With Joseph now spending a week and a half at his grandparents’ house, our lives are even more bereft of the enforced routine of being parents to a toddler. It’s not that I miss this routine – god knows, I hate routine more than most – but how strange it feels when it’s no longer present.

Eric, who’s been at home all day, now sits in the corner reading a book, listening to music that my brain parses as depressing regardless of its actual content. She’s not hungry, I’m not really hungry, as the clock ticks onwards long past what would have been Joseph’s dinner time. I was instructed not to buy food for dinner on the way home, so we don’t have enough ingredients to make an actual meal – not that I can be bothered to cook anyway. I contemplate going out for fish and chips, though I can’t really afford it and can’t even be bothered to stand up from the sofa.

A four-day weekend and a fragmentary reminiscence of University life have thrown my work life askew as well, and it feels odd to be there, like it’s a transient thing.

For all that I normally yearn to be free from the yoke of parenthood, it sure as hell feels weird when I temporarily achieve it, as if I’m no longer adapted to a child-free life.