We’ve got to a pleasing stage in Mary’s development in which she can’t stay awake for more than two hours at a time. Our little clockwork mouse kips around 10am, 1pm and 4pm, and in that time I get to READ.  An hour or maybe even more of blissful bookage, punctuated, at the moment, only by some local middle-class menace wielding a hammer/chisel/drill/hedge-trimmer/trident of Neptune/staff of Gandalf, trying to make his penis larger by doing DIY ALL DAY LONG. Not a moment of sunshine is to be left unsullied, according to this neighbourhood Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor.

Poorly concealed rage aside, I’ve recently been devouring Agatha Christie facsimile editions while Mary snoozes. I’m currently on The Murder On the Links, a cracking Poirot murder mystery set in the North coast of France during the 1920s, and I’m loving it. I often reach a real juicy plot twist just as I hear my baby meowing for me, and I’m only a teensy bit ashamed to say I keep reading until the meows become angry squeaks.

A Bookworm Mum has to take her thrills while she may.