'So, what do you think?' Adele stood at the kitchen sink wiping little Tracey's grubby mouth. Wayne, her husband, sat at the kitchen table covered in crayons and sticky substances. 'I mean, it's not as if I'm asking for the bloody world.'

Wayne remained silent, disentangling 4 years old Leo's fingers from his legs. In dismay, he spotted chocolate hand marks on his clean denims. 'Look at my jeans! I can't go down the pub wearing these!'

At the tone in his father's voice, Leo started crying. Baby Tracey, now in her high chair, began crying too. Then the back door burst open and Tim, their eldest, hobbled inside wailng as blood poured from his left knee.

His mother rushing forward, soothed her injured child but managed to demand, 'Get off your idle arse! Fetch the First Aid Box if you please.'

Leaping to his feet, scratching his head in bemusement, Wayne felt a hefty punch on his shoulder. 'In the bathroom cabinet, idiot. It's a green, plastic box with big capital letters written on it that reads, 'First Aid'.'

Adele's angry sarcasm sent Wayne dashing out of the kitchen, up the stairs and into the bathroom. Opening the cabinet door, he took out a green plastic box and, hurrying back downstairs, handed it to his wife.

Minutes later, their eldest child had stopped crying and so did little Leo and baby Tracey too. Adele, watching her husband through narrowed eyes, said, 'You didn't answer my question, Wayne.'

He looked up from his newspaper, a blank expression on his face. 'Vasectomy,' Adeles's reminder came out quietly but with a certain menace.

Wayne paled. 'I thought you wanted four kids,' he stuttered.

'I've got four,' she replied. 'Tim, Leo, Tracey and you.' And taking a scissors out from the First Aid Box, snipping at the air, stepping towards her cowering husband, she told him in a soft voice, 'After they freeze your balls, I'm told it's a simple procedure. They say it doesn't hurt one little bit.'

For a long moment, eyeing the snapping scissors approaching, aware that his children had fallen uncannily silent, Wayne, both hands instinctively shielding his testicles, with great reluctance, agreed.