I ’m always in a hurry. Time waits for no man or busy mother! The phrase “the busy have time for everything, the idle have time for nothing” was drummed into my young, impressionable ears and it stuck.

Trouble is I take it literally – the busier I make myself the more I can cram in.

I have to do things with haste, but I don’t always come out unscathed. Daily life starts bright and early, my first appointment being with my breast pump. Its familiar noise is akin to the sound of a large Friesian in some grass-induced stupour.

“Moo…mooo...” breaks the early morning silence of chipping Norton. Then the family have to be fed, dogs walked, baby receptacles sterilised and I’m like a tornado swirling around the house, sweeping things up in my wake, ticking off the checklist in my head. My peers wax lyrical about the importance of routine when you have children, and I do have one of sorts but it’s not met with military precision. In fact there’s nothing military or precise about it at all – things get done, that’s all that matters.

Getting out of the house can be as hard a job as running the country; someone’s got to do it, people are relying on you and sometimes things get delayed by unforeseen circumstances.

I was stopped in my tracks the other morning when I got my hand stuck in our wall- mounted post box. The key to it was nowhere to be seen but the slit looked much wider than usual as I spied some post that obviously HAD to come out at that precise moment.

In went my fingers, closely followed by the rest of my hand. Before I knew it I was contemplating a rescue by some west Oxfordshire firefighters. Except nobody could hear my cries for help, my mobile was in my bag on the seat of my car, the engine was running and my daughter was in the back.

This was a situation. Unemotional about my hand but increasingly worried about my daughter, I pulled my hand free, bruised and minus a layer of skin.

Note to self: post boxes are for letters.

We’ve been discussing our family holiday lately.

Yes, I know most families have theirs all sorted and the bags almost packed.

But in our case, it’s thrown up a huge challenge.

My 18-year-old son would like some nightlife and a sandy beach. My young baby presents very different sorts of needs: beach safety, the provision of a decent cot, room cleanliness, nearby medical facilities and somewhere to sterilise a bottle at 10 o’clock at night. The other consideration we nearly overlooked is the baby passport. The process of obtaining acceptable baby photos from a booth in a supermarket threw up its own challenges too. Happily, Betsy now has her very own passport photo which makes her look like a baby burglar…even at six months old. Cornwall would have been so much easier.