There’s an accurate, if snide, thing I’ve seen online that reads “No parent on Facebook can believe their child has turned any age”, and yes, OK, not the “on Facebook” bit, but there is a rote astonishment at time passing that I sometimes slip into, contemplating my adult sons. But, allow me, just this once, a Facebook parent moment. My elder son turned 23 last month and we’ve just been to London to collect his stuff at the end of his degree. On the way, I realised I was 23 when I moved there myself.

You can’t often pre-emptively pinpoint parenting “lasts”, but when you can, they’re strange and melancholy – even when they’re not, objectively, things a person would choose to do again. This trip involved (I hope) my last time standing, hips screaming from the drive, texting “We’re outside” as we waited for our son to wake up (my husband ended up throwing a ball at his bedroom window). It was definitely my........

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