The Spanair crash in Madrid could not have come at a worse time for a business that is really suffering all over the world. What everyone in aviation is now dreading is solid evidence that cost-paring or cutting safety corners played some role in causing the accident. Spanair was clearly in a bad way, and its long-term survival must now be in doubt.

Safety is all for airlines – if passengers start feeling uneasy about flying then, if at all possible, they will use other methods of transport to get where they wish to go. Or they might not bother flying and just do a video conference instead (which would please the green lobby at least).

In such an atmosphere of air travel anxiety any incident, however minor, is going to be seized upon. Ryanair’s cabin depressurisation yesterday over France has set all the alarm bells ringing – even the FT’s website this morning is actually leading its companies section with the story.

Ryanair quickly realised the seriousness of the situation and put its loud-mouthed boss Michael O’Leary onto Radio 4’s Today programme to defend the actions of his crew. He actually did a pretty good job of getting the facts straight. He’s quite correct to state that when the flight crew have oxygen masks on they are unable to use the intercom to tell passengers what is going on, for instance. Ryanair also has one of the youngest fleets around.

However, O’Leary’s cause wasn’t helped by polar explorer Pen Hadow (who was on board) telling reporters that 'well over 80 per cent of people on that flight knew they were going to die' and claiming that a lack of communication from cabin staff had added to their 'extreme fear'.

Ryanair has few friends out there – in the media or in the industry – and when something goes awry for the Irish airline, little mercy is shown.

In today's bulletin:
Bovis and Rio in a tale of two corporates
Editor's blog: Safety concerns add to airlines' woes
Rock may leave a £1bn hole
TUC argues for 'Community Day'
Books Special: Kaplan and Norton on The Execution Premium

I have a confession. There was a point at about 4.45pm yesterday afternoon when I was on the verge on having to... make a list of Things To Do. What with the print version of MT going to bed this week (with my deputy in Tanzania on assignment), sorting out getting The Kid from nursery, sorting out The Kid (Original Version) aged 13 who has just returned from holiday, banging out this blog, shopping, washing, finding out why the blokes who have replaced the pavement outside our house seem to have pierced the main water supply... I tell you, one of those spinning plates got close to dropping.

At bedtime, however, I had a moment of genius. Post-bath is the one point during the day when The Kid’s co-operation levels falter: he wriggles and squeaks, writhes and jumps around and refuses to get into the nappy plus sleepsuit. Solution: get the bottle plugged in BEFORE kitting him up. Genius. Why did nobody ever think of that before?

So then I raced downstairs and did the dinner party for The Kid's godfather and his wife, who were very polite about my spaghetti con aglio e olio (with a simple green salad) and even washed up afterwards.

This morning, as I brushed my teeth while making sure the Kid wasn’t pitching head-first into the lavatory bowl, I had a quick glance in the mirror and realised I was letting myself go. Nothing as gross as putting on yesterday’s socks or underpants, but I hadn’t changed my jeans for four days. My lovely Etro suits are a forgotten memory gathering moths in the closet. I’ve turned into a Slummy Daddy. There’s just no Me Time for the modern father.

Anyway The Wife called when she landed at Heathrow. Severe turbulence all the way over on the Red Eye. They were bouncing up onto the ceiling. Hope she likes the roses on the kitchen table. We might even get our supper cooked for us...

In today's bulletin:
BAA faces Gatwick and Stansted loss
Santander or else, says A&L
The business case for better posture
Editor's blog: I Don't Know How I Do It, Part Four
Should we ban the Olympics? 

Ok. I left you yesterday with the Kid safely in the hands of the professionals at his nursery. It’s a pretty cool, purpose-built and very right-on establishment. I saw from a wall display that they’d had a recent visit from Gordon Brown. Can’t think why The Kid didn’t mention it – maybe he just wasn’t that impressed. Toddler-filled nurseries are probably one of the few venues the PM can drop in on these days without being greeted by boos and hisses. Unless they all started flinging used nappies.

One thing I’m not concerned about is his food intake. At nursery they even have their own chef.  On the way back from the sodden Boys' Devon trip at the weekend we cheered ourselves by a lunchtime pit-stop at the Lamb in Hindon, Wilts. After the customary starter of an avocado, The Kid was eyeing-up my hors d’oeuvre of devilled whitebait. I let him have one and bingo, he was off.  He then helped me demolish the roast sirloin with Yorkshire pudding plus apple crumble and vanilla ice cream. And he was still up for half a banana to top off. 

Having a kid who eats everything – except tomatoes which bring him out in a florid rash – is a real pleasure. How he chews it all with only three teeth I can’t work out. Those boney gums are doing some serious overtime. His maternal grandmother has warned about the dangers of over-feeding but, hey, he’s hardly eating like Michael Phelps.

Still, on the subject of food, a touching sight greeted me on arrival at the nursery yesterday evening. A mother had arrived on her bicycle and her kid, who must have been at least three years old, marched up, knocked on her chest, and proceeded to plug himself into the breast before she’d even got her cycling helmet off. Some things a father just cannot provide. 

