Before it appears that I’m some kind of villainous dad, I need to establish that ever since they came into my life, my overriding purpose in life has been to be a diligent, devoted parent to my two children — even when the girl one threw up in my face or the boy one diagnosed himself with cancer because his belly button was hurting.

But each year, when the summer holidays loom, I transform into a twitchy, cranky mess, breaking out in cold sweats and clawing at my own skin as I fret about what’s to come once they’ve been turfed through the school gate for the last time. If you’re a working parent of a school-age child, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t been dreading the onset of the summer break and the impossible work/parenting juggle that comes with it, you’re a liar.

On one hand, I’m incredibly lucky that, as a freelance writer, I get to work from home and am usually unimpeded by obstacles such as fixed working hours or a remote workplace (although the thought of such sanctuary has its appeal). Having said that, I also have to write 30,000 words of a book between now and the end of August, which means that it’s going to get really, really tense around here when the children’s mum is occupied with her proper job. In fact, I had to get out of bed at 5am just to find the time to write this piece, but that’s OK.

We’re not short of things to do — we live a couple of miles from the north-east coast and a short car ride away from the majestic Northumberland countryside, so day trips are well catered for. Plus there’s the new-found wonders of Pokemon Go — less than a week into that craze and we’re all sporting Peter Stringfellow tans from extended adventures in the sunshine. But the book deadline means I can’t afford to take a sustained period off work, which leaves us with those days when we’re all rattling around the house, getting right on each other’s wick.

As such, a domestic state of emergency kicks into operation. The house as we know it ceases to exist. Any kind of structure or order flies out of the window, with chores abandoned and the ironing pile relocated to a hidden bubble of space behind the settee so we can all pretend it isn’t there. Bits of Lego, random action figures and hundreds of collector cards are strewn all over the floor, with the living room now resembling a toy shop that has been ransacked in a riot.

Try as I might to get some work done, it’s as laborious as pushing a golf ball up a custard mountain with the tip of my nose. The children seem to have developed some sort of innate, unspoken tag team system. The moment I sit down after finishing a 20-minute football match in the garden with the boy one, the girl one appears and wants to know if she can have some strawberries or whether I know why the printer has stopped working.

You know you’re broken when you find yourself on eBay, researching the cost of those paper boiler suits that decorators and lab technicians wear. We’ll all look daft, but it’ll cut right down on laundry. There’s always the option of farming them out (in the nicest possible way, obviously) to someone else, but the cost is too great, be it financially (child-care fees are exorbitant) or emotionally (their grandparents are now shattered husks, wrecked from more than a decade of ad hoc babysitting).

It’s not just the days — the summer holidays blight your evenings too. Extensions to regular bedtimes mean that the younglings are mooching about the house well after 11pm. Thinking of catching up on the last series of Game of Thrones at the end of a hard day’s life-juggling?

Better get your finger poised over the remote in case they wander in from their respective leisure spaces to submit some kind of random cheese enquiry or ask if you can evict a spider from the bathroom. The whole thing is a lot like regular parenting, only filtered through a psychedelic kaleidoscope and played out at three times its usual speed. You quickly realise how much of the strain of child-rearing is carried by the education system, and you vow never to make one of those snide remarks about teachers knocking off at half three each day and spending most of their lives on holiday.

You’ll find yourself swearing under your breath every time a child’s voice calls out to you, but that’s perfectly natural — just try to make sure they don’t hear you. Of course, I’m fully aware that I need to enjoy this whirlwind of insanity while it lasts — and the truth is that I love it, however stressful it gets at times.

In a few years, they’ll both be off doing their own thing, and my only functions will be to have a wallet that spews cash at them, and act as a gratis taxi driver. And anyway, I’m 44 so what would I be doing instead? Embarrassing myself in Ibiza? Investing in sleek, tasteful home furnishings? Sod that — give me a Fruit Shoot stain on the carpet any day of the week. And I’ll still have the dog once it’s all over — a shih-tzu-chihuahua cross with zero spatial awareness that is permanently attached to my ankle by an invisible piece of string. It will never end.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Andy Dawson is a freelance writer based in Sunderland. He created the Get In the Sea social media phenomenon and wrote the spin-off book of the same name. He’s also the 50% of the Athletico Mince podcast that isn’t Bob Mortimer.