Any of my eagle-eyed Twitter chums may have noticed this on Sunday:

I was secretly hoping it’d turn into a proper shiner, making me look like a female boxer or something, but alas it’s not that dramatic. It also occurred to me that a woman with a black eye raises certain questions, so every time I go anywhere and catch someone looking, I’ve been loudly proclaiming “LOOK WHAT MY KID DID TO ME!” just in case people think I’m a victim of domestic violence.

Anyway, just in case you’re interested in The Life and Times of my Shiner (I’m obsessed with it, I look in the mirror about 50 times a day at the moment), here’s a gallery of its cycle. Weirdly, the one with just a tiny cut is just after it happened and the one with all of the autumnal-shaded bruising is the latest photo, taken today.

[slideshow]