“Can you just come straight home?” J asked, sounding somewhat stressed.

“Is everything ok?” I asked, cautiously. I was waiting to hear the sound of screaming pitched battles between the twins erupting in the background. But all was strangely quiet.

“E’s just poked me in the eye and it really hurts.  I don’t mean ‘really’, I mean really,” she said, with the kind of emphasis that says “I’m worried” behind the evident pain.

About 20 minutes later, as I turned into the road that ran past the supermarket on the way home, I thought I’d call  just in case the pain had died down. However by now, she was clearly holding back the tears.

At home, the kids were lying on our bed watching IgglePiggle, with J semi-foetal with her eyes firmly closed.  In the dark. It wasn’t looking good.

Her right eyeball was certainly angry red, but I couldn’t see any cuts or scratches. I decided to err on the side of caution. As I ran the bath for the twins, I put on some pasta, asked J (with no hint of sarcasm or irony) to ‘keep an eye on it’.

I’m somewhat tactless, as you can tell.

As I bathed O&E, O berated E for her part in Mummy’s unhappiness. “No poke O in the eye,” he said, obviously concerned that she was some sort of compulsive optical attacker. I quizzed E on what happened. She suggested that it hadn’t been her finger, it had been a book. It was the book’s fault. Unsurprisingly, I began to question the validity of trusting a 2-year-old’s testimony.

I put a call in to our babysitter and thankfully she was free and drove straight round. We wolfed down some pasta (it’s normally a long wait in A&E), and headed the 600 yards or so up the road to the hospital.

Astonishingly, about five minutes after sitting back down in the waiting area having completed all the forms (“No, it’s *this* eye. The red one…”), J’s name was called. [This was obviously the benefit of coming before pubs start the hospital rush, with chucking-out-time, followed by violent chucking-up time and the usual violent chucking-each-other-around time. I must remember to only get seriously injured or ill at 7pm.]

After putting in some anaesthetic drops (which evidently stung to high heaven initially but within a few seconds becalmed J hugely), the surgical intern then proceeded to examine J’s lids and bloodshot eyeball. He squeezed in a few drops of orange dye and then shone a blue light onto her cornea to look for damage. In my usual, insensitive way, I found the whole thing fascinating and, evidently enjoying having someone to explain it to who wasn’t petrified with fear, the intern called me round to take a look.

Right across her eyeball, from the centre of the pupil to the tear duct at the edge near her nose, there was a big scratch, showing up bright green under the blue light. This was no little dot as I had been expecting. It looked like her eyeball had been attacked with an angle grinder. No wonder she was in such intense pain.

Given some antiseptic ointment to put under the bottom eyelid four times a day, J was also told that there was no realistic prospect of her being able to look after two demanding kids for a couple of days. She should really lie in bed with a cold flannel on her eye and not open it. I I hadn’t been in the room for the entirety of the examination, I’d have suspected foul play.  I knew I had to offer…

“I’d better take a couple of days off, hadn’t I?”

“I think that would be best,” he replied.

Amazingly, we were back home in only a little over an hour, during which time our babysitter had done all our ironing. What an angel.

Unfortunately, that was also just about enough time for the anaesthetic to wear off. J began to squirm with pain. I could tell it was pretty bad – she couldn’t even watch Raymond Blanc’s show which this week was on patisserie baking; J’s ultimate passion.

I settled her in bed with another squirt of antiseptic ointment and went off to the supermarket pharmacy to buy what every woman really wants: an eye patch. I’ve yet to give it to her, but I’m hoping a few days of pretending to be Gabrielle might help her recover faster.

So today has been yet another of those odd days that always seem to hit us when we least expect. They’ve certainly seemed to come more frequently since the arrival of the mini-loons. Is it wrong to dream of boring normality? What delights will tomorrow bring? Pancreatitis?

Although from the start we’ve called them Ella and Ollie, neither has quite managed to curl their tongues around their given names.  Ella calls Oliver ‘Ol-yio’, whilst he reciprocates with ‘Bubba’ for some reason.  What’s strange is that although he can now say Ella (and indeed knows her name is Ella), he will still call her Bubba.  It’s not even that he’s calling her ‘Baby’ as he can also clearly pronounce ‘Bay-beee’ (with two very distinct syllables).

I know that kids develop pet names for people (Granny is Geegee), but in this particular instance I really hope it doesn’t stick.

Here’s the thing.  Ol-yio has been fortunate enough to benefit from my father-in-law’s genes, and is tall, very slim (he has almost no bottom) and carries very little body fat (and never has done).  Ella, on the other hand, sadly has my morphology, and although tall for her age, is chunkier, shorter-legged and – putting it politely – is a bit squidgy like her Dad.

