Book brings on the baby blues

IT was a left foot Lionel Messi would have been proud of.

The paperback dropped to the floor, coasted across the laminate and shot between the legs of the heaviest armchair in the house, coming to rest dead centre beneath its immovable bulk. Gina Ford was no more.

Kicking defenceless paperbacks is admittedly not the most civilised of behaviour but in her attempts to put manners on the Tasmanian dust devil that masquerades as a six-week-old baby, child-rearing guru Ford had managed to turn its mother into an unrestrained lout.