Deep in the dog days of August I abandoned trying to get any work done or to limit my children's screen time. I was unsure which day of the week it was and had just come in from a desultory tour of the garden, which was as dry, crispy and sun-bleached as the stubble fields beyond.
The air was oppressive and (with a nod to the weather) the children were watching Madagascar, which would at least, I reasoned, keep them from viewing verboten rubbish on YouTube for a couple of hours.
I flopped on my bed in the coolest room in the house and reached for my phone to doomscroll Instagram, the maximum exertion I could manage at that juncture of the summer holidays which, for working mothers everywhere, is classified as the"functioning breakdown" stage.