Now I know it can all even out, and physical shape at 18 months is a little early to determine whether someone will be a supermodel or a beach ball, but every time Ol-yio calls her Bubba, I have flash-forward visions of my little darling sitting in voluminous dungarees stretched across an impressive girth, wedged into a rocking chair on the porch of our house, sucking on a sprig of wheat lodged between her few remaining blackened teeth.  It’s not a future that I dream for her.

So hopefully the ‘Bubba’ tag will be shortlived.  Perhaps we can convince him to replace it with ‘Vision of loveliness’ or something similar…

On a particularly hot day, when Mrs Jezzafuji returned from the supermarket, rather than leaving the kids baking in the car whilst she unloaded, she decided to let them out so they could play. As per usual, she got Ollie out, carried him indoors, took his shoes off and went back for Ella. As usual, like a good boy, he waited for her to return with Ella.

Then, as Mummy bent down to undo Ella’s shoes, he made a break for the open front door.

In one of those sickening coincidences, we had recently removed the rather tatty front door mat from outside the house, so when Oliver duly tottered his tin-man run and tripped on the door threshold, he pitched forward not onto a hessian mat, but face first onto the bare concrete front doorstep.

His lower teeth nearly, but not quite, went through his bottom lip.

Blood poured everywhere.

In another bizarre twist of fate, it was precisely at that moment, and not a second earlier, that E, our Mother’s Help, arrived.

En route to A&E, Mrs J diverted via the local doctor’s surgery, just to check to see if stitches were needed. In the GP’s opinion, thankfully not. All teeth were ok and we just needed to let the massively-inflated lower protuberance heal in its own way.

The following morning, as I was in the bathroom shaving, talking through the open door with Mrs J who was playing with the kids on the floor of the small landing, Ollie got up and pushed against the closed 3rd bedroom door. We keep it closed because we’d been going through stuff from the attic and they’re terrible ones for rooting through boxes and emptying them in about two seconds flat.

The door, this time, wasn’t closed properly (we have a 100-year old house without a square angle in the place and so you have to close doors and then pull on them until you hear them click). It swung open and Ollie took two steps forward, turned to us as we called him back out, and then somehow fell over his feet and fell face first, glancing his head off the small metal safe that we have bolted to the floor tucked against the wall just inside the room.

Within about two seconds there was already a big rapidly-purpling egg on the side of his forehead, and major heart palpitations in our chests. Thankfully, no concussion and no lasting damage, other than to the fact that we’d lost another couple of years off our lives from the stress.

Only a mere 24 hours after this, Ella decided to throw herself face first onto the floor and cut her own bottom lip, grazing the outside of her top lip and nose in the process.

By this time, we were starting to question our abilities as parents. How could this happen? We watch them like hawks; we’re probably over-protective if anything…Friends consoled us by saying that this is just what happens to them at this age, as they gain their independence by running around on their own. It wasn’t much comfort.

And then two days ago I caused the big one. I had decided that since cricket practice had been cancelled for the last two weeks because the University was using the cricket school for exams, that this Wednesday I was definitely going to let off some steam at the indoor nets session, which runs from 7 until 9.

Since the kids don’t finish the bath-milk-bed routine until 7, we decided to have our dinner early, whilst they were still up, before bath time at 6.30pm. The kids seemed to love the fact that Mummy and Daddy were the ones at the table for once and they were the ones walking around, as they took little tastes of our dinner like pampered pooches.

Ollie picked up his spouted cup, drained the water from it, and then picked up Ella’s in his other hand. She, seeing it as a challenge game, gave chase. He turned and made a break for the dining room door, only making it two steps before falling flat on his face, unable to brace his fall because of the cups he was holding.

It’s true what they say – time does slow right down and almost stand still in these moments. That feeling was compounded by the terrible silence that hits like a hammer after the initial sound of face hitting floor. It’s the pause as the child draws in an immense breath to let out the kind of scream that will chill you to the bone and make your insides appear in your throat.

Within a split second I was picking him up, but I could see the shard of white on the floor. As I lifted his shrieking face to mine, sure enough, he had broken a front tooth. 15 months old. He’d only had the teeth for less than a year, and it is at least another 4 years (and possible several more) before he’ll get a replacement.

The shock he was feeling was nothing compared to the huge sense of despair and guilt as I realised that although I’d suggested we should put them in the bath, my stomach had outvoted my brain by growling and encouraging me to put dinner before my kids.

Even Ella knew something really bad had happened, because she went and sat underneath the dining room table, looking sheepish and bereft.

