I rub Maeve’s cheek and I psych Mikey and Joey up about the match on Sunday. An aroma of cabbage from yesterday’s dinner hangs heavy in the kitchen. I feel nauseous. Jenny doesn’t look at me during our meal. I find this incredibly sad, so I do the same. Kevin McCloud talks in his drawl, trying to help middle-class British people with their very grave problems of designing and building their unique dream homes. I sip on a bit of the wine and McCloud’s nasal undulations make me cringe, but I pretend to enjoy it because I know that it will put Jenny into a better mood, and it keeps the children from annoying each other. I have a notion in my heart that I may be on the road to sex. Then again I may not be.

Jenny joins me with the wine once I have the children sent to bed. I think that it might loosen her up somewhat. I am wrong. A Friday night shouldn’t be fraught with so much drama, surely?

It feels so wrong to be forcing yourself on to someone but that’s kind of what I have to do. Sometimes. Far be it from me to attempt to be justifying my actions.

7. Orange Juice

We’ve run out of orange juice, Mikey says.

We told Mom to get some, she said she would, Joey says.

Well, she mustn’t have been listening, Maeve says.

My children are like a chorus in a play. The orange juice play. I have a vicious thirst and the only thing that can quench it, I imagine, is fresh orange juice. I open the fridge door and instead, I pull out some processed orange juice from the Centra. I knock it back but it is not enough.

I look out my front window and see my neighbour’s car jutting out of his driveway. He does this deliberately and he is precise. There is just enough of a protrusion to make it difficult for me to perform a three-point turn before parking my own car in my own drive. It gets under my skin. To think, that there was a time in my life when I believed that to have a driveway of one’s own might be considered desirable and now even this desire is being frustrated.

Right, I’m off to Tesco, I say.

I’m still wearing my sports gear from my early morning run. I don’t mind walking around the supermarket in Lycra. In my book, it gives other shoppers a sense of my fitness and it will save me changing again before the football.

Maeve asks if she can come with me.