To my horror, Dylan had barely got through the door when he reached into his bag and produced a giant Latin grammar and vocab book. He started rambling on about something to do with GCSEs and revision and suchlike, and how it would be really helpful if we could go through some Latin together. Five long, torturous hours of Latin ensued. Two hours in, I suggested we go to the park or play a board game but he was having none of it.

I tested him ad nauseam on nominatives, accusatives, vocatives et cetera; I was barely compos mentis by the end of it. I suggested that maybe next time he might find someone else to help him, in loco parentis, as it were, but as soon as I started saying it, I could tell I’d become persona non grata. But don’t blame me – actus me invito factus non est meus actus!

Sunday March 25th

I don’t know where the time goes. Barely had I finished checking on the contributions to the Poets on the Western Front trip (nearly £1,800 now!) and clearing my garden of all the abandoned pairs of deely boppers and fluorescent leg warmers from Dave, Martin and Marvin’s 80s Party last night, and it was time for bed.

I had hoped to make more progress with In Search of Lost Time but the changing of the clocks and the consequent loss of an hour has really impinged upon my Proust. I am doing my best to finish it but if Time itself has other ideas and conspires against me in such a cruel way then, really, what chance do I have?

I had planned to reward myself at the end of every page with a madeleine but not having any in the house, I made do with custard creams.

Today, I have eaten twenty-six custard creams.

As I bit into one of them – it may have been the nineteenth – a sudden, sharp memory came back to me of a student flat in Sheffield in the early nineties, the Cocteau Twins and a bottle of vodka, and Sophie and I gnawing at either end of a custard cream, until our crumb-coated lips met in the middle.

Monday March 26th

A near-perfect storm of boredom, procrastination and ‘papeteriephilia’ (a word I have just made up to mean a love of stationery) induced me to spend most of my working day reorganising my desk munitions. Five separate trips were made to the cupboard: new pens purloined, staples and paper clips pillaged, files and folders filched, then arranged in rainbow order upon my shelves. My desk drawer was tidied. My desktop stationery holder was replenished, its contents having first been rigorously tested and vigorously deplenished. I scribbled haiku on Post-it notes and stuck them to items in the stationery cupboard: