A SUIT can tell its own story, not that mine are aired that often. My two spend more time communing with each other in the wardrobe than covering my back.

I wore one of them to a party last year and then used a picture of the event as my new Facebook profile. A former colleague commented that he’d never seen me looking so expensive. I replied to the effect that I’d never felt less so, sitting here on my ledge.

The picture was taken in France last year during a short break staying with my brother the professor and his French wife. He’s living in Lyon for three years, teaching at a university there. His wife’s ancestors are rather grand and we were invited to a party at the family chateau.

My brother’s wife went on ahead the day before, leaving us to meet her aunt off the train from Paris. She was to drive us there. It was a hot day and the aunt arrived as arranged. We then went to a family apartment where a small old Citroen was available for our use. It was to be quite a journey, all very French seeming. Traffic was heavy on the motorway, so we came off and tried another route, climbing by steeply banked vineyards that staggered drunkenly up the hillsides.

The aunt is very lively and as she drove, she chatted constantly to my brother in the passenger seat, turning to speak often and gesticulating madly (there must be a French law demanding such hand movements during conversation). The little car bounced about and the aunt turned and talked. She tied her hair up and untied it, pulled it up again, using both hands and leaving the steering wheel to its own devices.

From the back seat we could see her hands fiddle with her hair, both hands, and see her turning to talk animatedly to my brother. We started to wander across the lanes and cars coming the other way flashed their headlights.

We did wonder if we’d ever reach that party, but we arrived in one piece in the end, pulling up outside a lovely building perched high on a flat hill, with a view across the valley. In the distance the Massif Central rose up from the flatness, a cold rim to all the heat. The hall of the chateau was bigger than our house. Beyond the grand entrance, a series of large rooms ran along the front of the chateau, opening up to a long and wide terrace facing that view.

It was a party to celebrate a wedding. We knew neither bride nor groom, or almost anyone apart from my brother and his wife, but we had met the lively aunt once before, although she hadn’t then been doing a crazy French take on Top Gear (‘This week we race three small French cars without using the steering wheel and changing our hairstyles as we drive at 60mph’).

It was a lovely event and the champagne flowed, hence the glass in the photograph. People packed into the downstairs rooms and it all felt impossibly grand. During the evening, my brother’s wife showed us around the house. As you rose up floor by floor, it was clear the place was in a bad way, crumbling and damp, all the way to the massive attic, filled with family relics. No one lives in the chateau now and the place has been trapped in unresolved family discussions for years. If the differences aren’t settled within the next few years, the French government will step in and claim the place.

We descended through the floors, looking in bedrooms filled with sleeping bags for the night, and peeping in once-fine bathrooms with damp in the air and on the walls. Back on the ground floor the party was in full swing. Waiters handed out the champagne and it would be rude to say ‘non’. Expensive looking ham was being carved in one corner while other staff handed round tiny quiches and the like, followed by miniature patisserie, lovely mouthfuls but not quite a meal, especially when you are drinking.

The suit is a Ted Baker bought from the designer outlet in York for my brother’s wedding years ago. So the expense is a bit of an illusion.

SO WHAT’S the best name for an unspeakable terrorist organisation? Prime Minister David Cameron used a spot on the Today programme On Monday to complain about the BBC using the phrase Islamic State. Later that day in a Commons debate on the UK’s response to the massacre in Tunisia, Mr Cameron said the broadcaster should use the term Isil, the label preferred by many UK politicians. This is short for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, the description favoured by MI5. Mr Cameron observed: “I think saying Isil is probably better than Islamic State because it is neither, in my view, Islamic or a state.”

Alongside this debate there has been pressure from a cross-party group of MPs in a campaign led by the Conservative MP Rehman Chishti, urging the BBC to instead adopt the term “Daesh”.

There is a possible problem with this term, and it has nothing to do with whether or not it is more suitable. It is simply that most ordinary people find it difficult enough to keep up with the news, without finding a yet another troubling new acronym to stumble over. The term “Daesh” is based on an Arabic acronym, and we all know how handy those are. It stands for – and here I have copied and pasted, for reasons which will hopefully become clear – al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa’al Sham.

