How Do You Spell Bucket?

It’s dark in my bedroom. Warm. I should be sleeping.
Because I’m knackered. Our house is like a war zone. My children have made me a star chart for bad behaviour and I’ve had to give up shouting for Lent. Life consists of hanging on by the toenails from dawn until dusk. I’ve lost track of my sleep deficit, let alone my few remaining marbles. No-one in their right mind should be conscious, let alone answering questions, at this time of day.
Nevertheless, there’s a voice in my ear.
Where’s the logic? It isn’t saying wake up, or I love you, or the house is on fire. There’s no gentle shaking, no quiet introduction to the rigours of the day. The voice, with no preliminaries, needs to know: ‘How do you spell bucket?’
Grainy light filters through reluctant eyelash. Or should that be reluctant light through grainy eyelash? A feathery chorus tunes up idly in the trees outside. Bucket? Bucket? Right now I’d swear it begins with an F. There’s a sigh like the rustling of paper, the smell of hot hair. Someone is muttering like Dick Dastardly. Who is it? Who? My little boy, that’s who. He’s the one demanding with menaces in that urgent husky shout peculiar to children learning to whisper. I use the term ‘whisper’ loosely. It could carry across Salisbury Plain.
The one muttering like Dick Dastardly and dribbling into the pillow is what’s left of me.
And my little boy, in more ways than one, is unravelling all my dreams.