I wish I was a baby. Not in a weird, adult nappy way. It’s just, babies have basically got the perfect life.

Say I was feeling a bit tired and grumpy. Say I’d got a bit of a snuffly cold too. My wife doesn’t hesitate. She just picks me up and gives me a nice cuddle. Immediately I feel a bit better.

But I’m still a bit tired, and a bit snuffly, so I carry on whingeing. My wife doesn’t get annoyed with me and role her eyes and tell me to shut up, or ridicule the irony of me moaning about my tiredness, when she literally had to ratchet her eyes open after yet another night of CIA style sleep deprivation torture. Tirelessly, she carries on soothing me. It’s lovely.

Eventually I fall asleep in her arms. Suddenly I become aware that she is trying to put me down. This, of course, is completely unacceptable. I’m not sure why. It’s not as if it’s a bed of nails. It’s a lovely, soft, clean, painstakingly plumped and luxuriously comfy little bed. But I just don’t like it. So I shout at her.

I can see she’s disappointed, but she carries on joggling and soothing me anyway, which is nice. Suddenly I feel a bit funny and throw up all down her back. She goes still for a moment. I can hear her breathing, slow and deep, as if she is struggling with some internal impulse. I start to worry a little that I may have gone too far. Luckily there is something I can do in this situation.

She looks at me with bloodshot eyes. Suddenly I stop whinging, I pause for effect, then I smile at her. It’s amazing, that’s all it takes. The deep lines of desperation and exhaustion on her forehead melt away and she smiles back at me, looking a little bit as though she might cry. Just to make sure, I give her a little giggle, a sort of backwards, happy sneeze. And that’s it. She’s mine again.

I grunt a little, go tense for a moment, then, as she holds me, the stupid looking love-smile still on her face, I do a biiiiig poo.