Just occasionally it’s worth taking the time to pause and step back from life as a dad. I often imagine what a fly on the wall would make of my conversations with my three-year-old – ‘don’t chainsaw your brother’, ‘don’t rip the dog’s tail off’, ‘don’t eat the wallpaper’. That kind of thing.

Parenthood is an alternative reality in which all the previously accepted laws of nature are reversed and anything goes. Sometimes it’s hard to adjust to this new world order, but adjustment is the best policy – as you’re fighting against the tide if you really want to stand firm on issues like being able to wear clothes that aren’t stained with vomit, or being able to watch a football match on the TV without playing horsey with a sugar-rushing toddler.

In fact, the quicker these things are accepted as normal and, indeed, expected behaviour, the easier it becomes to face each new indignity. No-one trains you in the art of wiping your child’s bottom on a dock leaf by the side of the M25, but that’s only because you’d never acknowledge the need for such skills pre-parenthood.

If you embrace these new-found survival arts you can quickly see the plus side, if not always the funny side. Unlike childless no-hopers, dads are much more likely to be able to strip down a DVD player to clear the insides of jam.