The expression usually goes ‘Your dinner’s in the dog’. But that wasn’t the case tonight though when the dog was on me, the dinner was on the floor, and Olive? Olive was struggling to decide which crisis to deal with first.

She was supporting me this evening and she’d brought Keith the dog round with her. While she made us dinner, Keith was dozing on top of me, lying spread-eagled across my stomach.

Then I started to have a ‘ticcing fit’ and Keith, clearly concerned, was keen to help. His idea of assistance involved standing on my face, and then licking it ferociously which, for the record, is quite an odd sensation when you can’t move.

Olive wrestled my body until it stopped thrashing about, trying at the same time to manage Keith’s enthusiastic intervention. Just then, with incredible vigour, the washing machine started its spin cycle, the noise of it vibrating increasing the pandemonium.

All of a sudden there was a loud clang. I couldn’t see what had happened but I saw the shock on Olive’s face, and Keith suddenly abandoned face-licking and went off in the direction of the noise.

Olive had abandoned the Spanish omelette she’d been making for dinner before my fit started. Now she gently broke the news that dinner was likely to be delayed. It’d hit the deck, shaken off the hob by the washing machine’s frantic spinning.

Even Keith turned his nose up at the floor egg.

Happily, things got back on track as quickly as they’d gone awry. I stopped fitting, the washer stopped spinning, Keith stopped licking, and Olive went off to buy more eggs. Very soon we were all, at last, having dinner.