My wife being in hospital means that I’m feeding my two sons, which in turn means that they’re almost definitely going to get scurvy at some point in the next week. It also means that, at present, they look like two little peasant boys straight out of Oliver Twist, which – I suppose – means I’m Fagin, which I’m not happy about because I don’t like fingerless gloves.

Truth is, the house is a tip. There are drawers open all over the place, crumbs on the carpet, and the bins are reaching the point of overflowing. It’s at times like this when I realise just how important Jess is, not only to my own sanity, but also in the day-to-day running of the family home. I open my bedside table drawer, and there are no clean boxers; so I’m reduced to either wearing the same pair inside-out or going commando, which is bound to get me into trouble should a work colleague ever deem it necessary to creep up behind me and yank down my trousers. (Something which, by the way, I hope never happens.)

Before you say anything, I’m not a stupid 21st century man who doesn’t know how to wash his own clothes. I don’t spend twenty minutes working out how to get the washing machine door open before thumping endlessly at the buttons and screaming like a caveman in the hope that something happens. I can do my own laundry. In fact, the washing machine is on a drying cycle as we speak, I think. You can put colours in with whites nowadays, can’t you? I should imagine, in this day and age, that doing so would not result in all my clothes being pink.

Truth is, I miss my wife. Not just because she’s in hospital, and I have no-one to talk to in the evenings – heck, I have  a double bed all to myself, and can stray onto her side without getting a kick in the thighs or an elbow in the ribs. But I miss her more than in the obvious, need-a-hug-gizza-kiss kind of way. Without her I have to think about things like what I’m going to cook for my kids. How the heck do you make spaghetti bolognese, anyway?

I was getting excited this afternoon about our forthcoming baby. Until now it had never really sunk in that we’re having another child, but then again it never really hit me that we were having kids when Jess was pregnant with the last two. It’s just something I took in my stride. But, sat at my desk, I found myself desperately looking forward to my daughter’s arrival, to burping her as she softly headbutts my cheek, to spending early mornings rocking her to sleep in the glow of a TV showing awful programmes. People keep telling me that because our unborn daughter is giving us so much grief already, that she’ll be a handful when she’s born. I don’t care, even if she is. She has me wrapped around her finger already.