On Monday morning, while I took a leisurely bath and the babe had already gone back to the land of nod, my peace was disturbed.

It was the sound of my husband swearing in the kitchen.

At first I thought maybe I had left the gas on again. I expected to hear him come charging up the stairs like a thing possessed to give me a piece of his mind.

Minutes passed, however, and nothing happened. Concerned, I wrapped a towel around me and crept downstairs.

My husband was gingerly removing items from the freezer and the room was heavy with the aroma of fine wine.

"What are you doing?" I inquired. He pointed to our patio table, on which lay two halves of a bottle of very nice champagne his father had given him for his birthday.

"I put it in the freezer last night to chill - and bloody forgot about it," he said. "It exploded and there's glass everywhere."

I could see how it had happened. The night before our friends, Scot and Judy, came over with their two small children and the evening had rapidly descended into chaos.

First our ten-week-old baby had a violent attack of wind and screamed for 40 minutes just as our guests arrived.

My husband, who was on cooking duty at the time, had to abandon the kitchen to be sociable while I paced around upstairs waiting for Max to burp.

By the time Max had calmed down, our daughter and our friends' children had worked themselves into a state of frenzied excitement and were running amok at a time when they would all normally be having a few quiet stories before bedtime.

Judy and I gave them a bath and promised they could watch the Barbie Nutcracker video if they behaved, which seemed to work. My husband, meanwhile, had returned to preparing his house speciality.

By 9pm we were ready to eat and were sitting around the patio table.

We couldn't hear the children and were hopeful they had taken our advice and were all squashed into our daughter Eve's bed.

"This is the life," said Scot, knocking back some of our cheap white wine. And for a few minutes, it did feel as though we were having a pleasant and civilised evening.

My husband brought out plates of steaming pasta and we were just about to tuck into it when he began whimpering with pain.

His eyelid had suddenly swollen to double its size and his eye began streaming.

"Jesus! What's happened?" said Scot in alarm. "Has someone just punched you?

"It's an allergic reaction to the basil, I think," said my husband, who began searching for some Clarityn.

"I was just chopping some up and I rubbed my eye. Don't worry. It will be all right soon," he added bravely.

So we continued eating, pretending not to notice my husband's disturbing disfigurement.

Five minutes later our daughter came out to tell us Scot and Judy's two-year-old had just removed her nappy to inspect the contents. Judy uttered a quick "oh god" and hurried upstairs.

By 10pm, Max had woken up with wind again and the three other children were all arguing on the sofa while my husband attempted to read The Cat In The Hat to them with his one good eye.

"It's been a splendid evening," said Scot, who obviously enjoys a bit of pandemonium. "Fantastic, in fact."

Anyway, back to Monday morning. An hour after my husband thought he'd removed all the glass from the kitchen floor, I stepped on a shard with bare feet. There was pain, blood and much cursing.

"Let's give home entertaining a rest for a while," I said. "It's safer."