The internet boils with anonymous rage, but this confrontation felt personal

It's nearly bedtime and a restaurant row in a seaside hotel leaves everyone shaken

It was almost 3am and I was lying awake in a large white bed working out what I should have said. What I could have said, were the circumstances just slightly in my favour, half an hour earlier or 6in to the left. But honestly, I was buzzing. I was absolutely completely alive, that night in half-term, in a hotel bed, in the dark, the only sound my family snoring gently beside me.

We had taken the children to the seaside for the night and were staying in a hotel down a muddy country road 10 minutes from town. It was quite obscenely idyllic - a little country house, strewn with lights. We got there at 6pm and headed straight to the restaurant in the garden. This is when children eat. If children do not eat at six, something shifts, a change occurs as if a switch has tripped. But they were thrilled to be here, on holiday, in a restaurant, and they sat on their big chairs and buttered their own bread as we ordered our food, and the waitress was charming and then the lights went out.