What is it with kids and water? You can't get them to go anywhere near nice, clean baths full of the stuff for weeks at a time, but show them a murky, grey septic tank and they will fall in it within seconds.

It's as if there is some sort of magnetic connection between kids and dirt.

Fresh, clean water, complete with bubbles and the scent of almond blossom, repels them across the room faster than you can say broccoli, but a gluey ditch full of dead ants pulls them in with nothing less than a supernatural magnetic force.

One minute you are on a pleasant nature ramble, and the next - splosh! - you are trying to scrape green stuff our of your kid's ears with a dock leaf.

And for once I know it is not just my own child who does it. Just last week one of his little chums did a spectacular swan dive into the school pond which left him dripping wet from head to toe. At home time he came staggering out into the playground wearing mismatched clothes, with his hair sticking out at all manner of jaunty angles and clutching a pair of sodden - and probably stinking - trainers under his arm.

We, the lurking mass of mums, immediately went into "dearie me/never mind/accidents happen" mode, but as soon as the poor kid had squelched off home, the titters began.

I have to admit I was howling with laughter when the Munchkin explained - very seriously, as if delivering some dire warning or other on News At Ten - that when his friend had finally emerged from the pond he had been completely coated in a sticky layer of frog spawn.

I realise that, as an adult, I should know better than to laugh at another's misfortunes, especially when the other is a harmless, sweet-faced four year old. But come on, admit it, there is something preternaturally funny about someone doing a Chaplinesque tumble into a frog maternity ward.

And, of course, there is always the laugh of relief all parents automatically emit when they realise a minor disaster has occurred and their child is not at the centre of the action. The titter comes out as a little hallelujah that "there but for the grace of God..." and all that malarkey.

Unfortunately, as the parent of a child who could trip over his own shadow, I rarely get the chance to exercise my hallelujah titter.

Let's make no bones about it, the Munchkin is not the most graceful of creatures. In fact, I think it is fair to say that he could fall into a tea cup of water, or at the very least find a way of tipping the contents over his head, within a matter of seconds.

You can probably imagine what havoc he caused the first time he saw the sea. Or rather the first time we released him from the confines of his buggy for a game of footie on Filey beach, only to watch dumbstruck as he sped off like a whippet straight into the waves - fully clothed, complete with new shoes bought precisely 24 hours earlier.

Now this wouldn't have been so bad if it had been a warm July day, but it was November and - the east coast being the east coast - it was freezing cold.

Then of course there was the time we took him for a run around at Rowntree Park. We thought we were so clever with the hat and the anorak and the waterproof trousers and the wellies, but we were still no match for the Munchkin.

We hadn't even reached the swings before he had fallen into a waist-deep puddle that the geese had obviously been using as a toilet for the best part of the last month.

When we managed to pull him out of its murky depths, complete with a very unattractive slurpy, sucking sound, he was covered from hat to wellies in green slime: the sort of green slime that you just know has had contact with another creature's bottom in the not too distant past.

And talking of bottoms. Last weekend, the Munchkin surpassed even himself in finding the most unlikely place to get soaking wet without even trying. He fell into a toilet.

Honestly, it's true. One minute we were chatting amiably while finishing our ablutions in the loos alongside Helmsley Castle, and the next I'm dragging him out of the toilet by his feet.

Do you think dressing a four year old in a scuba suit at all times would be an overreaction?

Updated: 09:25 Tuesday, April 01, 2003