I’m Esther Browning. I’m 5’8 and a half, have wild hair and three children. I’d like to pretend that the wild hair is purely because I have these children but people who’ve known me longer than the age of my eldest child could prove me wrong with a single snapshot so I’d better not.

We live about eight miles to the west of Oxford where our existence is a whirlwind of activity, the merry juggling of elements of the work-life balance between square meals.

The other week it was the end of term and the children were gently winding down. Surely we mums ought to have been winding down too but instead I seemed to be jogging from one fun-packed event to the next.

There was the school sports day where I coordinated the compulsory camera with my most sporty sparkly flip-flops in case I was called upon to compete in an inter-generational egg and spoon contest.

Hot on its heels came the family fun afternoon where I gave each child a fiver so they could lob wet sponges at the headteacher and consume an inordinate amount of sticky confectionary safe in the knowledge that it would make at least one of them seriously ill.

Finally there was the end of term disco, a hall of children writhing through dry ice to a thumping backing track, and whilst this is the Oxfordshire childhood that I want my children to remember, when I look back on these years one day from under a warm patchwork quilt, I’d like to remember more than just perching fondly on a child-sized chair with a warm white wine in a plastic glass.

And so that same week I bought a wetsuit for outdoor swimming.

This wetsuit is tighter than medieval torture equipment and required three sales-assistants to manhandle me into its neoprene skin.

I was assured this is normal and, in the changing room at least, felt empowered.

On the riverbank the constriction of my lungs and the cold water looming beneath me were exciting and terrifying in equal measure.

My friend and I squeezed in a morning while most of our broods were still at school, so just one warmly-wrapped son patiently set up his fishing rod on the bank.

We whooped into the Thames and emerged half an hour later both exhilarated by the exercise and rather proud too: not many fishermen can claim that their mum will actually swim across the river to untangle their fishing line from the reeds on the far bank.

This was an unexpected ‘good mother point’ that I used to mentally counteract my apparently unforgiveable dancing at the school disco and my total annihilation in the mums’ sack race.

As I said, it’s all a juggling act, and the balls are liable to fall at any moment. But for now onwards and upwards.

The school holidays are upon us!