SLEEP is one of my favourite activities.

Alright, it doesn't sound very exciting.

It is not up there with surfing, bungee jumping or zorbing.

But give me a bed, freshly washed duvet and eight hours sleep and I am in heaven.

If you can throw a good book into the mix too then perfect.

Perhaps it's that old chestnut "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" after ten years of children disturbing my night's sleep with illness, bad dreams or just generally being a baby.

I am at that unfortunate stage where I have bags under my eyes.

And now my eyes have so many bags the government are threatening to charge me 5p for each one.

Conversely, as much as I love sleep, my children seem to detest it.

"Can I have some water/a teddy/the tears of a narwhal served in a unicorn's horn?" they plead from their bedrooms.

Trying to get down the stairs after turning the light off is a mission I quite often fail.

The slightest creak of a floorboard, cough or sneeze and suddenly the questions come.

My daughter has found a winning tactic, one that is so devious and cunning I am slightly proud that at four years old she has been able to mastermind it.

Throughout the day she will tell me she "can't remember" what has happened at school.

Of course, having just started reception class this September, I am desperate to know she has settled in nicely but this selective amnesia blights her memory.

Until 8pm.

The creak of the floorboard alerts her to the fact I am making my way downstairs and might just be about to relax (or at least make a start on the lunchboxes and letters for the following day).

"Mummy," she calls sweetly, looking up at me with her big blue eyes.

"Do you want to hear about school?"

I try and resist.

I should say no, it is bedtime, you have had all the time in the world to tell me about school but you choose this moment, when you've been tucked in, to suddenly lose your selective amnesia and be full of anecdotes of what happened in school today.

Anecdotes you could have very easily remembered when I asked you earlier on but apparently, in daylight hours, it is simply impossible to remember even one thing which has happened during your six-hour day at school.

That is what I should say.

But I can't resist.

Tell me, I say, scurrying back to her room, diving on her bed, desperate to hear that she is doing Okay, she is making friends and not being left behind with classwork.

She is so devious - I think she knows I have been losing sleep over it.