I think perhaps we can already see the difficulty here. This translates as Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria), but is said to be close to “Dahes” or “one who sows discord”.

Sowing discord is exactly what these people do, so there is at least that in favour of “Daesh”, if sadly not much else.

A letter from Mr Chishti, signed by 120 MPs, was sent to BBC director general Tony Hall last week. Those supporting his call for a change included Boris Johnson – serial leaper on to many a passing bandwagon – and Keith Vaz, the publicity-averse chair of the home affairs select committee.

These things are never easy. When Mr Cameron said on the Today programme that Muslim listens would recoil every time they heard the words Islamic State in connection with this “appalling, barbarous regime” he had a point. Yet I still feel Mr Hall was right to reject calls for the change, even if his grounds for doing so were tortuous in a manner suggesting the darkest-ever edition of the TV comedy W1A. In rejecting the demands, Mr Hall said that using Daesh would not preserve the BBC’s impartiality as, according to a report in The Times, it risked giving the impression that the BBC supported the group’s opponents. Mr Hall was said to claim that the term was used pejoratively by its enemies.

Adding only the proviso that this was reported by the BBC-hating Times, this does sound like the most bonkers attempt ever at being even-handed to those who don’t deserve it. It must have been quite a meeting when that one was thrashed out.

I think the simplest way ahead is to slip in a cautionary “so-called” every time this appalling collective is mentioned. That is straightforward and adds a necessary note of caution, while not encumbering the poor, bewildered and tragedy-hued viewer with something else to remember.

As for Mr Cameron having a go at the BBC, he does like to do that, and on the Today programme he rushed in with his criticism too quickly if you ask me, as if taking a bite out of the Corporation was more important than the sombre topic of the moment. But then this is the man who said on the campaign bus before the election: “I’m going to close them [the BBC] after the election.” Well, that’s according to some reports. It was probably a joke, and I am rolling on the floor as I write this. But it sounds to me like the sort of joke that comes with serious intent attached.

As Siobhan Sharpe (brilliantly, horribly imagined by Jessica Hynes), likes to say in W1A: “Let’s nail this puppy to the floor.” Incidentally, according to some reports, that phrase from the first series ended up being used in the BBC newsroom.

IT’S hot on my ledge today. This thin place of refuge has no air-conditioning, just a window that can be left open or shut. This is not like the office I used to work in, where the air-conditioning led to constant squabbles. The chilly contingent shivered and swore, and then fiddled with the thermostat. Minutes later, hot air would blow down from the roof, leaving those of us in the hot contingent to sweat and swear.

There was no happy medium, just a system that blew hot or cold and could never be fixed to everyone’s satisfaction. A little like democracy.

When the weather is good, people sometimes phone in with a feigned illness and then head out into the sun. This is something I have never done. Look, I know that makes me sound too industrious for my own good. From where I now stand, this makes me wonder. If I’d thrown a few sickies in my time, the job would still have gone, but more sun would have kissed my face.

Today I am sitting inside writing this when I could be out in the sunshine. Perhaps I’ll phone myself up and say that I am not feeling well, and then go and sit outside.

Looking for a topic today, my eye settled on the York potash mine near Whitby. This was yesterday given approval in a close vote by members of the North York Moors National Park Authority. After a four-year planning wrangle, locals cheered the close result: eight for, and seven against.

Now York Potash, part of Sirius Minerals, will be able to dig a mile-deep shaft under heavily protected moorland overlooking Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay.

There is an interesting divide on such matters. Those who live away from the area but like to visit occasionally are against such developments. I’ll admit to being in that camp. But how are my rights as a visitor to a beautiful area set against the needs and wishes of those who live there? It’s a difficult balance, and one from which no one emerges with clean hands.

