I guess everyone has their morning routine. Mine involves having a bath, making a cuppa for me and my missus, pouring a glass of orange juice, taking my missus her cuppa in bed, making my missus her breakfast sarnie and then having my cereal of choice. In winter months, I have Ready Brek. In summer, I alternate between Rice Crispies and Weetabix.

This morning, I followed my routine to the letter, but at the last stage, I decided to throw caution to the wind and have an omelette. It’s good to live on the edge every once in a while.

Anyway, while the butter was melting in the frying pan, I mixed three eggs into a glass, poured in a little milk and then added a splash of water. It makes the omelette a little fluffier, I find.

Now, at this stage, something distracted me. I can’t remember what it was — probably the cat or something on the radio — but the sizzling of the frying pan reminded me that I had a potentially flammable situation on my hands, and I’d better get my arse into gear. So I poured my omelette mixture into the pan and then chopped up some sausage and cheese to add to it.

By the time my attention turned back to the frying pan, Julie had got up and joined me in the kitchen. So far, the routine was coping fine with this minor detour and the morning was developing more or less as per usual.

Then it started to go wrong. Something was amiss on the cooker. The omelette wasn’t working.

“My omelette’s not working,” I said.

“What do you mean it’s not working?”

But that was about as well as I could describe it. The omelette should’ve been forming, it should’ve been in the process of fulfilling its destiny and becoming an omelette, but it was still liquid. The mixture refused to congeal. Minutes passed; still nothing. When it looked like waiting on this bloody omelette to appear was going to make me late for work, I decided to cut my loses. In disgust, I threw out the chopped up sausage and cheese and went to get my Rice Crispies.

“Bloody stupid omelette not working properly,” I said and I remember thinking, what if all omelettes didn’t work anymore? How would this affect my life? I mean, I don’t eat a lot of omelettes, but it’s good to know they’re there when I need one. And if omelettes didn’t work, would scrambled eggs remain unaffected? It was an odd sort of moment.

“It must be working,” Julie replied.

“Much as I hate to disagree with you, dear, ” I began, and that was when I saw it.

On the worktop was a glass of omelette mixture.

Next to it was an identical glass, which until a few minutes previously, had housed some refreshing orange juice … right up until the moment when I threw it into the frying pan and attempted to stir-fry it. Suddenly, the smell of cooked oranges filled the kitchen.

So I had no eggs left, no orange juice left, a citrusy frying pan with burnt orange juice around its edges and a wife who thought the entire episode was hilarious and I was an idiot. I took some comfort from the fact that this probably meant omelettes would work again.

See? Routines. They’re there for a reason.