The Hardy family is in full Olympic mode. We started on Saturday night, Day One, with a meal at the Mee Sing Chinese Restaurant at the Lyneham shops. I was aching for the nostalgic Chinese meal, the sort you grew up on, lemon chicken, honey prawns, beef and black bean and Mongolian lamb. I found it at the Mee Sing and it didn't disappoint, the honey prawns in particular were thick and meaty, well coated in batter and covered in a sticky concoction that actually tasted like real honey. In a feat worthy of a medal, the Mee Sing fed two families, four adults, five kids, in quick fashion, for a neat price, and topped off the night by serving the kids a banana split so big it could have doubled for a snow covered mountain at the next Winter Olympics.

Day Two, I pulled out the map of the world, so now, when Julius Munyelele Indongo from Nambibia is copping a flogging from our own Anthony Little in the lightweight boxing, the kids' job is to find Nambibia on the map. It's giving them a great concept of how big the world is and that Australia, for its sheer size, is actually a very small part of the whole thing, and that little dot there is the whole of Canberra and we live in a minuscule part of that dot.

Day Three, we embarked into training mode. Blossie was at school and The Monster was bursting out of his skin looking for someway to release some five-year-old testosterone. Not content with helping mum do the vacuuming, which I think I have down to an Olympic artform anyway .... (now there's a concept, the Housework Olympics ... I challenge anyone who thinks they're a better ironer than me....) so, just as my father had done before me, I decided to teach him some boxing. I've always been a fan of boxing, despite it's obvious dangers, for it represents a true sport. No balls, no sticks, no apparatus to get in the way, manno on manno. As the first born of a man with no sons, my dad was quite keen to teach me to box, and delighted even further upon discovery that I was a natural southpaw even though I was right-handed. I'll admit here, I have never boxed, never even thrown a punch in a bar fight, but it's something that I've always had a hankering to do. Box, that is, not be in a bar fight.