Many locals who supported the mine stand to benefit from its presence. A reported 300 farmers and fellow landowners are said to have struck lucrative royalty deals for the mineral rights under their land. In the first 50 years of operation, York Potash expects to pay out £1.4 billion in royalties. Interestingly, if fracking splits the earth beneath where you live, you apparently have no such rights.

Massive claims are being made for what is a massive project. The mine will include a mile-deep shaft beneath project moorland and a 16km tunnel to Teesside. The company estimates that the mine will create 1,000 jobs, and this is what appealed to many locals (as well as earning money for doing nothing more than sitting above a tunnel). Fair enough, in that the area’s economy is stagnant. Yet this mine has an estimated life of 100 years, so are those 1,000 jobs spread over that span and if so is that really so many jobs?

I still feel sad about this decision. Once such industrial developments are allowed on such a stunning national park, you do wonder where it all will end. Perhaps I should go outside in the sunshine to recover. Ah, the phone is ringing. It’s me calling to say that I don’t feel too well today (must work on perfecting that croaky voice).

MAN On Ledge has always been a science dunderhead, so this may take some untangling, but here goes. Today is longer than usual. To notice this lengthening, you need an atomic clock. Staying up until midnight is also a requirement.

On the midnight hour, atomic clocks will read 23:59:60 before moving to 00:00:00, or so I am told.

The elongated day has been brought about by the introduction of a “leap second”. The Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing, and the additional second will allow our planet to catch up with atomic clocks. What you do with this extra second is up to you. I’ll probably spend it trying to get to sleep. What’s one 61-second minute added to all those regular-sized minutes? The minutes become hours and the hours become a red-eyed nuisance, but there you go.

This bonus second is being added to keep official time in sync with night and day. But as we know, nothing free is without a cost, and so is proves with this bulked-out minute. It is feared that the extra second could cause computer calamity on trading floors and the internet. When an extra second was added on a weekend three years ago ­– boy, what a weekend that was, all that extra time ­– LinkedIn crashed. Now I am on that social website and it still seems to be its old, unexcitable self, so I won’t be wasting my free second worrying about that happening again. If it did I probably wouldn’t even notice. Also affected last time round were passengers at airports in Australia, where more than 400 flights were grounded as the Quantas check-in system blew a fuse or something. I won’t be there at midnight-plus-a-bit tonight, so I won’t worry about that either.

The science bit goes something like this (deep breath taken): we need leap seconds because official atomic clocks are more precise than the spinning Earth, which fluctuates and is in the long term slowing down – a bit like the rest of us, really – due to what is known as “moon drag”. While moon drag sounds like something a hippie might once have said on a smoke hazy night while looking skywards, it actually refers to the gravity of the moon causing tidal bulges on the Earth’s surface. In one report this morning, Dr Marek Kukala, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is quoted as saying: “The tidal bulges act like giant brake pads.” If it’s good enough for an astronomer it’s good enough for non-astronomical me, and if you want further details, grab a passing astronomer.

Leap seconds are said to cause international difficulties, with countries being divided over whether or not we should play with time in this manner. The US and France wish to abolish leap seconds, while Britain, Russian and China favour wish to keep inserting these extra slivers of times. I am confident that the discussions on that will last for longer than a second and will perhaps include Vladimir Putin taking off his shirt and telling everyone else in the room that Vladimir can control time. Well, the Russian President does seize any opportunity to look manly. Vladimir is a few years older than me and already I prefer to keep my shirt on most of the time nowadays.

As for men going about the place shirtless on a hot day, that topic is best kept for a regular length day. Do enjoy your extra second.

AMID all the reports of the horror of the shooting on Marhaba beach in Sousse, Tunisia, where 38 people were killed on Friday, including it is now thought 30 Britons, certain tragic details stand out.

In one report, in The Observer, a survivor, Tony Callaghan, speaking from his hospital bed, said: “To see what I saw, people lying dead in a corridor, two ladies in a pool of blood, a young man holding his dead fiancee’s hand.”

That final image truly is appalling, as too was the news on the front page beneath a picture of a young woman, Carly Lovett, a 24-year-old photographer and beauty blogger from Lincolnshire, who had been named as a victim.

