It’s a conspiracy maan.

Any parent will tell you that sleep becomes very erratic in the first few years of your children’s lives. Then, after a couple of years it gets better and then it takes a turn for the worse again.

Unfortunately, we appear to be in the middle of the “worse again” period.

And why is it that children will sleep in late from Monday to Friday but at the weekend they come into your bedroom at 5am because they were either “dreaming about monsters” or they “want a cuddle”?

This has been the pattern for the past several weeks.

But, no sooner does Joseph start to sleep in, do other factors come into play.

This morning, foxes were yelping up and down the street, mooching about and play fighting with each other. This was just before 5 ‘o’ clock.

They move on, I start to drift back to sleep before I’m woken by the strangest sound. Did you ever run your fingers around the top of a wine glass to produce a strange humming noise? That’s exactly the noise which has been waking us up. After a quick bit of detective work, I found the source – the outlet for next door’s boiler.

At 5.30am!

What can I do about the foxes? Nothing.

What can I do about the neighbour’s boiler? Nothing.

It’s gonna be a long winter.