It is that stage of a boy’s life. You know, when they gallop around the house shouting ‘en garde’ and pretending to be Sir Silver Knight who engages and invariably beats the villainous Black Knight. Niccolo is now well and truly hooked on knights’ play and of course he wants the props to go with it.

So yesterday he brandished his small plastic dagger (which he calls a sword) and asked me to make him a shield “like the one in London” —he has a full knight’s costume in London but none in Milan, where we are staying until the baby is born so my husband can actually see his newborn daughter in between one long stint at work and the next.

I cut a shield shape from cardboard, covered it with aluminium foil, taped on two foil handles—et voila his shield was ready. And pretty much the minute I had finished doing this, my husband arrived home with two foam broadswords, a fake armour and a foam shield he had bought from a toy shop (repeat with me: our son is not a spoiled brat, our son is not a spoiled brat).

Who needs a cardboard shield when you can have a real one?

It immediately transpired that mummy’s cardboard shield—no matter how lovingly crafted—cannot possibly compete with a realistic toy-shop-bought one complete with roaring lion. Clearly, my skills as an armourer leave a lot to be desired.

The ‘good news’ in all this, however, is that Nicco decreed I can have the cardboard shield and his old ’sword’ to fight against him in our homely jousts. So it looks like I have moved up in life—from shield-maker to knight. En garde!