It is always the human details, such as the man holding his dead girlfriend’s hand, that bring home the unspeakable nature of these terrorist attacks.

The headlines make a lot of noise, important noise, necessary noise, in bringing the immediate news. Yet away from the headlines, when the rumblings die down, ordinary people are grieving or suffering, often quietly, until an anniversary comes along. Such a date is with us now, as soon it will be ten years since the July 7 bombings in London.

David Cameron, writing in the Daily Telegraph this morning and on the BBC Today programme also, said the government would counter the threat posed by Islamist extremists with a “full-spectrum response”, and promised to show “unshakeable resolve” in the face of terror. He said, in other words, what was expected of him, and no one can blame him for that, although whether the forceful phrases translate into useful action is anyone’s guess.

One of the arguments in favour of renewing Trident, our nuclear deterrent system, is usually that this must be done to protect the nation from outside threat. Yet if one man on a warped, murderous mission armed only with an assault rifle, can cause so many deaths in one attack in Tunisia, it throws protection in a stark new light. No missile can guard against that scenario. That doesn’t necessarily wipe out the need for Trident, but it does put its usefulness in another light. Could some of those untold billions earmarked for missiles and submarines – some reports suggest renewal will cost £100 billion – be spent instead on other forms of protection?

The ease of tourism has made the world both bigger and smaller. A country such as Tunisia is a happy, commonplace destination, so normal and seemingly near to millions of tourists; and yet it is a long way off, too.

We went years ago and the people were friendly, and our daughter has been since, with friends who regularly visit Tunisia. On one of her trips, she was trapped in the country by volcano ash clouds following the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland.

We went as long ago as 1987, not long after four homemade bombs exploded at hotels in the coastal cities of Sousse and Monastir, injuring 13 people. One of the bombs went off in the bar of the Sahara Beach Hotel in Monastir, which was where we stayed not long after, a little nervous but not unduly so. It was one of those mystery holidays where you booked at the last minute without knowing the destination; chance pointed us towards a hotel that had been bombed.

Whether tourists will return to Tunisia now after this atrocity is another matter, with thousands of tourists having returned home early. As for possible solutions to the tragic and sprawling mess of Isis, we can only hope that some of the prime minister’s robust words do the job.

IN THE long run-up to the general election, David Cameron and George Osborne were rarely out of hard hats and hi-vis vests, popping up all over the place like a Bob The Builder tribute act…

‘It’s what the workers wear, Dave, and we need to be out and about among the working people, especially in the north.’

‘The north?’

‘You know, Dave, that troublesome area between the bits we more or less own and the even more troublesome Scots, with all their belligerent demands.’

‘Ah, I see, George. So if we go around industrial sites and stand in front of trains dressed like this people will forget that we are a pair of southern toffs with a deaf ear to the north.’

‘Exactly, Dave ­– but you mustn’t forget that I am a northern MP.’

‘I’ve been to your constituency, George, and it’s just a bit of the south that somehow escaped north, isn’t it? Poshest bit of the north I’ve ever seen. Could even live there myself, so long as I could persuade the missus to uproot from Oxfordshire.’

George Osborne spent a lot of pre-election breath talking up his idea for a Northern Powerhouse. This concept is a little hard to grasp, but it does have its own Minister, in the smooth shape of Stockton South MP James Wharton. This is philosophically interesting, is it not, for how can you be minister for a vague notion of good intent? This is especially so as a mere two months after an election in which the Northern Powerhouse was rarely off the Chancellor’s lips, the most important part of the plan has just been dropped. This involved vital rail upgrades including the electrification of the London to Sheffield line and the upgrade of the trans-Pennine line, ludicrously labelled as HS3.

So the northern rail modernisation has been cancelled, and the government wishes to apologise for the non-appearance of this project. Anyone who feels upset at the cancellation of this grand promise can apply for vouchers for a free coffee on one of those trans-Pennine trains. Warning: hot coffee on rickety-rackety trains can be dangerous: please read the small print or carry a spare pair of trousers.

