a sequel

So another Sadler has been born into the world. I have had Mat's story of the birth trauma. How he had to try and sleep on pushed-together chairs of uneven height in the waiting room. And don't even get him started on the coffee! Amanda was fine I think. A couple of weeks early but just as well as she could hardly have got any more pregnant.

The result was, not unexpectedly, a baby. I saw it. It is a her. Mat's anxious mind has already flitted forward to the terrifying prospect of the Father-Of-The-Bride speech. He needn't worry – he's creative. Even if Emilia Sunshine Sadler is one of the few recent projects of his that have come to fruition (and that, even if he's reluctant to admit it, was a collaboration). He had announced his intention of filming the birth - more than that, it would have been a live concert, with Mat occasionally taking a break from supervising the special effects (to make it look more realistic) to bash out a plangent chord or two on his synthesizer. The doctors would have had to work round him. However, this potential YouTube hit sadly seems to have gone the way of Mat's 19-hour version of Dracula.

Not that any of my creative efforts have really borne fruit either, and I don't even have children to justify my sorry existence. Thank God. I can't even cope with other people's children, let alone my own. Taking my niece Heidi down the road to a Sadler barbecue was a stretch, but, as I joked – I think it was a joke anyway – she got me there. And once that had been achieved, it turned out that she had her own friends. Phew.