Golden Boy seems to rise with the sun, so I’m usually woken by a little, 16-month-old voice telling me to “get up” sometimes as early as 5.30am.

Mummy and I will lay there silently, hoping he will see sense and go back to sleep, before further demands of “downstairs” and “breakfast” are issued.

It is often Mummy who will crack first and fetch him from his cot but earlier this week I decided to be better than I normally am in the morning and got him up myself.

We left Mummy to sleep and she came down to breakfast looking bright and cheery a couple of hours later.

My benevolence was repaid the following morning, as Mummy whisked Golden Boy downstairs soon after he woke up.

“Let’s allow Daddy to have a lie-in,” she said, closing the bedroom door. I was still quite out of it and fell back into a deep sleep seconds after they left.

Is there anything more glorious than a lie-in? So busy are we with our hectic, modern lives that the opportunity to enjoy a long, uninterrupted block of sleep is getting rarer.

However, nothing makes you feel better than making a sizeable deposit in the old sleep bank. When Mummy and Golden Boy came with coffee in hand to revive me two hours later, I was more relaxed and alert than I had been in weeks.

With the weekend coming up, I’ll try to keep Golden Boy up later than normal so both Mummy and I can stay a while longer in the wonderful Land of Nod.

I hope you all can manage to steal a few extra hours’ kip, too.