One of the finest things in all the world is a sofa. A tremendous number of photos from my childhood feature me, asleep, on a sofa. When I was off sick from school, I would spend the day, on the sofa, wrapped up in a blanket, with a mug of chicken soup, watching Neighbours. It’s not as if I was a sickly child. It’s just that I have always been at my prettiest when I’ve been sleeping. You’re just going to have to take my word for that.

When Doobie had to have the boy-operation (for medical reasons, not for anything even vaguely behavioural or aesthetic), I unscrewed the feet from the sofa bed and turned it into a futon. I like to think it made things easier for Doob. It saved him from jumping up and down, and tearing his stitches. And that’s how we spent the next two weeks. On the flattened sofa, watching Buffy from start to finish – although, I suspect that was more me than him.

Sometimes, Poppy decides she can’t be doing with sitting on, or under, the blanket on Aimée’s end of the sofa, and she comes to sit on my lap. I am occasionally known as ‘Sofa’.