Ok. Today was a bad day. It went like this. Lula woke at 6.30. We had our first screaming episode of the morning over suncream. I’ve managed to win the insect repellent battle by convincing her that the bugspray is perfume. She submits to lashings of the citronella now because she thinks Egg, her amour, will like it.

Anyway, we fight over the suncream until I have a realisation:

‘Lula, how bout you wear some of mummy’s make up?’

She stops mid-scream and says, ‘Ok.’

I rustle through my make-up bag and pull out a tinted moisturiser with spf in it. She allows me to slather it on. She looks like an oopma loompah but I shrug, at least she won’t be a sunburnt oompa loompah.

I convince John that he should do the school run. Actually I tell him he is doing the school run and he thinks about arguing (I can see it on his face) but he submits quietly and they disappear.

And then return two minutes later. The car is flat because I’ve left the radio on all night. So we need a driver to chauffeur us to school and we need someone who has a car charger to come and help us start the car and we’re moving out of our house and there’s an army of ants trying to hustle some unidentified organic matter the size of a small child across the kitchen floor and I’m too appalled to try to stop it happening – just hoping the ants make it back to their anthill before check out time comes – and I need to pack and I’ve lost my hairbrush and really I am wondering why I didn’t just stay in bed all day and watch Mad Men instead.

The day actually gets worse. The car starts once more. But then it stops again. Just before pick up time. We move into our new place and find the kitchen sink leaks and there is no fridge.

‘You want a fridge?’ the owner asks (that’s not said like it’s an offer more like she can’t actually believe I am asking for a fridge).

I narrow my eyes, trying to figure out whether she’s being sarcastic.

‘Er, Yeah, a fridge would be useful.’ I say, pointing at the milk curdling into cheese on the side.

Also, now we live right next door – as in three yards away – from our friends and the decibel level that three children can reach is record breaking and nerve shattering and my mental state is so very precarious by 3pm that I’m already reaching for the stash of vodka.

So I’m  busy wishing the day would end and then I look up and I have to take a moment to slap myself. Hard.

I’m staying in a house amidst the rice paddies, lush green rice paddies beneath a blue expanse of sky. All day women have been walking past me carrying baskets of concrete mix on their heads (I have no idea where the men are). And I have a full time nanny.

I really, really need to get a grip.