All the recent fuss over Mrs Davison meant I had taken my eye of the ball when it came to parenting: it’s only by the grace of God that I came out the other end.

Now it might seem trivial to a grown-up (on reflection, why would it?) but Imogen, our eldest, had entered a poetry competition and it was taking over her life.

It was for the Feis, and she was following me around the house like an unloved dog, practising The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

The truth is it wasn’t very good. She wasn’t butchering it, but they had learnt it in school with a sing-song style that totally obliterated the nuances in Yeats’s masterpiece.

Chris Donnelly: Never mind education, let’s have a row about Union flag bags

Patrick Murphy: United Ireland? United in incompetence, maybe

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,” was all I heard on repeat as I tried to answer messages on the new WhatsApp group called MDrota (Mrs Davison’s rota).

Even though it was a pain in the backside committing to this ad-hoc care........

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