THAT Jack Bauer, he has it easy.

Mr Bauer, the counter-terrorism agent in Sky One's hit series, 24, has a hectic time of it, to be sure (6.00am, handed over by Chinese; 7.00am, escapes being sacrificed; 8.00am, chases terrorists; 9.00am, shoots colleague; 10am, nuclear bomb detonates, and so on).

However, I don't see him multi-tasking. Chloe does that, covertly repositioning global satellites for Jack while fending off her annoying ex-boyfriend and secretly nursing her sister's baby under the desk. Or was that the last series?

After a while, one of Jack Bauer's days blends into another, even though there's supposed to be 20 months between them. It's kind of like my life at the moment, minus the torture scenes and the Russians, obviously.

Friday is my maddest day. Last week's was pretty typical.

8.00am: Stagger out of bed, bleary-eyed from having been up until 1.30am writing my column and making figgy flapjacks. It is harder than usual to get up because I don't function until I get tea. Unfortunately, the tea-maker is away in London.

8.45am: Escort daughter to school (late), issuing instructions about drumming lesson, spelling test, etc, whilst trying not to drop box of figgy flapjacks.

9.00am: Make strong cup of coffee. Survey breakfast debris. The phone rings: it's a Hungarian cowboy called Django Kiss I've arranged to interview.

9.30am: Answer emails.

10.00am: Make soup. This is the only way to keep on top of the veg box deliveries, and use up the three heads of celery I seem to have accumulated. I feed flapjack to the cute veg box delivery guy, too.

10.55am: Tweak column. Email it to The Press.

11.15am: Compost John arrives. Together with my friend Spit, who is over from Tasmania, we excavate my compost bin. John tells me it is the wormiest bin he has ever seen. I tell him he's just jealous. He invites us to come and see his compost toilet, which is famous, having appeared on Panorama's Go Green Or Else with the BBC's Ethical Man. I decline and offer him a figgy flapjack, but he says he only likes savoury.

1.10pm: I practise the trombone and dribble a lot. Still can't get top D without making wet farty noises. With my lips, obviously.

1.30 pm: Make a salad for me and Spit. Jack Bauer never so much as bolts down a sandwich. How does the man keep going?

2.05pm: Spit leaves. I grab my dance shoes, powder nose, change pongy T-shirt and dash to my ballroom lesson with Joel. We practise the foxtrot, gliding round the room with me fantasising about looking like Lilia Kopylova (in my dreams). I lecture him on his coffee habit; he tells me to tilt my head. I step on his toes and forget the heel turn.

3.10pm: Rush to school, slightly flushed. Collect daughter.

4.00pm: Start the tea. The daughter downloads her day in between bouts of Tracy Beaker and Blue Peter.

4.28pm. Pop out to Jacksons for milk. Yvonne shouts, "where are my giblets?" at me, which I have promised her for Baby David and Jake. Retrieve giblets that I have cooked lovingly for the dogs.

5.25pm: Take daughter to French class, which I help out with. We sing a nonsense song about a donkey with a tummy ache. This wasn't useful when I went to Rouffignac market in the Dordogne recently and nearly ate donkey sausage, but the context confused me.

6.15pm: Schlep off to brass band practise. The daughter and I have been learning with Ebor Brass since Christmas; she's on the baritone, which is like a euphonium only smaller. Brian, our conductor, keeps the group on its toes by rounding on us every so often to ask what the notes on the lines spell out. Eggs Go Bad Down Fulford' is a local favourite.

8.30pm: Arrive back home to horrible gravy smell. The husband has been to the Chinese takeaway on his way back from the station. He makes me a cup of tea, at last.

9.00pm: We argue about who is more tired. He has been in high-powered meetings all day and his train got held up at Doncaster, so I lose and put the daughter to bed.

9.45pm: Collapse in front of Desperate Housewives, which we've recorded on SkyPlus, or Dangerous Housewives, as he calls it. It's his favourite programme, apart from 24. We watch that, too (there's a backlog of TV to catch up on; I'm already seven ERs behind).

Midnight: Fall into bed. I feel a certain affinity with Jack Bauer. For one thing, I'm always on the run, too. And for another, I feel responsible for saving the planet. Even if it is only by doing the composting.