My headache has had a reprochement.

Despite the trippy pills which can cut it off at the pass, this week has just fed the migraine its lines from the wings.

The pain has glowered throughout the week, making its presence known with each new fateful twist and turn – and there have been many. The miraculous medication has fought bravely and with studious chivalry. But it had fallen back to the drawbridge by teatime yesterday, its mighty triptin shield fending off the enemy’s broadsword.

By seven, as I blogged with grim determination, the migraine was in the castle Keep.

I posted, switched off the light, and in the oh-so-familiar darkened room, I curled up. Phil was still in London, the children were tucked up in bed, and I allowed myself to feel officially poorly.

All night I woke up and observed the pain rampaging around the keep: up the stairs, down the stairs, in my lady’s battered chamber, where the synapses were doing all the wrong things in all the wrong places.

I woke at six and supplied a brief grumpy status update to the other human in the bed. He offered tea and sympathy, and I hrmphed.

“I’ll have the children today”, he directed. “You need to stay in bed.”

Some part of my mind reeled in wonder. A day in bed. Someone else with the children. What might that be like?

We have a term in our house: sofa boy, or sofa girl. For us, medicine is as much about a tatty dog-eared piece of upholstery from IKEA, as it is about paracetamol and ibuprofen. When someone feels unsound in body and spirit, we root out an old blanket and tuck them up on a sofa. We get them a lovely drink. We select their favourite viewing on the telly.

For it is my opinion – and call me an unbridled crank if you will – that the state of our spirits has an awful lot to do with whether one lets the enemy past the drawbridge.

If, at the first sight of the enemy on the horizon, one administers frankly comical amounts of sympathy, it can often get the troops stationed on those battlements better than anything else.

There should be rafts of in-depth research about sofas and their effect on the immune system: but I do note with approval that the centre of a therapist’s world is not unlike our well-cushioned chaise-very-longue-indeed.

Doubtless our internationally renowned Harley Street is filled with sofas, whether by accident or design. Surely these stolid pieces of upholstery are the unsung heroes of our great British Health Service?

At the first sign of discomfort, my good husband is a primary beneficiary of our sofa.

It is nice and long, and we bought it because it can take someone over six foot and still offer matronly comfort.

It never fails to do the trick, and he is usually up and about within 24 hours, all, I would argue, because of a tasteless turquoise settee.

Today, it looked like I might get a brief stint as Sofa Girl. Oh my.

I lay pathetically for a carefully calculated space of time before stretching out an arm to claim my tea, because I have to be at death’s door to miss my tea. Actually, I was at death’s door once, and even then I seem to remember not going without tea for more than 12 hours.

And then, falling back with Tenysonian pathos against my pillows, I listened to Phil’s speech as the children arrived in our bed to greet the day.

“Hello, children:” (he always seems to favour a 1940s BBC-style delivery for these moments of public announcement). ” Daddy will be looking after you both today, as Mummy is poorly and needs a lovely rest.”

He paused. Von-Trapp like attentiveness from offspring, and I was basking in the moment. When the rhetorical pause was perfectly complete. he continued.

“So you both need to go and get your own clothes today, and then Maddie, I want you to be a really grown up girl and get Felix and yourself your own breakfast.”

You know that moment in Wild West movies, when the baddies throw open the saloon door, and the two-bit plinky pianist stops playing, and everyone freezes, their fire-water poised half way to their lips?

I sat bolt upright.

“Oh no, you don’t”, I proclaimed, with menace, to the listening gunslingers. “My children are not latchkey children.”

There was a short silence during which I believe a ball of grass blew across the dusty room.

‘Latchkey’ children refers, here on the island, to small children who are given a key and told to let themselves in to their house when the day is over. The general feeling is that someone should be looking after our children, cherishing them for every hour of every day.

Even – or should I say, especially – breakfast time.

In addition to this, it is important to remember that ironing does not exist in our house. There is simply a great mound of clothes, and after this week the mound is reaching biblical proportions. If my children attempted entry it is possible they might never come out, and how would we explain this to Social Services?

And so the Sofa dream vanished in a puff of smoke.

Phil took himself off to run the dog past ravenous huskies in the forest; the children watched cartoons while I ironed today’s offerings; I assembled a bag-lady outfit for myself.

Since then, as befits an average day in this idiosyncratic household, I have discovered we had no bread and dashed out to get some in time for breakfast; managed, with my son, to mislay his first holy communion class workbook, possibly forever (although if it has made its way into the ironing pile all bets are off) and cooked toad-in-the-hole for an appreciative audience.

I did think wistfully several times about that sofa.

After lunch, my mother offered to take Felix to his class. And Phil said to me: “Right. You. Bed. Now.”

It all sounded very dramatic, but I came up here and tucked myself up.

And I instantly felt so much better that I was able to write a thousand word blog.

The power of the Sofa endures forever.