To avoid a double chocolate nightmare when I got divorced, I began to vary the contents of my children’s calendars – but now they’d rather have a mini Smirnoff than a lip balm

Advent calendars are a nightmare when you’re divorced. The kids come back from their other house with days’ worth of unopened Toblerone, which is funny and delicious, after, say, eight years, but tear-jerkingly poignant when the split is very fresh. So, ages ago, I took matters into my own hands, as there was a very real risk I was going to put everyone off Toblerone. I got some little DIY advent kits from Sainsbury’s, thinking I could only fill the days when they’d wake up with me, and they wouldn’t be faced with a sad backlog.

That didn’t work for my youngest, who said the main upside of having divorced parents was that you got two of everything. So I moved on to filling all the drawers, but not necessarily with sweets. That coincided with a year I wasn’t that busy with work and whatnot, and I went all out. If you can name a miniature thing, it went in a drawer; tiny tape measures, minuscule note-writing sets, ceramic kittens, lip balm. An overload of cuteness. That didn’t work for my eldest, who said the pressure of how much sheer appreciation I was expecting every morning was putting him off his breakfast. I said: “Is it me, though? Or is it that you’re full of Lindt pistachio truffle?” And he said: “No, it’s definitely you.”