7.46pm Lock car doors. Begin Memorial Lecture. 'Apologise and you get to live.'

1.30am Wake to scuttlings and scratchings. Switch on light. Steely-eyed Grit observes rat. Steely-eyed rat observes Grit. Grit shrieks. Rat skits sharp.

Sleep remaining night under blazing lights scared witless, calculating cost of replacement mother when present one dies from rat-disease.

(Rat probably stays quaking under chest of drawers, panic-stricken at sight of Grit jerking bolt upright like a zombie rising from the coffin.)

6.00am Spring up, grateful for first light. Disinfect self, house, bathroom. Bundle kid clothes in laundry. Clean kitchen furiously. Forensically inspect bread.

7.00am Drive to Co-op. Buy more coffee.

8.00am Thank someone's Lord! The Ratcatcher's here, prompt for appointment made last week. He patrols the house, sniffs rat, and lays bait under floorboards.

9.00am Kick children out of bed; serve toast with shouting.

9.30am Lingua Latina arrives for the Latin lesson with a house full of home ed kids, and home ed kids mammas. Spend the hour regretfully wishing I had a servus like Caecilius.

11am Office. Speak to Dig about The Book of the Comma (South East Asia edition). Bind two books for his Important Meeting tomorrow. File mail about the recent fraud committed against my dodgy name and dodgy address, for which I am probably now blacklisted forever and will never be able to have a TopShop credit card ever again.

12midday Send pleading emails re: please book in for sub aqua, can kids come to your quarry visit, please pick up your child from sleepover. Dash to Co-op, meet neighbour, share miseries of homeless household next door. Plot.

1pm Serve soup with scowling. Clear up kitchen.

2pm Encourage Shark to overcome reluctance and play Latin game (cost=3 chocolate chip cookies). Resentfully pay bill for Astronomy course for Squirrel when she could do it herself if she was arsed. Ask Tiger about books in non-confrontational tone so she does not bite my head off. Change laundry with half-chewed face.

3pm Plan home ed mapping workshop for Wednesday. Make shopping and to-do lists. Sigh a lot.

4pm Supervise Shark cooking batch of apple and ginger jam mostly by ignoring her and hanging out the laundry. Say yes Shark, please now prepare apple jam tea-time for all your sisters.

5pm Resign self to hour-long journey through slow-hour hell, driving Shark to Woodcraft Folk.

6pm Drop Shark, nervously head for supermarket clutching list for tomorrow's Africa cookies, the workshop of which is high stakes and must not fail.

7pm Shove into car boot bag loads of crowd-pleasing cookie-making ingredients.

7.05pm Promptly fall asleep while sat in car outside Sainsbury's.

7.30pm Wake up! In a panic, drive back to Woodcraft venue to fetch Shark. She climbs in the car 7.45pm.

Grit: Gosh! It's lucky I woke up when I did! Can you imagine? I fell asleep in the car!

Shark: Hmph. I don't know why you need to do that when you spend all your days just sitting around.