Yes! But I’m fascinated by how much my brain just wants to trust them, how easy it is to glance at them and go “yup, looks great”, in relation to how absolutely nonsensical they really are. How intuitively trusting we are, and how hard we work to make things feel reasonable when they really aren’t.

My child gets DLA, and will be eligible for PIP after the age of 16, but that can't fill the earnings gap left by losing a day a week to appointments, on top of the time constraints of regular caring responsibilities, before you even start on the added costs of life as a disabled person.

If I consistently earnt below £151 per week I could claim Carer's Allowance - but a penny over that, even once, and the whole lot gets clawed back.

I'm aware that it's an enormous privilege to have free access to this healthcare (though that's been a whole other battle). But how does anyone think we live like this? Am I meant to not be working, so I can attend appointments in the middle of the day at a week's notice?

I'm self-employed because of this - which means I don't get any paid time off, but does at least make it possible for me to take huge amount of time off at short notice - what employer, what job, would let me do that?

That's just the appointments, before even beginning to think about the routine stuff - how long it takes to do ordinary things like washing, or going to the toilet - and the tasks of disability, the daily physio and the meds and prescriptions and laundry and all the rest.

In the last 5 months, there are only 2 weeks in my diary that don't have any medical or social care appointments in. Some are an hour, some are whole days; some remote, some home visits, some long journeys.

The week before, a full day at a specialist hospital - and again, delighted to be there, having begged for this referral for months. Left home at 8.30am, home 5.30pm, no work, needed after-school childcare.

Last week, we had to go to two one-hour hospital appointments on different days. Each one of those means at least 3 hours out of the day, between preparation, travel time, unpacking once hone etc. So again, 6 hours of work time lost.

This week, we've had two home visits from health professionals - really grateful for them coming here, but one of them works by assigning a whole day, then calling at 9am to say exactly what time they'll come. So a whole day of me not working, because I couldn't know when I'd be free.

To be clear this is my experience as a carer, not physically disabled myself (though neurodivergent and dealing with multiple low-level physical health problems).

Katharine Rundell wrote a book called “Why you should read children’s books even though you are so old and wise” which makes a great case for this (and tears into certain people who are snooty about writing for children being the easy option).