You know you’re married with kids when you tell your wife you feel sick and she looks at you as if to say ‘Oh, great. Another person to look after.’

This was the look I received whilst I stood on MacGregor Ward in Warwick Hospital, after having been with Jemima, who had been suffering from viral gastroenteritis for a few days. (She’s much better now, by the way. More on that to follow another time.) A little later on, in the living room at home with two boys climbing over me, I had that horrible feeling dawn which told me that I was actually going to puke.

It is at this moment when you have to do the walk of doom from wherever you are to the nearest toilet. This must be what criminals feel like when walking down Death Row to the execution chamber.

You enter the bathroom and look at the toilet in such a way as if to say ‘It’s just you and me now, toilet. Let’s get acquainted.’ And then you stick your head in the bowl and shout vowels at the water as your children play downstairs, none the wiser that you are rainbow yawning, your head framed by a ceramic seat.

I’m not telling you this for any other reason than I wanted to see how well I could describe being sick. Turns out, pretty well.