Going back 36 hours I felt absolute rubbish and having served tea to the masses, couldn’t eat any. It was probably a result of sheer exhaustion having been unaware that a 2 year old can be not only be awake from dawn through till midnight but that he was not equipped with either an instruction book or a volume control. I helpfully suggest selling him on eBay but alas he’s too cute in the few brief moments when he’s eating peas. I have not been sleeping properly during previous nights and to be fair Beth also looks like sleep is a distant memory. Rach and Kev also look tired to say the least. I try and help by suggesting a plan B which to their credit they try. Take control I say, no Cheetos or E numbers. Lunch at 1 pm then a nap by 2 pm. Allow to sleep for 2 hours max then wake him. Plan B is progressing well. Tea at 5 pm than at 7 pm issue soothing noises read story, lower lights and peace is restored by 8 pm. Epic fail as he is still awake and in full voice at 11 pm...... whilst Mal is sound asleep in his chair. How Beth copes is a mystery and I retire with plan B in disarray. There is no plan C and even eBay seems a forlorn hope.

I give in as I feel awful and go to bed at 7.45pm and sleep for 12 hours getting up at intervals to use the loo. I used to be able to slide out of bed and complete the whole process leaving one eye firmly shut and the other in sleep mode open only for navigational purposes but with many cats attracted to my bed like magnets I am pinned down and have to extricate myself carefully, usually apologising profusely for disturbing their beauty sleep and reminding them to keep still while I am gone in the hopes that I will have a bed to get back into. When I return I find the zig zaggy slot I had climbed out of has visibly shrunk. I then have to post myself back into it whilst the cats keep their eyes tightly shut and with each breath out the space visibly shrinks. It’s like some crazy game show and I am the victim !! Having got back in I find I reach for the bed covers but they are missing...... The black and white mass have pinched the lot and are not about to return them or even admit where they have disappeared to...... At one point during this very long night I wake up and realise yet another trip to the bathroom is necessary. If there were no cats I wouldn’t need to go but as I am pinned down with no easy way out I just have to go, I’m sure there is a law that governs this, which does nothing to help. I look around to plan my escape and as I move up towards the pillows I find that l have a serious pain down the back of my right calf into the ankle which prevents me from raising my foot from pointed downwards to a position where I can actually stand up on it. I have no idea what has happened but it seems to involve my Achilles’ tendon. I can only assume that either in my sleep I have been, unknowingly, up and out for a 10k run or a line dance marathon or my brain, knowing that injured Achilles’ tendons have been mentioned in the last couple of weeks has gone for a full simulation of the injury......... now as I climb wearily from my warm bed from underneath many cats apologising for making such a song and dance of getting out and disturbing them yet again, I find I am minus the use of my foot. I can’t even get back in without dislodging the masses. I put on extra clothes as I see no sign of any blankets and slide in under the edge of a small piece of bedding I can identify as best I can and wriggle till I have 3 inches space on the outside edge, it will have to do. I dream of my thick warm single sleeping bag on its way from England as we speak. I will climb in and zip it up and if I need to get up in the night, me and bag will leave the bed and hop to the loo. See how they deal with that !!

The next day I hobble around for the morning while I work out what has happened to my leg. The pain eases as time passes but it still hurts. I have no memory of any injury so it’s very strange. 

I decide to make a cheesecake for tea that evening and following Tom’s recipe get out my springform tin and butter the inside. Next I assemble ingredients and put digestive biscuits into a bag which I then bash with a rolling pin, add melted butter and mix. I turn around to empty the mix into the tin to find my little cat Rosie trying to help by licking the buttered tin clean. She emerges triumphantly from beneath the rim with butter all over her whiskers and paws. I run a bowl of hot soapy water and resisting the urge to take a flannel to her whiskers which are covered, wash the tin and start again. I mix the filling and then start on the cream.  Rach, hearing the puffing and panting involved in whisking the dream by hand, comes into the kitchen to help and offers to whisk the cream for me. The strict instructions from Tom were to use a balloon whisk but she asks for the electric whisk, the look she gives me says not to argue so I find it quickly. Eventually the cream thickens and I empty it into the other ingredients and lick the spatula . At this point I discover to my horror the cream is on the turn. It now takes some time to totally remove the cream from on top of the other all white ingredients and bin it whilst Rach is whisking more cream. Eventually we have cheesecake, strawberry this time, and very nice it was too. 

We have tea and I stack the dishwasher but most of the things used in the construction of the cheesecake have by now been hand-washed  so the dishwasher is only half full but with 7 eating at each meal washing up needs to be done frequently. I add the cat bowls to make up the load but wait till bed time to add the drinks glasses before starting it. 

We sit in the lounge relaxing and Mal falls asleep, as usual. One by one everyone drifts off to bed, I sit quietly and play my Words app to relax my brain. Things are looking good for another decent night’s  sleep. It’s warm sitting by the fire under a pile of cats. Alas at this point things start to unravel. Smuggle gets up from the pile and strolls across Mal to find a space on the sofa. Mal wakes up and helps himself to a handful of sweets.

At this point he says,  ‘So what exactly are we building tomorrow?’ My resting brain cells leap to attention and then spring into action and within a split moment any hopes of a night’s sleep go out of the window. I try saying can’t we look at this tomorrow but the questions persist. This happens on a regular basis and usually at some point the conversation comes to an abrupt halt when Mal says,” I’m tired now, I’m going to bed, we’ll talk about it tomorrow. I head for bed muttering and spend a sleepless night with my brain turning over the next days work and ideas for a plan of action. On this occasion Mal flounces off to bed saying, “ well, I’ll just build any thing I feel like tomorrow then !!“

Too late for me I am wide awake......

At around six am I drift off to sleep only to be woken an hour later by a crash from the kitchen. I attempt to rush out to find the source of the noise despite not one cat twitching even a whisker and with no intention of letting me go anywhere in a hurry. Even though I was half asleep I had the awful realisationI that I had forgotten to deal with the remaining wine glasses or start the dishwasher the night before. The glasses were thankfully unbroken but knocked sideways and Tinker was staggering away from the scene of the crime so presumably he had been drinking the dregs of the red wine in them and knocked them over, this then caused a minor avalanche and the stainless steel drainer fell into the bowl with enough force to wake the dead, Rach upstairs hears it but Mal  sleeps on !!. I hobble across the kitchen to find Tinker now pretending to be asleep with an angelic look on his face... butter wouldn’t melt, now where was Rosie??

 I put the glasses in the dishwasher add a tablet and set it going on a quick wash so it will be ready for breakfast. By now the cats have all moved from my bed onto the kitchen table in anticipation of an early breakfast and to be nosey. Had there been a telling off about to happen I swear they would have whipped out knitting needles just as in the days of the French Revolution. I tell them the show is over and scoop up one in each arm turn off the lights and go back to bed.

The fact that I have written this at 7.10 am tells you how much sleep I then got.