No ball games allowed

You join me in Tumble Town, an indoor adventure play barn type thing located a mere three minutes walk from our new house in Guiseley.

I’m surrounded by numerous noisy toddlers and an equivalent number of knackered looking mums and dads. And Jamie is having a wonderful time.

But it’s a far cry from where I was expecting to be at the present moment, namely Old Trafford and the fifth cricket one-day international between England and Sri Lanka.

We Whites were due in Manchester at 10am, me heading off to join my pal Ed in the beer queue, with Vanessa and the kids hooking up with Ed’s wife Jane and their three children for a day of fun and cakes.

Sadly, Charlotte failed to follow the script.

Sleep wasn’t on her agenda last night and was therefore was off limits to the rest of us.

It was the third such night in a row.

The long and the short of this was that the early morning drive to Manchester became neither practical nor wise.

And instead, Vanessa and I have committed ourselves to what is likely to be at least a week of systematic cruelty – or “controlled crying,” as it’s described in “The Book” – with accompanying sleep drought.

To coin a well-worn Coleraine phrase, “is it any wonder I take drink?”

(Answer: No).