How blowing up planes in Grand Theft Auto V eased me into motherhood

By day I was exhausted from making small talk at baby groups, but at night I could escape to a life of violent crime and irresponsibility

It's 3am and I feel like a human vending machine. My daughter's constant night feeds are keeping me awake, but not awake enough to do anything useful. So I pass the time in my preferred way. I steal aircraft. I take a sleek black jet, fly it over a sleeping city and land it smoothly on a desert strip, narrowly avoiding a wild dog.

GTA V hit the UK in September 2013, a month after my daughter was born. I have intermittently enjoyed the escapism of video games since my teenage years, starting when I completed Mario Kart on my brother's N64 instead of revising for my GCSEs. But it was GTA V that utterly consumed me.