Cancelling something so much trumpeted before the election seems like an act of cynicism, although Transport Minister and Harrogate MP Andrew Jones told the Yorkshire Post yesterday that putting the projects on hold was “a pause, not a stop”.

But was it really, or is this just another depressing example of politicians saying whatever they like before an election, and then changing their mind afterwards?

The government is blaming Network Rail for this failure. Well, ministers always like to blame someone or other. It seems only the other day that the Tories were promising the biggest investment in the railways since Victorian times. It turns out it was just the biggest manipulation of the truth since the last time a lie broke free and skipped into the sunset.

There are many aspects to this affair, but here are two thoughts. One: did the Tories know this was an empty promise in the run-up to the election? Two: could you run this Northern Powerhouse thing past me again as every time I try to grab hold, it just slips through my fingers.

There are many great things about the north, and you can take that from a York-based, Bristol-born, Manchester-raised former inhabitant of London. Man On Ledge loves living in the north, but is a Northern Powerhouse based round Manchester really the answer for the whole of the north and what does it have to do with Yorkshire? Granted, it is at least better than all the money being spent in the Southern Powerhouse of London which is what usually happens.

But it’s hard not to see the Northern Powerhouse as a slippery promise, made with good intentions perhaps, but ramped up mostly for electoral purposes.

Not only that, but it sounds like the name of shop selling electrical goods.

THIS week I have been on holiday, although I can’t say I’ve noticed, except that my wife has been around more than usual. How do you have a break when you don’t have a job? The week was booked long before I found myself standing on this ledge and peering over at the dizzying view.

Normally there is nothing better than a week off work, unless it’s two weeks off work. The worker says they are “off this week” and everyone knows what they mean, envies them a little perhaps, or feels slightly grumpy if they are left in the office to do extra work to cover for their happily absent colleague.

In a fairly long working life, this is the first non-holiday holiday I’ve had, the first off week when I wasn’t exactly on in the first place. But I have been keeping busy, posting on this blog every day, adding a tottering pile of words to the new novel, and exploring fresh opportunities.

Holidays are a wonder and being off makes a refreshing change from being on. At such a juncture it is tempting to comment about teachers and their holidays, the long weeks of “off” that will be coming along soon. But my son the primary school teacher might not see the funny side. Well, he sees the funny side of most things, to be fair, and he has already been exposed to a bit of family teasing about the long holidays. For all that he seems to pack an awful lot in when he is at work, as teachers do.

When he was growing up, we took teacher boy and his brother and sister on lots of holidays, mostly camping in France, nothing too grand, although there was one big family trip to Florida, courtesy of the grandparents/in-laws.

The French holidays continued a tradition, at least on my side of the family. My father was a teacher, later a lecturer, and we used the long summer holidays to travel to France. My dad has always been a full-on Francophile, something which dates to a French exchange when he was a boy.

We drove to France, two adults and three children, in a Mini-van packed with camping gear and food, and stayed there for nearly six weeks, sometimes reaching as far south as Bayonne, which my father had visited as a boy.

We stayed with the family sometimes for a while, and once my mother dragged us into the house in a panic, as Madame Ruffet (I’m making a stab at the spelling) was about to slaughter the chicken we would be having for lunch.

Other memories from Bayonne are fuzzy with time: meals that went on forever, pillows that were long hard cylinders, tiny darting lizards on a sunny wall, and my younger brother flooding the bidet.

This off week has been a time for flying visits (Newcastle, Knutsford), lunch at Bettys at Harlow Carr, with the post-prandial walk round the gardens rained off, decorating (one of the tasks my wife does she when is off) and taking part in a couple of crime-themed talks at York libraries (the sort of thing I enjoy, off or on).

Next week I will be on again which is to say off.

I CHOSE my bank at random a very long time ago. Aged 18, I walked into a branch and arranged for an account before university. I still have the same account today, although it is now a joint account. The branch is, or possibly was, in Cheadle, near Stockport.

