Aaah, children. You never know when they’re going to embarrass you, like the time my son sang Prince’s “Sexy MF” to the whole of Monkeyworld in Dorset or another when he sang Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” to a Somerfield supermarket queue. He asked for gin once when my then-landlord came to inspect the state of my flat and is prone, even now, to mooning his grandparents, aunts and passing traffic whenever he gets the chance. Which is frequently. Best of all, he looks exactly like me, just a boy version, so I can’t even pretend he’s not with me even in the presence of strangers. I might as well wear a sign around my neck that proclaims: “THE REPROBATE KID IS MY SON.”

He’s a good boy really, just a little saucepot. I don’t know where he gets it from (ahem). My mother laughs and says it’s payback time. She recites all the times I embarrassed HER whilst out on shopping trips or days out, the most usual being the time I tried to swallow a pickled beetroot whole in Pizza Hut and choking on it: my father whacked me on the back and said beetroot flew across the room and landed in somebody’s drink. Niiiiice.

But anyway, my point is, “they” say write from life. WTF??? Anyone with kids knows that no media kid is the same as a real life kid. Media Kids are quiet and sit in the background and draw, especially on soap operas. Sorry – my mistake; sometimes they cry a bit. What a hard life! Media Kids don’t pick their scabs or enact Jackie Chan movies at four in the morning; they don’t shove peas so far up their noses they have to go to Casualty, they don’t set fire to the guinea pig hutch and they certainly don’t shove fish paste sandwiches in-between the sofa cushions to avoid eating them. I just pulled those examples out of the air by the way. Really.

Lilirose’s vocabulary is coming along a treat though: her brother is really taking his time to ensure she has all the words she needs in time for starting nursery next month. Like stinky, poo and bitch. Great.