I’m writing this a week before it landed in your inbox, which feels like cheating and winning at the same time. All being well, we should be away when you read this: our first holiday in over a year. Our first holiday abroad with the baby.

I don’t intend to write while I’m away but I always pack the laptop because it’s usually the case that when there’s no dishwasher to unload and the sky is new I find myself awake and restless and full of words, and it’s a very pleasing thing to need to let some of them out when there’s no expectation of doing so.

Maybe this will happen, probably not. I always used to be a dawn writer; those last dark moments of the night were mine to sit with, tea steaming, electric heater purring. I have written most of my books to the sound of blackbird song. That sounds incredibly twee but in Brixton it just means a rare moment in the day when everything else is quiet - no planes, no sirens, no awake neighbours. Now, though, the baby steals my sleep, as babies are meant to, and now 8am seems the only acceptable time to wake up. I long for him to sleep through but mostly so I have the energy to re-discover the time to write before he wakes.

For the past few weeks I have felt uneasy about going away. Matrescence and trauma have made me a home bird, something I’ve never previously been. I’ve tried to build good feeling, rather than bad, by notching up tiny little holiday things I’m looking forward to. Perhaps, by the time this reaches you, I’ll have enjoyed some of them. ...