Apprentice

JP is a budding zoologist. He was going to be a paleontologist, until we delivered the shocking news that dinosaurs are, in fact, extinct*, and that Nigel Marven does not really own a time portal to travel back 65,000,000 years to rescue T-Rexes called Terrence and Matilda.

Dinosaur hunting is a serious business, requiring the wearing of khaki, walking boots, and Indiana Jones-style hats. Your kit must include binoculars, water bottle, Milky Way (snack size) magnifying glass, glow-in-the-dark stegosaurus figure, bug viewer, triceratops keyring, compass, notebook, pencil, ThomastheTankEngine pop-up tent - and that's just for watching the Prehistoric Park DVD.

Nigel Marven Jr. has an ant farm in the kitchen. We tried to catch ants in the garden to populate the farm, but failed to attract sufficient numbers from the same family to prevent gang warfare, murder and cannibalism on a shocking scale. In the end I resorted to ordering ants by mail - probably the strangest parcel I've ever accepted delivery of on the doorstep. The prominent 'Caution: LIVESTOCK' label on the very small jiffy bag must have aroused the curiosity of the postman, because it would easily have passed through the letterbox, but he chose to ring the bell. His unspoken question went unanswered and a petri dish of ants was dispensed into the farm.

As far as we can tell, it's much like a human community. The women set about unpacking, checking out the local schools and hiring a windowcleaner and the men scoured the perimeters for opportunities to wage war on the neighbours.

Keeping the ants company in the kitchen, is a pool of baby Triops - aka prehistoric shrimp. Hatched from eggs kept in suspended animation for thousands of years - reawakened with rainwater and the promise of fish flakes. They too are cannibals and the hundreds we hatched are now down to about 8. They're just about visible to the naked eye now, and their pool is surrounded by an attractive boundary of home-grown grass, which we have also 'hatched' from seeds that came with the Triop eggs.

Father Christmas delivered Worm World last month - watch this space.

*Apart from Dung Beetles, Dragonflies, Crocodiles, Scorpions, Triops and Ron Atkinson.