Suddenly our family life becomes an unfunny sitcom

My daughter is crying. She is holding a tiny red London bus, one of her favourite toys, and the terrible thing that has happened to her is that she has smashed our television with it. The screen is completely destroyed, with a central impact now radiating a small spider web of white lines, within a larger morass of jagged, blocky blues, greens and purples that crowd out the picture on its surface.

I am too stunned to move, the impact having happened so fast that I’ve yet to process it at all. My first thoughts, such as they exist in this zen-like state of paralysis, are of the immediate financial cost of what she’s done. Thus, the denial phase of grief kicks in swiftly. I switch the TV off, perhaps hoping the very clearly annihilated screen is a signal fault. I turn it back on, dismayed to discover that no, this was not an emergency broadcast from Smashed Telly Gold +1; my two-year-old has just managed to do £400’s worth of damage in two-fifths of a second.