‘Oh, stop moaning and do some work.’

Thus was my reintroduction to the world after six days of what I considered to be agony. Such was my pain that I'd found eating to be impossible and subsequently lost 5kg, (about 11 lbs). I thought I’d born it stoically and even spent the previous week sleeping on the sofa lest my (muffled) screams of agony ruin the sleep of She.

     ‘You want to try giving birth. Now that’s real pain.’ And hitting me with such irrefutable logic my wife departed, leaving me a long list of things to accomplish whilst she was at work, and not giving me time to remind her that my alleged daughter was born by Caesarean. Not that it would have made any difference - and probably a bad idea from past experience. How dare I take a week off work whilst she had to continue drinking tea with the others whilst bemoaning the slothful ways of their husbands as wives are contractually obliged to spend their days. (I don’t really think that’s what she does but as she isn’t here, I can say what I like.)

     “Oh, daddy.” Notice the name, the one that’s only used when something onerous or just plain dirty is in the offing. The note affixed to the kitchen table had fallen off, swept aside by my wife’s sternwave of fury. “My saddle rack at the stable has come a bit loose and could you screw it back on again. Please, please XXXXXXXXXXXX SWALK.”

     Now I don’t have to tell any American how much a saddle weighs, and from dim experience I recall that English saddles weigh far less, so with that in mind, I removed an acre of dead undergrowth from the garden, and cleared up the pile of eviscerated wildlife, courtesy of my daughter’s two feline fiends, before heading towards the stable.

     ‘You said one saddle!’  Aforementioned spawn smiled sweetly, preparing to deliver the coup de grace.

     ‘Yes, my saddle is loose, but the rack holds twenty eight more. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.’ And with that she was gone, presumably to compare jodhpurs or yet another pair of Uggs despite the entire place being knee deep in horse manure, or whatever it is teenagers do after being released from the drudgery of actually looking after their very own horses.