Steve Canavan: When it comes to sleeping, Mary Mary’s quite contrary

I’m a patient man – I once sat in a traffic jam on the M6 for 13 whole minutes before starting to get irate, beeping my horn and ringing the police to ask why the wreckage of the 32-car pile-up ahead hadn’t yet been cleared.

But even a mild-mannered man like myself is starting to get a little exasperated at how long it takes to put a three-year-old to bed.

My younger child, Wilf – who is definitely going to get the larger share of cash in my will - is no problem. You give him a bath, read him a book, then chuck – sorry, place – him in his cot and he goes to sleep. He’s a dream.

My older child, Mary, used to be like this too but at a point I can’t quite recall, things started to go awry.

Actually I can recall. It was when we took her out of her cot and put her in a normal bed.

Cots are fantastic in that they look like the bars are there for the child’s own safety and protection, when in reality they are there, of course, to imprison your infant and make sure that, like a serial killer on death row, they can’t escape.

I think one of the lowest points of parenthood is when your child learns how to climb out of its cot, often appearing in your room sometime around 3.30am with a cheery smile and the words ‘is it playtime yet?’

But back to Mary, who I used to love putting to bed. We’d read a couple of books together (those really rubbish ones where you lift a flap above an image of a stable and it reveals – lo and behold – a horse; I was always disappointed the authors didn’t spice it up by occasionally surprising you with a picture of something more interesting, like a masked man grinning and holding a bloodied chainsaw). Then we’d sing nursery rhymes together, I’d hilariously deliberately get the words wrong - ‘Hey diddle diddle, the elephant and the trumpet - she’d laugh, we’d embrace, then I’d kiss her and leave her room.

It took 15 minutes tops, leaving me free to spend the rest of the evening doing one of my hobbies – needlework, wood carving, or naked pilates (the latter is good fun, but it’s important to shut the lounge curtains before you begin).

Now, however, things are very different.

Bedtime with Mary involves a set sequence of activities so energetic an Olympic athlete might consider using them as part of a pre-event training regime.