After four days of being confined to bed, feeling as though one’s lungs are collapsing under the weight of a thousand stepdancing leprechauns who, when their legs get tired, relax by stabbing one in the ears with the pointy end of the rainbow, it’s hard to avoid feeling glumly reflective and moodily obsessive about, say, what many things have I failed to accomplished, lo these long years? and what will be my legacy, whensoever I am dragged from this bed, a bedraggled, lung-crushed heap? and shouldn’t I have a better mattress at this stage in my life? and why are there cracker crumbs in this bed? and why won’t anyone bring me tea in a nice china pot, with biscuits and sugar lumps on the side?

I grow old, I grow old.

I am consoled, only, with this, the knowledge that my children may someday find their place in the firmament that is Awkward Family Photos: