Seventies when we were young. Because of an increase in paranoia and cars, Ethan would either have to be ferried around endlessly by car or be resigned to spending more time at home becoming addicted to Super Mario Bros.  Traditional activities such as rope climbing, star gazing and badger watching from up on high seemed much more “real” and exciting.

Fortunately, the initial planning stages began early enough, so as not to be consigned to a project never to be completed.  Inspiration came from thumbing through the pages of http://www.dangerousbookforboys.com/ although Conn and Hal Iggulden’s time estimation of 90 man hours was slightly daunting.  As I work in London during the week, it was decided that we would need to save up and enlist some help to source materials and get the project up and running.  Therefore, we called on our good friend and gardener Robert Boast of http://www.boastaboutthegarden.co.uk/ to offer knowledge and advice, even though he had never taken on an “up a tree” project.  This being so, Robert and his team (James and Paul) were very excited at the prospect.

Last weekend I went to http://www.proadventure.co.uk in Llangollen Wales to learn some paddling skills The plan is to use these skills later in the year to help me and Dan enjoy a camping and canoeing expedition and perhaps help me lead some of the local scouts on some outings.

The course was incredibly intense with new stuff thrown at us every five minutes. Rich Witheridge, our instructor, was great at providing just the right amount of guidance and advice as we learned and practiced one new thing after another. I had not realised just how much I did not know about paddling canoes and kayaks.

As readers will know Dan and I are planning a trip to Italy inspired by the xbox game Assassins creed (read more here).

This weekend we had our second horse riding lesson, this time in a group of eight beginner riders, and all is going well. We're both getting the hang of the 'rising trot' and have even begun some weaving between cones. Not bad for a couple of 'newbies'.

The Italian lessons haven't kicked off yet as one tutor was a no show and we're still looking for another :(

Picture the scene being repeated on motorways up and down the country. Dad is driving the car, the kids are bored and driving each other and everyone else mad and something needs to be done.

Don't despair, with few handy games and jokes you can soon get them distracted enough to not notice the otherwise endless boredom of traffic queues.

Here are a few ideas ruthlessly copied from a great Dad manual called Dad Stuff by Steve Caplin and Simon Rose.

I was following a trend on Twitter  and found myself tweeting all sorts of memories. Here they are for your delight, of course you'll have to be a certain age to appreciate some of them.

When I was a kid;

• We knew our neighbour's names
• Children under 10 didn't know bad words
• Geeks weren't cool
• They made indestructible toys
• Ladettes were called tomboys
• Children didn't need supervision at all times
• Prices were marked to the half pence
• It snowed every winter
• The Thunderbirds were Go!
• Trees were for climbing
• It was OK to thumb a lift home from school
• There was no such thing as a budget airline
• There was no such thing as health food. It was just food
• I thought they put real criminals on horses in cowboy movies and then really shot them
• It was OK to walk across the railway line to play in the river next to the weir
• To make the six million dollar man look fast they showed him in slow motion
• In the winter we had a coal fire in the living room and it was my job to light it with matches
• Disciplining children meant beating the living daylights out the little B*(*&^%$^&%%^
• Every boy knew how an engine worked
• Only twits had nits
• I could eat anything in any amount and was still a skinny strip of nothing
• Shopping was a torture that mum would inflict on us periodically
• Holding a door open for a woman was considered polite rather than patronising
• Strangers weren't dangerous
• Sex was a word that was rarely heard and was always shocking
• Safety pins were fashion jewelery
• Strangers saw our photographs before we did
• We didn't have a shower we had a bath and we used it once a week whether we needed it or not
• Real men had body odour
• The future was so bright we had to wear shades
• We didn't have unleaded petrol
• Movies were called films
• Star Wars was the best movie ever made
• The phone was a big thing in the hallway to be answered with a 'telephone voice'
• It was more fun to be outdoors than in
• Virtual meant nearly
• I wanted to be a grown up. Now I'm a grown up...
• It was OK to have a bath with my sisters
• We used to meet real friends in real places
• The TV had a massive FOUR channels! Who could watch all that at once?
• They had the wizard of Oz on telly every Christmas
• Children played out
•  I was immortal
• Traffic queues were called traffic jams
• At night while wide awake my mum would make me go to bed. In the morning when I was fast asleep....
• The only reality TV shows were the news and documentaries
• Every day was summer time
• Nice girls said no and most girls were nice :(
• Growing up was for grown ups
• A chopper was a cool kids bike
• Converse baseball boots were just cheap trainers
• I wanted to be a space man
• Mobile communications meant having a 10p piece in your pocket
• It was OK for Andy Pandy to go to bed with Looby Loo in children's hour
• Every body knew how to make a paper plane
• We didn't go and play paintball we ran around the woods with toy guns shouting "you're dead!"
• There weren't many reasons to cry
• It was cool to build an airfix kit
• We replaced our blankets with something exotic called a continental quilt
• We had a settee not a sofa
• A two car family was very very posh
• Mum stayed at home while Dad went to work
• There weren't any school bullies, just tough guys and whimps
• Music piracy meant holding down the record and play buttons till the DJ stopped talking
• All the bad things happened miles away
• There wasn't any health and safety to spoil the fun
• Playing conkers was allowed
• Computers were big enough to fill a room and were operated by men in white coats
• Not seeing my parents until it was dark was OK
• They made proper prams that you could turn into go karts
• Playing didn't need electricity and wires
• Time to go home was when it got dark
• Playing was something we did outdoors with friends
• Everybody was going to live on the moon

My son Dan has been inspired by the XBOX game Assassins Creed. He hasn't decided to wear a hoody and start running from rooftop to rooftop killing bad guys you understand but is now interested in exploring the ancient cities of Venice and Rome in which the game is set. He's also quite taken with the idea of getting around on horseback.

Now it would be easy to just nod in all the right places and let all this go as a passing interest but instead we sat together and made a plan to visit Italy sometime towards the end of the year. When we get there we want to be able to speak a little Italian and it would be really cool if we could ride through the Italian mountains just like the guys in the game. The trouble is we don't speak Italian (well Dan knows one or two words but they're not repeatable in polite company) and neither of us knows how to ride a horse.

This sounds like an excellent adventure too good to miss out on so we have decided to learn to speak some Italian and to ride a horse. Today we had our first riding lesson and within thirty minutes we went from tentative walking to confident trotting. Dan came away hugely excited and I'm really pleased that he took to it so well.

Hi, and welcome to the first post of the Lads and Dads Club. We're creating a community of fathers and sons that want to get together and do fun, interesting and challenging things while spending quality time together.

From flying a kite in the local park to paint balling and off shore sailing there’s something for everyone. We’ve set the site up so that fathers and sons of all ages can get together in groups to go and do cool things at weekends and in the holidays that otherwise would be tricky to organise.