You can hand a young child the keys to a soft play empire, a sensory board engineered by NASA and a fully assembled Lego Death Star, and they will still choose the plank on two chains.

Bang for buck, nothing in modern parenting beats the humble swing. For the price of a dodgy lower back you can generate hours of wind-in-hair, lungs-out shrieking joy.

But there comes a moment when you’ve done the alternating hand push, pushed from behind, and watched them try sitting, standing, twisting and the dreaded “look Dad, no hands.”

And you both know it. The municipal playground pendulum; reliable, squeaky and lightly splattered in bird turd has taken you as far as it can.

It’s time for level 2: the rope swing.