A start

My Blackberry alarm goes off at 6am but I’ve already been awake for some while. At various points in the night my two sons have found their way into our bedroom and the youngest one has been kicking me in the head for at least two hours. Despite the fact that my phone is downstairs, the alarm is still loud to wake the household and so I go down to switch it off. I determine, whilst I’m down there, to try and find the razors and shaving cream that I’d bought the other week. Last seen on one of the kitchen worktops when I unpacked the shopping bags, they have since disappeared. I check every cupboard, nook and cranny in the kitchen, my bedroom wardrobe, and the cupboards in the bathroom. Zilch. I suspect that my youngest son has somehow broken through the stairgate into the kitchen, found the razors and cream and posted them both into the dustbin. He’s making a habit of doing that. I saved two LEGO cars from the same bin the other day but I obviously wasn’t in time for the razors. Two packets of pegs have also mysteriously disappeared...

I shave my head and face with a blunt razor, miraculously retaining both ears.

Shower, dress, and fold clean clothes from the washing line. Place clothes in airing cupboard. Leaving them folded on shelves will mean that small hands will pull them off again just as quickly.

By now it’s seven o’clock and time to wake my daughter. She started school on Monday and she needs to be out of the house by 8.30. I rouse her, bathe her and dress her, getting told off as I do so for pulling her tights up too high and giving her “granddad trousers”.

We go downstairs together and I sort out some breakfast for her. While she’s eating I unpack the dishwasher and then stack a couple of dirty plates from the previous evening. I’ve also brought dirty clothes down for the washing machine but it’s full of clean clothes from yesterday and so I peg these out first and then set a new wash going. It goes straight to the spin cycle and I realise that my youngest son, not content with posting my shaving gear into the bin, must have also fiddled with the programme on the washing machine. I stop the machine, re-programme it and start again. By now, Niharika has finished her breakfast and so I sponge the last remnants off her skirt, wipe her mouth and she’s good to go. So too, am I. It’s just gone ten to eight and I have about seventeen minutes to get to the station in time for the 8.09 to Liverpool Street. I saddle up and set off. I’m there by three minutes past, lining the platform at the start of another day.