But in the big journey of life I’ve felt like I’ve been kept in a holding pattern. This is mainly due to the situation we found ourselves in of letting out two properties and renting ourselves. Jane and I both own 1-bedroom places which we were unable to sell due to the bottom falling out of the market three years ago, so we ended up renting out so that we could afford to rent a place big enough to take the three of us.

We thought, perhaps naively, that eventually we’d save a bit of money and eventually be able to afford to stop letting out our properties and sell them. But the trouble with juggling 3 properties is that there’s always something going wrong with at least one of them. We were exposed to expenses from all directions.

So, at the start of the year, I realised that enough was enough. The only way we were ever going to have our own house was to grasp the nettle and put our houses back on the market again. This meant risking losing both tenants and losing the income that was paying our own rent. But we decided it was now or never. If the worst came to the worst, we’d end up having to live in one of the properties we owned, squeezing a 3-person family into a one-bedroom flat.

The last time I put my house on the market I got no interest whatsoever. Hardly anyone even viewed it. I wasn’t expecting much more now.

Within a week of me putting my house on the market, amazingly, we’d found a buyer. We’re not at the stage of exchanging contracts yet, but things are really looking good.

Today we put in an offer on a brand new house being built in an ideal spot for us, and it was accepted within the afternoon.

Things are really starting to move quickly. It makes me wonder why everything seemed so hard before. It also makes me wonder if everything is too good to be true. I’ve not stopped worrying just yet.

But, really, things need to move a bit quickly, because in September this person turns up…

That scan was from Tuesday. The house offer was on Monday and we paid our deposit today… so yeah, busy week!

A spokesman for the Internet said “we have contigency plans for these situations, and our web gritters were out in force on all the major internet trunk routes, but when you have 5 million people tweeting that it’s snowing, all within the space of a few minutes, there’s very little we can do”.

Problems also spread to the most popular web destinations. The BBC email server is being dug out from under a huge drift of snow pictures and videos being sent in by members of the public with nothing better to do. The major cables in and out of London were blocked, and several TCP-IP packets were forced to sleep in their cars overnight.

Police were advising people to stay off the internet apart from essential surfing. The Chief Constable of the Internet Police said “you have to ask yourself: is posting your opinion about whether we’re going to have a white Christmas or not on ‘Have Your Say’worth the danger to yourself and your family?”

Has your internet connection been affected by the snow? Send your telegrams, etchings and watercolours to “Brr It’s Chilly Isn’t It”, Mere Bagatelle House, Norfolk, NR1 FFS.

The NCT (not NCP, they’re something quite different) are disputing the claims. This is unsurprising, as most of the extended antenatal classes in this country are run by them.

Jane and I decided early on that we’d not bother with NCT classes and instead take the free NHS route. This entailed a slightly cursory programme of three visits to a community centre to learn about stuff like how plastic babies fit through plastic pelvic bones, and how much change you need for the hospital car park (which isn’t NCP or NCT). I think it was enough information for us.

One of the things they covered was pain relief, and I remember in particular the discussion we had about TENS machines. For the uninitiated (as I was), a TENS machine is a bit like those muscle stimulation gadgets they sell on the shopping channels to get rid of flabby tummies. Placed on the skin, they stimulate the nerves and are supposed to reduce pain during labour.

There’s not much evidence that TENS machines actually work, and the midwife at our antenatal class that covered pain relief more or less admitted that she thought twiddling with the knobs on the machine distracted mums from the pain by “giving them something to do”.

I think that’s probably the main benefit of extended antenatal classes. The nine months of a first pregnancy is an awful long time to fill, and the gaps between decorating and buying baby stuff are mainly filled with worrying about something you don’t really have any control over: the birth. NCT classes and their ilk give parents “something to do”, and maybe give them back a sense of control.

It doesn’t matter so much, then, that what they’re learning is a little common sense midwifery wrapped up in a lot of (literal) puff which won’t actually benefit them on the day. The important thing is that up until that day, they felt more able to deal with it.

But I’m still happy of being to be ignorant of how to breathe. When the day comes, I’ve been taught by existing fathers the two facts that will get me through the worst of the delivery. One: take the blame for everything. Two: if they’re biting down on their hand, don’t offer to replace it with yours.