Regular readers (Hi, Mum) may remember a month or so back, there was a small incident in the Whittle household involving some girl jeans.

Basically, Flea had chosen some denim shorts from John Lewis and only realised when we got home that the label said 'John Lewis Girl'. This is a major problem. Because Flea does not wear girls' clothes. Ever.

Every time I tried to get her to wear the jeans, she would come up with some creative excuse.

"My t-shirt is grey. It doesn't match blue."

"Have you seen those clouds, Mummy? It's a bit gloomy for shorts."

"I can't open the button on those shorts. What if I need the toilet?"

I was ready to admit defeat until the owner of a small company that makes Clothes Plasters got in touch and we were sent a set of clothes plasters to try – these are iron on patches in cute, sort-of-retro designs that come in a metal tin, just like old-fashioned plasters used to.

The blue box, which we chose for obvious reasons, includes pirates, robots, space ships and other designs – to fix them to the shorts, you just iron on the front of the patch (through a tea towel) for 15 seconds, and then iron the reverse for 30 seconds.

The results speak for themselves:

Flea2

They are now – without a doubt – BOYS' jeans. And now Flea's favourites. Go figure.