My second family has given me a new lease of life. Who needs sleep, anyway?”

Children are the greatest gift that life can bestow. An expensive gift, you might say, especially if they have to be privately educated because your older children were too, but truly priceless, except in financial terms. I could give you an annotated price list, if you’ve got time.

Time – that’s not something I have much of! I love getting up with the twins – they’re nearly three, can you believe it? – around dawn and chasing them around for a couple of hours, getting them fed and dressed and then cycling them to nursery in the safety pod of the tricycle.

I quickly agreed when Sonia suggested that I should do the early shift – she needs to conserve her energy to steer our legal practice. It’s incredible to think that she was just a junior clerk when we met, seven or eight years ago. I was in charge then, mid-50s, still married to Pauline of course, and the boys were off at boarding school.

That’s all changed now. The boys are both at uni – aren’t those fees a scandal? – and Pauline seems to be doing really well with the yoga practice that she set up with our settlement. Turns out she knew plenty about the law, for a humble lawyer’s wife! Ex-wife, I mean.

Anyway, Sonia is hard at it in the office now, and with her taking on so many of my former clients it’s easiest if I do the pick-up from nursery and take the twins to the park. I’m not so fast on that replacement left hip, but the right is fine, though I think my knee might be going on that side. After the park I fix their tea, get them in and out of the bath and ready for bed. Sonia insists on reading the bedtime story, though – she’s hands-on in that sense! Even if it’s sometimes on Zoom.

I must say it makes me think a little when I compare notes with my mates in the pub once every other week. Kids grown and flown, off on mini-breaks all the time, out for dinner with their wives or girlfriends. Lucky buggers! Only kidding. Blink and you miss these early years, all the mothers at the school gate agree, and I hardly saw the boys at all when they were toddlers – too busy making money and having fun! I won’t make that mistake again. No chance.