Anyway, call me mad but things are going so swimmingly, I’m going to push the envelope and throw a dinner party this evening. Watch this space for tomorrow’s final instalment. 

In today's bulletin:
Tenants super for gloomy house sellers
US economist: we're going to see a whopper!
BAA secures its future - for now
Editor's blog: I Don't Know How He Does It, Part Three
PRs to be thrown into the Lake of Fire?

I left you on Friday afternoon about to embark with The Kid on a weekend trip to Devon with Divorced Dave. The Kid’s a good traveller: crashes out in planes, trains and normally, automobiles. With his mother’s approval from five thousand miles away, I went for the mildly risky bath/bottle/car option, which he hasn’t tried before. He’d never found himself sitting in a car in his sleepsuit but dozed off when the Sweet Dreams dummy was plugged in. And off we gunned down the M4 with a song in our hearts.

At a service station just West of Bath, Uncle Dave decided it was time to refuel and very unwisely slammed the door as he got out to wield the pump. The Kid woke up and fun and games ensured as we piled down the rain-swept M5 dodging caravans, almost hitting one on the A30. The main problem was, like the kids on Top Gear who have now decided the Audi is uncool, The Kid agrees. He didn’t like the sports suspension and low profile tyres which give a seriously jiggly ride in the back. There was quite a lot of protest until I put my jacket over him to shield from the glare of oncoming headlights.

We arrived on the edge of Dartmoor at 10.30 PM in the pitch black and pouring rain like Withnail and I at Uncle Monty’s cottage. Got the travel cot up in two mins flat, dropped Kid into sleep sack and we all hit the hay.

Saturday 6.10 AM. It was still tipping it down. Snores from Uncle Dave’s room (may have been feigned). Usual routine of Bottle (7 oz.); carefully supervised rapid crawling round bedroom; books read: 'Noisy Animals', 'Farming Animals', 'Spot’s Rainy Day', 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' (twice), 'This Little Baby'. Tempted to read excerpts from Allison Pearson’s 'How Does She do It?' in ironic voice but too knackered. 

Morning walk abandoned as Bugaboo wheels sank in four inches of mud.

By lunchtime, however, things were looking up. Booked a table at the excellent White Horse in Moretonhampstead, ordered a couple of pints of Yellow Hammer and some linguini with crab and started to mellow out. The Kid (98th percentile for height and weight) is a serious trencherman in the making and snaffled an avocado, pasta with oil and parmagiano, half a banana, a dozen grapes and some Cornish Yarg. A huge nappy (Code Yellow) sorted in the corridor.

Off for a drive through Dartmoor mist, and teeming rain was followed by a slightly trying Devon cream tea with all the trimmings at Uncle Dave’s posh club Bovey Castle. Kid tried to crawl into the fine wine cellar which shows good instincts. Staff very understanding.  

Saturday evening bath and bed entirely uneventful. Father and Dave sat down to pizza, a bottle of claret and Mike Figgis 'Internal Affairs' (terrific movie and without doubt Richard Gere’s best ever film performance in which he plays a bent cop with nearly a dozen kids).

Sunday morning early and a minor scare. Having turned my back for no more than eight seconds he’d disappeared. I found him in an ante-room closing in at speed on an axe and a mouse trap containing a lump of rodenticide. Then it started raining again.

This solo childcare business is about focus and concentration. Lots of it. He’s now in the safe hands of the professionals at nursery.  More thrills and spills tomorrow.

In today's bulletin:
Looks like Woolies hasn't gone to Iceland
Cut rates or else, warns BCC
Entrepreneurs keep nose to the grindstone
Editor's Blog: I Don't Know How I Do It, Part Two
Bowie cashes in on Olympic Heroes

I was mildly amused to hear this week that the celebrated Daily Mail columnist Allison Pearson is in a spot of bother with her publishers. The author of the smash-hit novel 'I Don’t Know How She Does It' - a hymn to the modern, multi-tasking professional mother - is being sued by Miramax for the return of the $700,000 advance she has been paid for her next offering. She hasn’t delivered. In her world of complex multi-tasking, clearly she has allowed one of the larger spinning plates to fall.

I doubt if I’ll be the only bloke tickled by this, not least because I hear an awful lot of sexist nonsense these days about men’s lack of ability when it comes to the multi-faceted demands of organised child-caring. 

Well, I don’t know How I Do It, to be frank. The Wife departed at the crack of dawn this morning for a business trip to the States, leaving me on my Jack Jones with The Kid (aged 11 months). I think even the most hardened harridan might be impressed by my busy timetable since 6.10 AM, when the cot-yelling started.

Bottle (7 oz.) gently warmed and downed in one. Carefully supervised rapid crawling round bedroom. Books read: 'Noisy Animals', 'Farming Animals', 'Spot’s Rainy Day', 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' (twice), 'This Little Baby'. Change into day clothes for the pair of us. Breakfast: rice krispies plus two lumps toast.  One nappy change (Code Brown). Speeding around the half-finished kitchen in juvenile dodgem which plays 'When The Saints Go Marching In' (this is beginning to sound like a Bridget Jones Diary entry). 8.55 AM: handover to The Minder and fast exit to my desk here to a proper job (only kidding).

