Saturday night. I sleep with my wife and baby. It’s like being in a trench in Flanders. Bright lights beam. Bodily matter is ejected and consumed. People scream, but their writhing mouths can’t say the word “Mummy”. I behave like a captain during bombardment. I’ve taken the precaution of drinking myself into a stupor. I’m wearing earplugs, eye patches and thick clothing. If there’s trouble in no man’s land, I send in the sapper. Okay. Yes. I know I’m not being a team player, but she has equipment. She has breasts. I have wanted breasts since I was a teenager. Nobody gave me them. The result is: I can’t feed the baby.

Seven am. Sunday. Day of rest. Wife wakes me. She says: “Can you get that?” Baby is shouting. I take her downstairs. She grins at me all the way, which changes my mood like a soothing blast of laudanum. I lie on the sofa, she lies in her springy chair, and we bounce through the Match of the Day theme tune. When someone scores, we kick our feet excitedly. She’s becoming the perfect girl. She doesn’t say a word during the commentary - she knows this isn’t filler. This is Alan Hansen, appearing like a deus ex machina to explain what should have happened. Perfection.

Then she yells for an hour. I go through the sad rota of dad tricks. I check her nappy. I sing. I even turn off the football, and instead, we watch her far inferior plastic wind-up television, which plays Old MacDonald, while winding round a procession of mournful farm animals.

The privates appear - my daughters. They want porridge. I start making it. Baby screams. I pace the garden with her, longing for the honeyed comfort of porridge. Porridge is a fairy-tale food. You pour 20 oats into hot milk and it stiffens, magically, into a huge vat that feeds a whole regiment.

But this time, that hasn’t happened. I enter to find the porridge has congealed to a thin, snotty layer. My wife appears and gives out the porridge. Cassady says: “This is not enough.” Wife hands over my bowl. Cassady pours in half the sugar bowl, then slaps the mixture with her spoon, before declaring: “I wanted a medium bowl. This . . .” I say: “Cassady, shut up.” Wife says: “You be quiet.” If I swear, she thinks I should be tied to a wheel and flogged. I think: 1) “Shut up” is not swearing; 2) Don’t question the captain in front of the lower ranks, or he loses all authority; 3) Cassady had just trashed my porridge.

I glance at my wife. “You did well in the trenches last night,” I say. “I’m recommending you for a medal.”

“Don’t want a medal,” she says. “I want a lie-in. Or I’m going to shoot my foot and get myself sent back to Blighty.”

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