THERE'S a new swear word in our house. And it begins with B.

It is Bunnings.

It's only a swear word to the wife though. For the husband it is a symbol of happiness, tranquillity and hours of endless entertainment.

What is it with men and hardware stores? Honestly, I swear they are the sanctum of cultural entertainment for modern man. It's their form of museum or art gallery.

Bunnings should charge an entrance fee because you don't have to buy anything to be entertained. Men seem content to walk around and stare vacuously at the objects on the shelves for hours without achieving anything.

Even my kids love Bunnings, because it has a play park. My sons are 10 and eight. You would think they'd be beyond finding a play park entertaining. Not so, it seems.

Anyway, Sunday's shopping expedition has firmly ingrained my dislike for the hardware giant.

I took the kids to the play park so Doug could "quickly" get the one lone plank we needed.

After about 25 minutes, during which time our children had conquered the play park, Kyla had her face face-painted and I'd contemplated the range of sheds and play equipment - there was still no sign of Doug.

I walked up-and-down each of the aisles before finding him, staring at the shelves as if pieces of wood were as interesting as the Mona Lisa. He hadn't found anything, he'd just been staring at what he could have, if he didn't have me as his wife.

He also didn't want to ask for help in finding what he was looking for. As my colleague, Donna, says - that would be like a man asking for directions.

So I had to break his reverie and with the help of the fantastic staff, it was mission accomplished. All we needed was a couple of bags of compost and we could get out of there in under an hour. Then our kids disappeared.

In between Kyla wetting her pants, me getting the compost, Doug picking up the plank and driving around to pick me up, we'd lost two of our three children.

So I had to return back to the aisles, Doug-less as that would waste time, and find our kids.

That's when the music was interrupted for what sounded like an emergency procedure... except it wasn't.

"Attention, attention, Doug and Kathy, we have your children," was the gist of it.

"Please come to the service desk as your sons are lost, lonely and looking for you and we're about to call Child Services for neglect" was my interpretation of the rest. As I shamefully collected my kids, all I could think was... bad, bad Bunnings.