Tuesday morning sees me, in that golden half-hour between dropping the kids off at the school gate and catching the bus into Bradford, sawing frenziedly at a half-inch thick layer of fat on a slab of pork.

I have – somewhat rashly, I realise – offered to fully prepare a dish of pulled pork to be simply slotted into the oven for four hours when my wife comes home from work. The trouble began when I cut open the shrink-wrap on the meat, showering myself in blood. By the time I’ve removed the fat, the kitchen looks like a filming location for a remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Bloodied but unbowed, I soldier, on, swiping a sticky finger across the screen of my phone to stop the online recipe I’m working from disappearing. The next job is to “finely slice two onions”, which I set to with gusto.

By the time I’ve rubbed wholegrain mustard into the meat, showered it with onions, chopped garlic, white wine vinegar and cider, and covered the whole thing with baking paper and foil, it’s just about time to go to work. The only problem is that I stink to high heaven of onions.

In the bathroom I scrub my hands like Lady Macbeth and liberally douse myself with Dolce & Gabana 21 Le Fou – I knew that would come in handy sometime. Ten minutes later I’m sitting on the bus, painfully aware that there’s an odour rising from me that makes me smell like the aftermath of an explosion in the garden of Lady Rosemary and Sir Basil. I start to sing under my breath: “I’m Bayleaf, I’m the gardener, I work from early dawn...”

Between that and the smell, I ensure that no-one sits next to me all the way to Bradford.

By the time I get home the pork is in the oven. The entire house smells of cooking and... something else.

“The smell of onions was overpowering when I got in,” says Mrs B.

Never mind, at least there’ll be some pulled pork to have in... I check the timer. About three hours. Just enough time to take the boy off to Scouts and have half an hour in the park with the girl.

On the way back she contrives to stand in a pile of dog poo. I direct her to some grass to wipe it off and she narrowly misses another pile. She has some kind of in-built homing device for this foul stuff. We get home and I tell her to take her shoes off and leave them outside.

When Mrs B finds out I’ve done this she says, quite rightly, that leaving the shoes outside is not quite the same as cleaning them, so I am despatched out to do just that. There is no more terrible job than cleaning dog poo off shoes. I gag throughout and am almost sick.

Back in the house I sniff suspiciously at my hands. Is that dog poo? I go off to scrub them again. Well, at least the smell of onions has gone...