I started the day feeling smug because I actually slept. Yes, slept.

The night before, I’d made a proper sleep checklist like a responsible adult. I stopped having coffee at midday, stuck to green tea, chocolate tea and mint tea, and — brace yourself — stopped going on my phone after 9pm. Wild behaviour. I watched MAFS Australia, nodded off at 10:45pm and slept all the way through until 5:45am. In my world, that’s basically a luxury spa retreat. Absolute win.

First job of the day: straightening my hair. What I thought was pure perfection. Smooth. Sleek. Salon-worthy. By the time I got home at about 4ish, it had turned into a full-on frizzy mess, like it had personally been through some things.

Then it was straight into taking my daughter to college. Despite it being warm-ish for December, I was wearing approximately 100 layers and still couldn’t decide if I was hot or cold.

After dropping her off, I had two hours to kill, which is never good. Aldi happened, you know, when you go in for one thing and come out with seventeen things you absolutely did not need. Except this time, fate intervened. I spotted one of the box trolleys I use for Kids Cooking Parties and nearly fell over. Aldi was selling them for £10. I’ve paid £30 for the exact same thing before. Yikes!

Boots happened for a No7 eyeliner and mascara, and then they casually gave me a free makeup palette like that wasn’t going to emotionally carry me through the rest of the week.

By this point I was exhausted, so I went to Costa for a sit-down and ordered a soya cappuccino. Immediately wished I’d gone to Starbucks instead because Costa had one person making drinks and about fifty people queuing in from the rain. Still, the Christmas countdown vibes were officially on. The back of my right knee, however, decided to join in and started hurting, because why not.

Somewhere in between all of this, I got new keys cut because my son is back from uni, which is great and bought him his favourite food: avocados. After all, apparently that’s who he is now, and I support it.

I’m also spending a small fortune at the moment because everything is expensive and money now seems to evaporate on contact. In Tesco, I caught myself eyeing up white baking chocolate, then remembered I already have a huge bag of white chocolate cooking buttons at home. I’ll be using those next week to dip spare chocolate cookie dough and make my annual Christmas pudding chocolate chip cookies, which feels very festive and completely necessary.

After picking my daughter up from college, unloading all the shopping, picking my son up from the station and then taking my daughter to a doctor’s appointment, I finally made it home.

Afternoon snack (very important): M&S Cheese Clouds with Marmite. Absolutely elite. Totally yummy. Zero regrets. This did, however, remind me that I currently have an unhealthy obsession with M&S red pepper pitta chips and I really do need to take a break from them. Today was not that day.

Then it was time to get dinner on; Friday night roast chicken and roast potatoes & broccoli, because tradition still matters when you’re knackered.

Food-wise, the day had already gone off the rails. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, toast and St Dalfour Strawberry jam, which was clearly the wrong food, so everything after that turned into a bit of a pig-out situation, not forgetting about approximately 15 fresh green grapes, which I’m counting as a balance.

I should probably stop talking about food now. But let’s be honest, I absolutely won’t.