The weekend promises even more intense multi-tasking, as a divorced mate and I are planning to take The Kid down to Devon for a Boys' Mini-Break. That could be a nine hour drive behind three-abreast caravans on the M5, with a lot of Baby Organix cheesy wotsits and other assorted snacks wiped over the leather of his Audi. Heavy rain is forecast, and the last time I turned up there all he had in the fridge was a three-quarters-spent container of Gentleman’s Relish.  Careful planning will be all.

For the 'Two Men and a baby' update, read my Silly Season blog on Monday. 

In today's bulletin:
Winners and losers in supermarket price war
Merrill Lynch gets 60 year UK tax break?
An enterprising approach to education
Editor's blog: I Don't Know How I Do It  
Lessons in positive spin, from YouTube

Two distress purchases made within the last 18 hours have left me a) wondering about the fascinating subject of pricing and b) a couple of hundred quid poorer.

Yesterday morning, after the customary English summer torrential downpour, there was water coming up through the shower waste plug-hole. An evil smell was wafting around the kitchen. After some argy-bargy with our builders – who love us so much they are still working on the downstairs extension nearly eight months after they arrived – I called in a specialist. (Builders may be able to chuck bits of rubble down drains, but they can't clear them - although there's a certain amount of cheap entertainment to be had watching them try.)

Dyno-Rod got the call. The bill – which they are very careful to make you fully aware of before they turn up – would be £93.57 plus 'the VAT'. Their man came along and with a combination of his long glove and a water blaster sorted us out within half an hour. It was with great relief I watched the fluid level inside the man hole (complete with bobbing indescribables) recede like the tide going out.

I was reminded of a £100,000-a-year plumber MT once interviewed - in a 'Most Overpaid Jobs' feature - who said to us: 'Mate, I charge whatever I reckon people will pay. And if you've got a burst pipe at midnight, you'll pay anything'. Except that I didn’t begrudge the Dyno-Rod man a cent – he earned his dosh. £93.57 plus the VAT felt more than reasonable.

This morning, however, I made use of a spare ten minutes to pop down to the tyre shop to get the rubber on my ageing Saab looked at. After the customary sucking of air through teeth, the front left was condemned and the bloke went inside to check the price of a replacement Michelin: 'ninety five plus the VAT'. This is one of those moments, like the annual service, when you bitterly regret giving up your company car. The Dyno-Rod/Michelin tyre price similarity struck me immediately.

Now I know an awful lot of R&D goes into tyres – just look at the fetishistic fuss they make over them in Formula One -  but £115 for a bit of shaped rubber? I could, of course, have had a cheaper one - but then they wouldn’t have matched. Two different brands on the same axle? I’d be letting the family down if it made the vehicle less safe etc etc...

I have no idea what it costs Michelin to make one of their tyres. But I do know that these days you can no longer assume that the price charged for something bears any resemblance to the costs of producing it. Smart companies concentrate on the value they offer to customers. They also know that coming in under the price point of a hundred pounds – albeit without the VAT – eases the psychological pain. I’m still trying to work out why the one purchase irks me but the other doesn’t.

But the purchase which irked me most of all recently was the cost of a recent visit to Specsavers: before my very eyes a pair of glasses which were supposed to cost £120 went up to £225 as I was blinded by the science of variofocals. That experience left me feeling that Ryanair were a bunch of pussycats by comparison...

PS. MT ran a great feature on pricing recently which you can read here.

In today's bulletin:
Bank fails to douse recession fears
Move the Scousers on, says Tory think tank  
Editor's blog: The price isn't right  
A question of convenience for London's businesses  
A new recipe for team-building success? 

Back from hols and 1,024 emails in the inbox. Bet you can’t beat that. It’s always the same after a period away and it takes me a good couple of hours to shift through what is, if I’m perfectly honest, 95% dross. You may think it’s great being so popular but you’d be wrong. And they’re not all spam offering me four gross of Cialis for $129.99, or a chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity to help some West African whose father has sadly passed away and who needs help getting his secret stash out of the country. No - they’re mostly no-hope press releases from desperate PRs.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, as soon as I switched it on, my Dell started producing some alarming clicks, clunks and whirrs and then went on a general go-slow. Time to call in the IT Boys. An upgrade and a new hard drive was the diagnosis; up came the guy with his sonic screwdriver and off I went for a meeting.

When it comes to my tech equipment I’m fairly conservative and don’t take to change lightly (I still think wistfully sometimes about my old Amstrad 8256 and stuck with my Nokia 6310 until last year). So, imagine my horror when I returned and didn’t recognise my desktop, background and, most importantly, my Outlook. The new version is completely different and I was thrown into a complete funk. It was like coming back to your house and finding someone had painted the hall mauve, laid shag pile in the living room and interfered with the cat. That is how intimate our relations with technology have become. 

As for me, I need another holiday.

In today's bulletin:
Credit crunch leaves UK £600bn out of pocket
Water lot of money to spend  
Editor's blog: The tyranny of technology  
Olympics give us a sporting chance  
Business Travel Special: Durrants Hotel, London