I am never, ever going to forgive you for this,” I cry, “you said you’d never do this again after what happened on the ski-lift...

11.30 pm, the night before St Patrick’s Day — and my husband and I are in bed, making plans for tomorrow.

We have got as far with our schedule as “sodding the parade.”

But after so many years of taking the children to watch it, the parade still feels compulsory and sodding it, wrong.