Routine

Routine used to bore me rigid. Routine was bad. Now routine is good.

Having children makes you like this. From day one, before you've even left the hospital ( but just after they come round and talk to you about contraception) you're told that you have to get the baby into a routine or else everything will go pear-shaped. What they don't tell you is that everything will go pear-shaped anyway but you still stick to the routine.

Routine becomes a lifeline which enables you to make some sense of the shock of new motherhood. It quickly turns into a millstone round your neck but you stick doggedly to it, just in case discarding it causes everything to go even more pear-shaped. By this time you are so entrenched in your routine that to break out of it would send seismic shock-waves through your life , the ripples from which would stay with you until old age.

My routine is now characterised by what we have for dinner every night and what sports kit the boys need for school that day. So yesterday was not Tuesday but an amalgam of pasta bake and PE and today was chicken and swimming.

Tonight I'm breaking with routine and watching TV. Kevin McCloud returns with a new series of Grand Designs . This will presumably have been recorded before the comically named Credit Crunch and will doubtless feature a string of spendthrift, aspirational, design slaves who will whine at having to cut back on the granite toilet seats because their limestone flooring has gone over budget by thirty grand.

And in case you were wondering tomorrow is pizza and rugby.