The day passed in a blur of pruning, mowing, weeding and waiting. Mr Guilt sat curled up around my neck like an Arctic fox whilst I was on the ride-on mower, just ensuring that I didn't look towards Mr Vroom's house. The machine slid up and down across the bottom part of the lawn, with me perched on it: a modern mermaid calling out an unlikely aging Ulysses; I thought that the noise would have alerted Mr Vroom that I was out and about, and he has promised to set the mole-traps, after all, but there was no sign of life from the house down the hill.

Bereft of the opportunity to practice my daily pouting, I shaved the lawn with anger, blades down to worm level. When that did not soothe my mood, I took to shears and pitchfork, setting upon the bushes, weeds and anything sticking out. There must be something Freudian about this behaviour, surely.

Mr Guilt smiled complacently, knowing that it was quite redundant: I was making a pretty good job at being unhappy without any help from it.

I should learn how to be happy from my children; when they came back from school and after-school activities, including frolicking in grass (judging by the stains on their originally immaculate white tops, now reduced to a pulp of green sludgy stuff), fighting with other like-minded thugs and hyperventilating thanks to sugary drinks and salty chips, there was no sign of grudge, sadness or resentment towards me. No memory of this morning whatsoever. No propensity to remind me how nasty I had been, or even a gentle ticking-off. Nothing. In fact, I got kisses and hugs.

Mr Guilt nodded knowingly, and tightened its embrace.

Why can't I just let my boys' kisses lift the spirit and be all I need to feel happy?

Precious currency, kisses from little boys: they already deny me the good-bye one when we are in public or in front of friends/other children, embarrassed by its intimacy and worried that it might display some sort of uncool weakness.

Soon I shall only get the good-night one, and that'll have to last me a whole day.

If I didn't have Mr Guilt peering over my shoulder and reading what I am writing, I'd argue that perhaps this is why I have been fantasising about being tackled by Mr Vroom behind the potato haulms, where, reduced to immobility, in my imagination I relent and concede one passionate kiss on lips burnt by the wind, arms held behind my back and numb with the stinging nettle's own deadly kiss.

Of course, there is always Mr Husband. But his physical absence during the day does not help, nor does sticking up a freshly bought Daily Mail between his face and mine, when we do manage to meet up at dinner time. Mr Husband believes that kissing belongs to our earlier years, a past life of courting and wooing: it is as if he felt too grown-up for kissing, just like our boys do. As a wife, I am entitled to the occasional peck on the cheek, when he has not eaten onions. Unfortunately, as he loves them, onions feature quite heavily on the dinner table.

I wonder whether Mr Vroom likes onions too.