A call to the emergency dentist helpline suggested that if there was no nerve showing (thankfully not) that he would be ok to wait until our own dentist opened again in the morning.

As he sucked his teeth and obviously played his tongue around the new layout of his mouth, I looked at my gorgeous son and wondered how I could be so powerless to help him against even the simplest of problems. If that’s how useless I am as a protective father, how on earth will I be his guardian through life in the face of real danger?

When they arrived into this world, I made them both a vow that I would protect us three with my life, and never let harm befall them. It hasn’t exactly taken long for that promise to be exposed as hollow. I know it’s an impossible task, but you still feel like you should be able to keep them safe from lasting damage at the very least…

Of course, in no time at all, as with his other accidents, he’d put it behind him and was back playing happily and chasing Ella across the bedroom carpet.

For us, putting this week behind us is going to take far, far longer.

On Saturday, we took the twins to London to the London Aquarium on the South Bank of the Thames, right next to the London Eye. We timed it perfectly: they had their morning sleep in the car on the way there, had plenty of time to see all the big fish, they ate their lunch by the Thames watching all the street entertainers, and then Mummy and Daddy had just enough time to grab a salad and a soup pot from Eat before going back to the car, where the twins would have their lunchtime sleep for most of the drive home.

Needless to say, they absolutely loved it.

As the rain arrived and poured down upon us, we arrived back at the underground car park by the Festival Hall, and started to unload the kids into the car. I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my satchel bag. Yes, I know you’re surprised that a man of such machismo as myself has a Man Bag, but it was holding the big digital SLR camera, the flash unit, some spare clothes for the kids, a couple of toy cars (for them, I hasten to add), and most importantly my mobile phone, house keys and second car key.

The blood drained from my face. J looked on, dumbfounded. “What is it?” she asked. I didn’t even have time to answer. “Brown bag…restaurant…stolen!” I yelled, as I sprinted up the slope out of the underground car park and back into the rain.

After only about five minutes of lungbusting running, I realised that despite losing the stone and a half, I was still a long way from fit! But I couldn’t stop – I didn’t want to lose the camera and it would have been a real nightmare having to get all the keys re-cut, and I don’t know how I’d survive without my phone!

I reached Eat, breathing heavily, soaked to the skin, looking frazzled, to find two young women enjoying peacefully chatting and having their lunch. In between gasps and coughs, I blurted out a question as to whether they’d seen a bag, and the middle-aged woman sitting at the table behind (who had been there as we left) leant forward and smiled and said that she’d taken it inside and handed it to someone. If my legs hadn’t felt like someone had electrocuted them, I would have leapt across the tables and planted a big kiss on her cheek.

As I went in, the woman’s partner, who had got up to go inside as we left, was coming back out again. I was handed my bag by a sceptical-looking manager (I guess I looked a bit of a sight), and paused to thank the woman again on my way past outside.

She smiled, but had that far-away look of distraught on her face. Her partner nodded, and said “She handed your bag in…and someone nicked her handbag off the back of her chair!”

I couldn’t believe it. The cruelty of fate. So that’s the universe’s reward for you doing the decent thing and handing in someone’s bag – you have your own stolen. I didn’t know what to say, other than the usual platitudes and apologies for being such an idiot as to leave mine behind.

It just made me think, ‘why bother with being kind and good, if Karma is just going to dump on you from a big height?’ Karma, you’ve got your dials completely out of kilter if you think that’s a just and fair result.

Last night was a prime example.

It was about 10.30pm and I noticed the telltale drumming on the conservatory roof from the leaking guttering that indicated that rain was beginning to fall. I suddenly remembered that the kids’ tow-along chariot thing that connects onto the back of the bikes was still outside. Despite being only dressed in my boxer shorts and a pair of granddad slippers, I leapt like a spawning salmon out onto the garden decking, folded it up and carried it to the garden shed.

Inside, in the almost inpenetrable darkness, I could just make out that the weekend babysitters, Granny & Papa, had obviously used the kids’ trikes and had left them in the doorway, blocking access to the small amount of remaining space in the shed. To their left, J’s ladybike (with front wicker basket) was leaning up against miscellaneous junk piles, and was supporting my shiny, brand new Giant bike (that’s a brand, not a determinant of scale). It’s a bike I have yet to even change the seat height on, never mind ride.

I carefully lifted one of the trikes and squeezed down the narrow channel to place it in front of the leaning bikes. I located the other after a moment’s blind searching and – with no floorspace left – balanced it on top of the lawn mower. I gave the usual test of stability – I waited for a crashing noise for a few seconds – and when I was happy it was fixed in place, I grabbed the folded chariot and manoeuvred it in place.

Just as I finished, I accidentally nudged the back tyre of my new bike, which I could tell was still gleaming, despite the dark. I felt a sudden swoosh of air, and then the tell-tale smash of bike on trike on mower. My innards flipped and a guttural moan of anguish fell from my lips. Straddled across the folded chariot, I leaned over as far as possible and tried to extricate the bike from the dark and doubtlessly damaging clutches of the other shed equipment. At first I pulled gently, hoping it would miraculously lift straight off, without incident. Patience very quickly gave way to anger as I yanked and pulled the bike upright, all the while hopping on one foot, spreadeagled across the folded chariot. In the dark.

At this point, most normal people would consider the value of their new bike, and the lack of sense involved in fighting with inanimate objects in the dark and would beat a retreat inside to at least collect a torch. However, I’ve always been one who reads the Darwin Awards entries and thinks ‘well that all sounds perfectly reasonable’ right up to the point that someone has their head sliced off in a jet engine, or something similar.

As a consequence, I shouted, pulled hard and the bike popped upright, only to the slide forward straight into the trike on the floor, tangling its spokes in the front wheel with apparently impossible complexity.

By this stage my head was close to exploding with rage. Not just with the ability of inanimate objects to once again get the better of me, but also because I realise exactly how stupid I was being, but I was far too far down the road of idiocy to give up now. By this stage I was also having to swear in foreign languages, having exhausted every single swear word in English.

Anyone gazing upon the scene would have seen a chubby guy in boxer shorts, leaping from foot to foot, alternating between pleading with and swearing at childrens’ trikes, whilst also moaning like an injured wildebeest at an invisible level of damage to my bike.

Suffice it to say – I am not proud of my behaviour. Or my stupidity.

But as Forrest said, stupid is as idiot does. Innit. Or something like that anyway. It’s not a quote I use much.

All around, couples spoke in hushed tones; the volume betraying either gymnastic expressions of passion, or – this being France – perhaps barbed comments about the sartorial choices of the other guests.

Behind me, the stillness was broken by the pair of mute swans racing each other across the ornamental pond, heads straining forward, wings flapping broadly and the flat-footed slap on the water’s surface as they manically wobbled like aged sprinters out to prove themselves for the last time.

I looked up and the sky was the clearest azure. Even soft whispers of cloud had been barred entry to the moment. The gnarled and silvered oak timbers clung of the chateau’s expansive facade like witches’ fingers. The lime-rendered walls shimmered so subtly they almost fluttered in the heat.

The sunlight’s warmth enhanced every colour, saturating the ornamental gardens and lawns with an extraordinary palette of unbridled exuberance.

Across from me, the near-black shields of her glasses so nearly managed to conceal the astonishing luminescence of J’s eyes. But nonetheless, sparkles danced within as she drank in the menu’s delights, interjecting ‘mmms’ and ‘ahhs’ into her gastronomic oratory. As she paused and smiled up at me, her golden hair gently carressed the blushing smoothness of her cheek.

She’d organised the entire trip without me knowing any of the details whatsoever. I was to book off Friday and Monday, and make sure my passport was still valid. As I sat, in the exquisite surroundings of Les Sources de Caudalie, on an unseasonally hot afternoon for Bordeaux, I wondered whether she’d had a hand in the weather too. Even a God could not resist the wondrous persuasion of such a beauty.

A small moment, merely an instant, in a long weekend of the purest relaxation. But in each beat of my heart as I watched her, memories of every thoughtful kindness she has shown me over all our years together pulsed into my thoughts, each reinforcing the same message – that I will adore her till my last breath.

It is in those interstitial moments in our days that we realise the true meaning of our entire lives. Mine is to love J – and the children that she fought the universe to bring me – with every fibre in my being.

Thank you J, for a wonderful birthday. I hope I can repay you.

Of course, the blog’s birthday also heralds one other momentous event. Twelve months ago I was dreading the chiming of midnight as it took me into my 40th year, and I would be celebrating a birthday in my thirties for the very last time. Funnily enough, I feel better about it now than I did then – perhaps I’m just resigned to the steady onslaught of ageing and deterioration…

So tomorrow morning, I will doubtless be woken at 5.45am again by Ella chatting away to herself, and, bleary-eyed, I will get up. I’ll grab our bags (which I’m just about to finish packing), will load them in my car, and then sort the kids out with their morning bottles and dress them. Then at 7am, our ‘Mother’s Help’ E will arrive to look after the kids until J’s parents arrive mid-morning. We’ll kiss the kids, go to leave, run back and kiss them again, have a moment of angst on the doorstep about leaving them, and then pile into the car and drive to the airport. About five hours later, we’ll be sipping wine in a vineyard in central Bordeaux, where (I’ve discovered this evening) we’ll be staying at a chateau-cum-hotel, with on-site spa facilities. Just the two of us. No kids. For three nights.

