Bill Gates may be brilliant at pushing barely functional programs but he's an imbecile at deciding what tie goes with which shirt. The rest of us are the same way: good at a few things but really bad at almost everything else. I love my children more than life itself but I'm shockingly incompetent at babysitting. In my marriage, the primary caregiver mantle has been adopted by my wife, Masters Degree and feminism notwithstanding.

People who say stupid things like "children are a gift from heaven" do not have children between the ages of one and seven. They're a gift alright - but from the "other place".

My boys remind me of Australia: attractive-from-afar but oddly Stone Age up close.

My wife recently went away on a three-day business trip. Due to an insane combination of decency and the corrosive effects of Vavi's daily pronouncements on the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, she is quite sensitive to the possibility of abusing our child minder. Hence I was instructed to relieve her of her duties from 4pm each day while my wife was away. (Oh, how I long for the good old days when one could make Mavis work 18-hour shifts on a bread-and-strawberry-jam diet.)

And this is how it came to pass that I drove into my yard circa 3.30pm this past Thursday, intent on multi-tasking my way through taking care of my offspring and writing this column (except it was originally about something important like indigenous flowers). The ambience was not dissimilar to the aftermath of a really productive interrogation at Guantanamo Bay. The family mutt, Spiderman, was skulking in the shadow of the shrubbery, whimpering like a mouse caught in a trap. I knew immediately that our helper, the aspiring unionist, had previously unleashed Dillinger and the Sidekick (read: my children) on our unsuspecting canine to allow herself a breather. Spiderman's left eyebrow had been shaved off and his eyelashes highlighted with a purple marker. With his good paw, he tapped "Call SPCA" in morse code. Walking into the lounge was like walking into a rehearsal of Lord of the Flies. Our nanny's limp body was sprawled out on the couch, her eyelids twitching, her spirit broken. She looked like a haggard 86-year-old alcoholic. One of the Tasmanian devils was jumping up and down on her abdomen while the other attempted to stuff peas into her nostrils. As soon as she spotted me, she disappeared inside her bedroom faster than Usain Bolt on steroids.

My wife has weird, pacifist views on child rearing. I personally believe that any child older than five has it coming if his Adam's apple has an inadvertent rendezvous with some parental flying fist. Sending kids out into the world without familiarising them with the feeling of a well-aimed backhand is like the president of Pakistan sending troops to the Indian border armed only with prayer mats and good intentions. This is the thought that entered my mind as I surveyed the aftermath of what had previously been my TV lounge. About 10 broken CDs lay on the floor. If I'd caused $200 worth of damage to my father's "45 collection, he'd have hit me so hard my intestines would have tingled well into the 22nd century.

Resourceful individual that I am, I immediately strapped the children into the car and drove them to Pick n Pay to procure lollipops, just to shut them up. As soon as we arrived, the two-year-old expeditiously made a 4.5kg deposit into his Pampers, despite his having only consumed 250ml of formula that day. If ever there was conclusive proof that Albert Einstein was talking right out of his backside when he declared that E = mc2, this was it. But, then again, my boy is probably an alien life form.

My wife is clearly doing something right. When we picked her up from the airport, the duo of devils was miraculously transformed into mommy's angels. The first words out of the four-year-old Judas's mouth were: "Baba gave us lollipops for dinner."

I'd sooner have my flesh consumed by rabid dingoes any day than do that again.

So sue me.