Everything has changed since that long-ago day, not least in banking and my hairline. Internet banking has so far escaped Man On Ledge, as I’ve only just got used to chequebooks being more or less extinct.

So the notion of mobile banking apps that keep track of you and your money is to me the stuff of dystopian sci-fi nightmares. Other people will probably find all this very normal. In the future, apparently, which could be as soon as a week next Tuesday, the way things are going, your bank will be able to use your GPS-enabled phone to remind you that you haven’t been in a certain shop for a while, and that there is just the sort of thing you like in there. Not only that, but your nagging new friend will advise you on how to save money on your broadband or gas – and switch suppliers without asking.

All this and worse will no doubt happen. But don’t ask me for advice. My track record as a futurologist is feeble, as I once dismissed the idea that anyone would want a camera on their mobile phone (bang on the money there, obviously).

And banks as something solid and reassuring, rather stern Victorian parents towering over you, are fast disappearing, and some banks don’t physically exist at all, preferring apps to branches. Well, good luck to them all. I might catch up one day.

Before anyone gets too excited, I recommend that they read The Circle by Dave Eggers. This fast, funny and troubling novel has at its heart a seemingly benign internet company called The Circle, a sort of amalgam of Google, Facebook and Twitter. This organisation runs everything in your life, keeping all your internet activity in one place. A keen young woman, Mae Holland, joins the company and her rapid rise from newbie to the face of an organisation with a sinister stranglehold on our lives races along like a thriller, but a thoughtful thriller, scary for being only a turn or two away from the truth.

And if panicking about the near future is your thing, tune into Channel 4’s creepily engaging new drama, Humans. This eerie affair concerns robots that seem too human, and in some cases may even be human to a degree (after two episodes, it’s all a little confusing, but in a good way).

These human-like robots, or synths, are gentle, ever-attentive and hover around their owners, ready to cater to their every domestic need. Some are designed to fulfil sexual needs and work as prostitutes, which was where last Sunday’s episode ended with a spot of excitement, some blue blood and a yanked-out microchip (or something).

Do we really want this sort of a future and is it too late to opt out? Certainly a bank that keeps track of your every move sounds like a bank that should take a flying leap, if you ask me. What Dave Eggers captures so well in The Circle is the way massive organisations with enormous power over our lives pretend to be our best friends. If we surrender too much to hi-tech corporations or anthropoid robots or banks that want to stick their electronic noses into every aspect of our lives, we lose part of what it means to be human and free to make our own mistakes, don’t we?

TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE: A footnote. The running socks had been airing in the conservatory. Before heading out this morning, I picked a pair and put my foot in the first sock. There was something at the bottom, so I took the sock off and shoved my hand in, thinking it was a bit of tissue or something. Then I shouted in panic (“What have you done now?”) as my hand was stung. There was a bee hiding in the bottom of my running sock, not, it has to be said, a bee-friendly location. The bee flew off after being shaken free, and the sting soon went, as it wasn’t the full bee treatment, merely a warning.

Could my bank have alerted me about that?

CHILD poverty is a touchy subject for governments, as it should be. The Last Labour government rather grandly promised to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

On one level, this could be dismissed as a bit of political grandstanding. How could such a social blight be ended by a certain date? Isn’t that a little like the minister for weather, if such a title existed, declaring that he planned to abolish rain by next April. Well, that analogy can only go so far. Rain falls on everyone, whereas poverty affects only the less fortunate.

Remember, too, that Gordon Brown, when chancellor, boasted about having ended “Tory boom and bust” – shortly before the biggest bust in memory.

So politicians do say these things, it’s what they do.

Yet child poverty did fall from 3.4 million to 2.3 million between 1998-99 and 2010-11. Now a report due tomorrow from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a body independent of political party, is said to suggest that such progress has been halted, with levels of child poverty rising to 2.6 million.