Don’t get me wrong – I adore my kids, but the first and biggest love of my life is J and it will be so special to spend a few days just the two of us, safe in the knowledge that the twins are safe and with family, in the comforting surroundings of their own home.

I cannot wait. In fact, I’m going to go to bed right now and get the sleeping bit out of the way.

See you on the wrong side of 40 very soon.

But it’s got me thinking – are there TTC men blogging? I know that my brother did for a long time, recounting he and his wife’s desperate struggles against the horrors of ‘Unexplained Infertility’, finally calling time on their emotional torment and now giving daily thanks for Big S and Little S, their adopted daughters.

I must confess that I’ve not specifically gone out looking for men blogging about IVF and the like. I’ve always been amazed at how open most of the women who’s blogs I’ve read have been about the treatment they’ve undergone, listing statistics and drug regimes and every nuance of their cycles. I wonder if men would be the same? For men, the process is so limited, the preparation so miniscule in comparison to what their partners go through, but the heart-rending distress and pain resulting from BFNs is just as real for the male half of the equation, and often we’ve got to be the strong ones and keep it together in order to support our shattered wives and girlfriends back to some semblance of calm normality. And to be the person they can scream about the injustices of the world at. And to just offer arm-enveloped comfort.

So if you know of any blogs by men going through the emotional TTC wringer, please let me know. I’m going to look too. With J’s blessing.

The lid has an integrated fold-out spout which sprinkles the granules in an even fashion, delivering a healthy, moss-free lawn in next to no time.

I popped the lid, filled it with granules from the big bag that I’d bought at the garden centre a few weeks ago and set off on my little trek, zig-zagging from one side of our little lawn to the other and back.

Having laid outside the back door for the last few weeks, the granules in the bag had formed little lumps about the size of small pebbles, and so kept blocking the sprinkler’s nozzles. After tipping it upright and shaking the dispenser vigorously from side-to-side, it was clear and off I set again.

Another blockage. More shaking. Off again.

Once more it clogged. Frustrated shaking this time. Off again.

Then after two more steps, there was a ‘pop’ sound and the container went light in my hand. I slowly turned the torch to the lawn beneath my feet. A pile of feed-and-weed about the size of a small family car deposited itself underneath the container, whose open lid was swinging gentle to and fro, shining in the torchlight.

There was little hope of successfully recovering much of the pile, so after a succession of the foulest swearing known to man, I grabbed a broom from the shed and tried to brush the pile into the lawn, thinking that it would simply mean that moss had no chance whatsoever of growing in this area.

When I looked in the morning, I realised that the same apparently applied to grass.

So now, instead of having a lush, green lawn that would be the envy of every visitor, I have a lawn with a huge orangey-brown patch taking up the central third, which is probably evermore to be as barren as Death Valley.

With a brain like mine, I sometimes wonder how I don’t fall over more…*sigh*

I’ve had a couple of texts from my brother asking what I would like, to which I replied ‘Peace, love and understanding…what’s so funny..?’ thinking I was making a song-related joke. Actually, from my conversation with him this evening, evidently what I was being was just bloody annoying…

J has given up on me. She has taken to just sighing and shaking her head in disappointment as I stand in front of her like a five year-old having to explain why I glued my sister’s head to the table. (I never did, by the way.) I look down at my feet, toeing the carpet in a small circle and mumble something along the lines of: “But I’ve already got everything I need…?”

“It’s not about what you NEED – it’s about what you WANT. All these people want to help you celebrate your 40th and all you’re doing is spoiling it for them…”

“But I can’t think of anything that I want either…” I say into my chest.

“Then you’ll get what you’re given, and you only have yourself to blame,” says J, in her best Mum voice…

I’m really, really sorry, to my family, to J’s family, to J herself. I’m just not good any more at thinking about what I like. I guess I’ve just become ‘Dad’ rather than Jezzafuji, and have forgotten who I am a bit.

I decided that I would ask my brother for a new squash racquet. It’s not exactly a funky 40th present, but since my old one has a slight dip in the top which is threatening to collapse in upon itself, it’s something that I will both like and (soon undoubtedly) need.

Other than that, I can’t think of anything.

Can people buy inspiration for me?

I’m going straight to hell, aren’t I…?