“Good morning I’m Evie I’m looking after you today I’ve got Ella with me I’ll be talking to her as we go hope you don’t mind.”

Straight for the blind she barrelled through the dark with a student in her slipstream.

“Would you like me to —”

“No!!!”

Thanks.

For once, she did not have to mobilise and extract children from their beds and into the shower. She did not have to organise food for the school-and-daycare run because there will be no time to sit down for breakfast once the preschooler has occupied the shower recess and declared herself a mermaid. Five minutes spent negotiating her entry, followed by ten trying to secure her surrender because the water is warm now and she has decided she lives there.

No lunches to pack, water bottles to fill, dogs to feed, bedroom doors to secure against canine invasion, socks to locate and then deploy by guerrilla tactics: stalk, wait, intercept, get them on before she realises they are not her very favourite socks with the love hearts.

Then to the problem of our little mermaid’s hair, worked loose from its plait in the busyness of sleep: arms flinging wide, legs in all directions, head travelling across the pillow, tossing, turning, face on my face, feet where feet have no business being. By morning, the ringlets at the back have felted themselves into a bird’s nest.

Secure detangling comb. Conditioner. Patience. One wrong tug could void the fragile peace treaty brokered by the iPhone keeping the little mermaid seated and distracted while knots are neutralised and plaits reinstalled to shore up the main line of defence against daycare nits.

And then the school cap.

Where is the school cap?

No hat, no play sounds perfectly reasonable until you discover, through tears in the car halfway to school, that the cap is still at home—or worse, on the lawn—which means the 9month old puppy has plundered Little Sir 10’s bedroom and borne the cap away as spoils.

I appreciate that vitals need monitoring on a surgical ward. I am sincerely grateful for your role in prolonging my life.

I am less convinced that this requires the blind.

Dedicated to the slick up-do personalities among us, and those still gathering momentum.