Last week I ran out of episodes for my newish podcast, having had something of a batch-recording session over the summer.

I genuinely thought the logistics of this week might mean that episode 8 wouldn’t happen.

Because I was pretty busy.

But it has happened.

It turns out that the very thing I thought might get in the way — the fact that I was away for the weekend — actually ended up helping, as I stayed at my parents’ house with only one of my children in tow.

So I recorded episode 8 there.

Sadly, despite mentioning during the episode that I’d remembered to bring the USB microphone, it turns out it wasn’t switched on.

So the audio was recorded on my phone’s microphone.

Which probably isn’t optimal, but still only ranks as a relatively mild technical failure compared to some of the other episodes of this folly.

I also somehow managed to make this the longest episode to date, and I’m not entirely sure how that happened.

It wasn’t intentional.

Nonetheless, if you are one of the small number of people who has listened to my previous episodes, and not hated them, then I think you probably won’t hate this one either.

Which is about as strong an endorsement as I’m prepared to give it.