This is a sensitive topic for the new Tory government. So what is their first response? It is to say that we need to redefine poverty. The words jumped out from my Sunday newspaper and gave me a black eye. So here they are, but do watch your eyes: “The Conservative manifesto pledged to redefine child poverty.”

Now there are probably many shades to this, and I am sure that David Cameron has some emollient and meaningless words to hand to soothe the situation. He usually does. Here are some given to a newspaper today by his press spokesman, who said the prime ministers “wants the government to focus more on tackling the causes of the issues, rather than just treating the symptoms”.

You see, emollient and without meaning.

On learning about this tactic, it was hard not to feel a jolt. One interpretation of this strategy is simply this: child poverty is on the rise again, so we are going to redefine what it means to be poor – problem solved.

This handy technique could have many uses in politics and in life. The person caught speeding could say that they were redefining the speed limit and that they were within the new limit. Food manufacturers could redefine the size of a product while charging the same or even more for the “improvements”. Oh, sorry – that one happens already. And we could all stand on our bathroom scales and declare, on seeing evidence of rising weight, that we have redefined the personal obesity parameters.

All politicians have to rely on statistics to gauge poverty – or anything else – and statistics can be used in many ways. So there is always a margin for statistical massaging, but this use of “redefine” surely ought to worry us.

Ministers were said today to be remaining tight-lipped about the reported rise in child poverty. I bet they were. But through their tight lips they were no doubt mumbling about poverty being relative. And perhaps it is, but it’s rarely about the “relatives” in their case, is it?

Wealthy politicians wishing to redefine what it means to be poor sounds like an Orwellian joke, only it appears they are perfectly serious.

WE’VE covered some miles, the old car and me. It’s debatable who has more miles on the clock, depending on how car miles translate into man miles. Let’s just say the car is heading towards 140,000 miles.

Today will be another of those university journeys. Parents with student-aged offspring will know about these. Ours started when son number one went to university in Preston to study forensics. We trekked over there the first time with a car full of student stuff and parental misgivings. Our worries were not great, but seeing your first one leave at 18 is a pull. On the way back we had a tearful coffee at a soulless motorway service station, a suitable place to feel stranded between one thing and another, while our son went out and got drunk with his new friends.

Three years later, it was time for the last trip, the car groaning under the weight of the years and the beers (boys in our family put on weight in student years, no so the girl). Number one son returned home for a while, and number two boy headed off to Salford University. Hence three more years of loading and unloading the car, complete at times with massive speaker, amp and guitars in an old Volvo estate that once carried most of his band, along with their instruments. Last summer another final trip was made, before the middle boy eventually moved back to Salford to rent a flat with his girlfriend (one more final trip).

Now our youngest needs moving in Newcastle, in readiness for her last year. First the old car had to ferry her to student halls, and later back again, and then to a rented house, shared by a gaggle/giggle of girls. Now she needs moving to a nearby flat for a summer of working in readiness for her final year.

Once these dad tours-cum-chores involved lifts to Scouts, gigs, dance classes, parties at friends’ houses, leavers’ balls and so on. Then the distances grew, but at least ours have all been in the north and within easy enough reach.

I can’t say I’ve ever minded too much: it’s just one of those jobs that have to be done, and there is only one driver in our family.

So this morning we’ll head off early, do the switch-around, eat at the café where our daughter is working for the summer, then point the car towards home again. The university lifts are almost over, and this is a relief in a way. Yet Daddio, as my daughter alone calls me, has enjoyed the responsibility, and the time in the car with each child, heading backwards and forwards to assorted student locations. Often we have seen cars loaded with students and their duvets heading towards York. The drivers glance over, or so I like to imagine, and think, ah yes: we’ll have yours and you can have ours.

Footnote: today at 7pm at Dringhouses Library, in Tadcaster Road, there is a panel entitled the Fascination of Crime, as discussed by four members of York Authors. The quartet comprises Pauline Kirk (writing as PJ Quinn), Tom Harper, Adrian Paul Fayter and me. Tickets costs £5 and include refreshments. Phone 01904 552674, or email dringhouses@exploreyork.org.uk for details.