I have to come home. To the kids, Aunty Dee, and Aunty Dee's purple jumper

While we have been away - and I've enjoyed myself by amputating my own toes at 2am with a scalpel made of suede art - Aunty Dee has stayed back at the house and looked after the triplets of terror.

She has been on shift for a whole 26 hours now, alone.

When I hobble home, I half expect to see a bomb blasted crater where the house once stood. Smouldering wisps of smoke coil up, slowly, out of the pit. From that I can deduce Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have completed Round One of the argument over whose turn it is to make hoof shoes for the unicorn. They settled the issue by pressing the big red button we keep in the kitchen marked detonate.

You can bet Aunty Dee would have sat there calm and impassive throughout. She is maybe sitting there now, knitting, at the bottom of the pit, perched on the last splinter of sofa, thinking she will just let that argument run its course before she gets up from the perch and goes to make a cup of tea.

This is what is so brilliant and so frustrating about Aunty Dee all at once. On the one hand she has that astonishing ability to calm things down just by being there and suggesting that everyone knit nicely. On the other hand, she has the knack of not noticing when everything is starting to kick off and the police riot vans arriving. They might be spinning round those corners on two wheels at 90mph but Aunty Dee will totally ignore that; she may ask politely if someone would mind not winding the wool round someone else's face.

So there may be small moments of tension when I stagger in and survey the debris of 26 hours strewn over the house, but the griblets will have had that precious time with their best and most favourite aunty in the whole world, the one who makes them cry when she leaves just by her departure. And they will probably cry too for the knowledge that they had the great and glorious luxury of being able to act, and act up, just how they liked, and still be loved, completely, utterly and unconditionally.

Thank you, Aunty Dee.