This month was supposed to be about finding a new job or at least exploring new opportunities. However, I’ve found myself being a teacher again, to my own children. Help.

I’m sure if you did this last year, for about three months, you’ll know it’s the most exhausting and draining task you can go through. Getting through the day unscathed is impossible. Once the work is finished and you’ve been their emotional punchbag all day, you get to be dad again, but without the teacher bit. However, they’re tired, you’re tired and you have nowhere to go because you’re not allowed to… go anywhere.

I found myself thinking ahead… ‘just get to half-term and that’s it’, but as we know with the nature of the virus and the nature of this erratic government, it probably won’t end there. Homeschooling might continue into March and April. I hope not but we’ve been here before. We just don’t know. But at least the pricks are on the way, eh, readers? Fnar, fnar…

Mum used to say ‘don’t wish your life away’ and in her short life I hope she took her own advice. She would say this to me if I had said something like ‘I can’t wait to…’ and ‘why is this is taking soooo long?’. But she was right. What if the next few months are my last? We have to make the most of these times, as desperate as they are, because tomorrow could be the end. Focus on what we can do, not what we can’t.

As much as the children drive me mad sometimes, I love them, of course, and I enjoy their company. But as they get older the natural order means we won’t spend as much time together. I’m already the ‘old man’ in their eyes – the grumpy ogre, though I have improved since I left the BBC. I could be the last person they want to be with in the near future, therefore I may look back on these days fondly. I’m already remembering the good bits from Lockdown #1 – the daft made-up games to alleviate the boredom, watching birds build nests in the garden, having Dumb and Dumber haircuts…

I already get teary eyed about them growing up. They’re closer to be being adults than they were babies. My eldest is 13, if he chooses to go to university he’ll be leaving in five years and considering how quickly the last half decade went, this is a terrifying and heartbreaking thought. Therefore I’ve decided to make the most of our time together, despite the meltdowns and tantrums… mine as well as theirs.

I remember listening to a conversation involving a man I had zero respect for. He had run a campaign to get my friend replaced on the radio. Our paths had crossed before that too when he accidentally copied me in to an e-mail accusing me of being unprofessional. Anyway, I overheard him scoff at his friend’s announcement his partner was having a baby. ‘I don’t want kids,’ he said, sneering. ‘I want to climb Kilimanjaro, one day.’ He assumed having children would stop him having a life. I haven’t climbed Kilimanjaro, I’m not that arsed really, but I have scrambled up Kinder Scout with my two boys and my wife Niki, and it’s one of our favourite ever days together.

I’ve been on my own incredible adventure with my family, I don’t want to rush through it. We’ve got to do our best to cherish this time as difficult as it is. It’s our lives, we can’t skip bits just because it’s hard at the moment. It will get better, but we just have to make the most of what we have currently.

The dead are wondering why we’re all so miserable.