It is 5.38am. I am tapping on my tablet with one hand whilst the other is poorly supporting a slurping Tom at my right breast.
“She wore brown tweed to Sandringham yesterday,” I murmer, mainly to myself.
Karl yawns and claws at the the rigging of Tom’s blanket as I have all the duvet.
“But she left the children at home. I think, actually, their religious education might be suffering a bit. It is Christmas, and that’s the second time they haven’t been as a family.”
Karl points out that we took the children on Christmas day and they lasted 20 minutes, with Eva crying solidly because none of the carols were ‘Happy and Know It’.
“Maah-mee. Spotty horse has fallen down.” Eva shouts from her room, still yet to realise there is no invisible bubble of steel forcing her to stay in her bed. This is both wonderful and terrible.
Sated, Tom’s head lolls backwards. I hoof him to Karl and seize my chance.
“I’m having a shower,” I say, after I have deposited spotty horse, toddler and a beaker of warm milk on the bed too.
“Mummy, what you doing?”
“Having a shower.”
“Mummy, what you doing?”
“Having a shower.”
“Um, Daddy, what’s Mummy doing?”
I sigh as I remember all the towels are in the wash.
Sneaking past the the Labrador, Max, who, at this time of the morning, can find spotty horse faster than a homing missile, I nearly brain myself slipping on the brown nylon rug he sleeps on and has shed on his way up the stairs. I pick it up. I pull it over my shoulders. If I squint, it could be brown tweed.
But today, it will be a towel.
