When the bedtime routine goes on all night, it looks like Steve is starting to crack...| Steve Canavan

But I feel moved to do so this week after he – Wilf, to give him his title – gave me one of the worst nights I’ve endured since becoming a parent, which is quite some statement because there have been many to choose from.

As usual we put him to bed at 7pm.

I say we, Mrs Canavan did it, because I put our three-year-old Mary to bed.

This is at the request of Mary, who goes berserk if I’m not in charge of her bedtime duties on the very shrewd basis that she knows I have no discipline or ability to say no and that if I’m in charge bedtime goes on for about two hours.

This is as opposed to the five minutes it takes Mrs Gestapo Canavan (‘Mummy, can we play a game’. Mummy: ‘No. I’m switching the light off now. Goodnight’.)

It is an arrangement that suits me because quite frankly putting Mary to bed is more interesting.

This is down to books. Books for three-year-olds are so much better than the drivel we have to read Wilf.

There’s one baby book in particular that irks me, about a bear and a hare.

It’s called ‘Mine!’ and is about a hare that refuses to share things, like a pot of honey, a balloon, an ice cream, etc.

The moral of the story being, of course, that it’s good to share (all parents spend half their lives telling their children this … which is a bit hypocritical because it’s not like I’d share with a friend, say, a meal in a restaurant or half my life’s savings).

What drives me mad is not the story – it’s very good and Wilf always reaches for it – but the blurb on the back which says, ‘another laugh-out-loud adventure’.

Now I’m not one to take issue at things, but a sample line of this book is: ‘Bear and Hare go for a walk.

‘Oooh, ice cream! Share? Asked Bear. Mine! Said Hare’.

Now you might describe Laurel and Hardy as laugh-out-loud, or Monty Python, or Morecambe and Wise, but, with the greatest will in the world, not this.

I mean, last time we read it Wilf didn’t guffaw uncontrollably and say: ‘Daddy, stop reading, my ribs can’t take any more’.

No, he did what he always does, pointed at random things on the page while crying extremely loudly if you don’t give him his milk quickly enough.

Anyway I sorted Mary and finally emerged from her room at 9.10pm (‘Daddy, can we play one last game of Jumping Superheroes – I’m Cartwheel Girl’. Me: ‘No Mary, its been two hours now and we really need to get to sleep – remember Wee Willie Winkie will be back any minute and if he finds any children still awake, he kidnaps them and locks them in a small dark cupboard forever.’)

As I stepped onto the landing I was met by the sound of a sobbing Wilf.

This was followed by a bedraggled looking Mrs Canavan putting her head round his door as she said: ‘Can you take over? I’ve not had my jacket potato yet’.

This was not ideal (not the jacket potato situation, me having to take over).

I tried to soothe him, something I’m usually pretty good at.

All it takes is one verse of Incey Wincey Spider and he’s smiling and settled.

But on this occasion it had no effect.

I knew I had to bring out the big guns so I grabbed his big toe and said in jaunty voice: ‘his little piggy went to market’.

This nursery rhyme/foot massage/slightly disturbing swine tale always, I repeat, always works.

But again, nothing changed.

Wilf carried on screaming.

This was at 9.30pm, and without a word of a lie this went on ALL NIGHT.

Mrs Canavan stayed with him till midnight, then I took over.

If you picked him up, he quietened.

If you attempted to put him back in his cot or even sit down on a chair, he opened his eyes, glared at you in way similar, I imagine, to the way a serial killer looks at a victim just before slaughtering them, and then started to scream again.

At about 5am – when I was having to suppress quite strong thoughts of opening the window and throwing Wilf into the garden – I could take no more and began deliberately making a succession of loud noises, kicking the radiator, knocking over a pile of books, headbutting the wall, in a bid to wake Mrs Canavan, who appeared to be having the sleep of her life.

It worked because she wandered in bleary-eyed about half five.

‘Is he still awake?’ she asked.

‘Erm, yes,’ I replied, slightly sharply.

‘Yes he is. Very awake. And he has been since midnight.’

‘Ah, poor mite,’ said Mrs C, looking at him with concern and sympathy.

‘Forget him, what about me?’ I wanted to bellow.

I’d not been this tired since the previous week when the car valeting place was closed and I had to hoover my own footwells.

She took over trying to calm him and I slumped into bed, though because our bedroom is right next to Wilf’s, his yelling meant I couldn’t get to sleep.

The last time I looked at the clock was 6.20am – and then I awoke with a moan at 7.45am when the alarm went off.

I can tell you now, with some certainty, that 85 minutes sleep is not the optimum amount when you’ve got to go in to work and spend the day teaching.

Amazingly Wilf – who had a couple of teeth coming through by the way – was all smiles when he was dropped off at nursery that morning.

‘Isn’t he lovely,’ said the nursery staff, not an adjective I would, at that exact moment, have used myself.

I, meanwhile, am leafing through Yellow Pages looking for a nanny who is prepared to take children overnight.

Wish me luck.