McCartney’s hyperactivity isn’t why I’m exhausted; it’s because the smoke alarm at the bottom of our stairs chose to wake me up in the dead of night. If it had been to tell me that the house was on fire, I wouldn’t have minded, but it was only to let me know that it had a low battery.

There I was in the middle of a deeply satisfying sleep when an annoying little beep crept into the bedroom and prodded me awake.

I’m not using “beep” in place of an obscenity, although obscenities were in my thoughts. They were eventually joined by some other words and, in the fullness of time, formed a plan. It involved me creeping round to the other side of the room in the dark and shutting the bedroom door. Despite the obvious fire risk, Mrs Eddison insists on sleeping with it open. For reasons that are mainly menopausal, she also enjoys kicking the duvet off and throwing the windows open. On the way back to bed, I replaced the former and closed the latter.

It reminded me of the time I tried ignoring Jordan when he was hitting himself on the head with a ruler

My hope was that, with the bedroom door shut, a small beep would go unheard. But trying not to hear a beep involves actively listening for one. Consequently, it remained irritatingly audible and even more difficult to disregard. It reminded me of the time I tried tactically ignoring Jordan when he was repeatedly hitting himself on the head with a ruler. He wouldn’t stop, and neither would this. Eventually, I went to t’ foot of our stairs (as we say in Yorkshire) to resolve the bleeping situation once and for all.

But this turned out to be more difficult than I imagined when my short stature conspired with a low dining chair and a high ceiling to keep the alarm out of reach. Anyone who says size doesn’t matter hasn’t had a beeping smoke alarm two inches from their grasp. I had no choice but to cold-foot it out to the garage to get the steps.

Fuming over a smoke alarm

“This’ll shut you up,” I hissed as I fiddled with the alarm’s inner workings. My triumph was short-lived. In an attempt to convince Mrs Eddison that I’d been making illicit toast, it defied its low-battery status and broke into a frenzy of shrieking.

My wife wanted to know why I’d put our lives at risk by leaving it without a battery

Even after I explained, my wife remained unimpressed. She wanted to know why I couldn’t have waited until morning; why I’d now put our lives at risk by leaving it without a battery; and why I couldn’t keep my cold feet to myself. Ten minutes later she sat up and asked the trickiest question of all: “Did you remember to lock the door after you came in from the garage?”

By mid-morning, my energy levels are running seriously low. The situation is not helped by McCartney, who is metaphorically (and sometimes literally) bouncing off the walls. “They’re trying him on some new medication,” says Miss Fatalism. “They reckon it could take weeks to get the dosage right.”

“It’s not the dosage they need to get right, it’s the voltage,” I reply. “Somebody should take his batteries out.”

Steve Eddison teaches at Arbourthorne Community Primary in Sheffield