At the start of lockdown, I paid for Minecraft Realms for my little boy (8) and girl (6). I set them a challenge: learn Minecraft, play it, have fun, and defeat the Ender Dragon. My only rule: they have to play Survival, and they can't cheat.

I've been enormously strict with that rule. No cheats, ever. This is a survival game. Survive.

It has been a long, long, long road. They have recruited friends, built houses, died hundreds of times, lost all their items, got trapped in caves, died a hundred times more, argued, and played endlessly.

They've also drifted from their goals. Elliott, my little boy, has been taming dogs, and has a pack that follows him round. Florence, my girl, mostly builds gardens and crushes on the older boys they play with.

Elliott built a vast, towering tree house, and at the top of the treehouse, he built a dog sanctuary and play pen. Only he was allowed up there. He didn't want his sister to come up.

Not only was it a weird dog zoo/prison, it was where Elliott kept his armour. Chests upon chests of it. Four month's worth of enchantments ready for that long awaited fight with the Ender Dragon.

His sister really wanted to visit Elliott's tree-house. There were very, very, very loud arguments about why she was not allowed to enter the tree-house.

Then. A scream. "FLORENCE NO. NO. NO. USE WATER. STOP IT, QUICKLY."

Florence had set the entire tree-house on fire. Elliott was in tears. Screaming and shouting. "MY DOGS. ALL MY DOGS."

Florence ran out of the room. She had realised what she had done, and bolted upstairs, crying with fear. Everything was gone. EVERYTHING. All the resources for the Ender Dragon fight. All the armour, all the weapons, everything.

She says it was an accident, swears blind it was just a mistake with a flint and iron. But who knows what goes through a little sister's mind when denied access to a sky high petting zoo.

And also: all of Elliott's dogs were dead. Burned to death by his sister. Imagine the trauma. Eight dead dogs, all with cool names, tamed from all over the world.

At least that's what we thought. Over the weekend his friends managed to "find" some of them. Apparently. I wonder if actually they tamed more dogs, renamed them, and gave them to him, but I can't prove anything.

They also hatched a plan. They begged me to turn on cheats so they could restore all their stuff. Being a terrible, heartless, awful dad, I said no. Not a chance. Live with the consequences. Mainly, I couldn't be bothered to look up how to turn on cheats on a Minecraft Realm.

So this afternoon, as a group, they got together as a group, found a stronghold, and with cobbled together armour and weapons and bed for respawns, they finally killed the Ender Dragon.

Florence, Elliott and all their friends are best friends again. The missing dogs have little graves and signs, achievements have been unlocked and they are excitedly planning their next build.

So thanks Mojang and everyone who works on Minecraft. Thanks for entertaining my kids for lockdown, giving them a task, a playground, a place they can be with their friends and brothers and sisters.

Anyway, I just looked up how to allow cheats and APPARENTLY MINECRAFT BACKS UP YOUR WORLD NOW? And I could actually restore the world pre-fire, resurrect the dead sodding dogs that have dominated my life for the past week?

So, and finally I get to the point. Should I restore their realm to pre dead dog times?