IT IS my gloomy habit to skim the newspaper headlines on the BBC website. Nowadays most of them contain that unavoidable neologism beginning with a ‘B’. For once this morning’s post-match headlines raise the spirits, even if the first one seems a stretch – “NEVER IN DOUBT!” shouts the Metro, celebrating England’s victory over Colombia.

It didn’t look that way perched on the edge of the family sofa.

The occasional watcher of football can all too easily assume that England losing is just what happens, yet now we are through to the quarter finals after winning a penalty shootout – a form of torture that generally finishes us off.

This time we survived thanks, according to the front page of The Sun, to “The hand of Jord” – a punning hymn to Jordan Pickford’s one-handed save from Carlos Bacca’s attempt that led the way to Eric Dier breaking the penalty curse.

The tabloid puts this uplifting turn of events on its back page – “It’s the headline we have waited a lifetime to write: England win on penalties (Yes, Really!”).

The Mirror fronts with: “AT LAST! England win on penalties”, while the Daily Express goes with the retrospective optimism of “NEVER IN DOUBT!”

Headline writers often plough the same furrow, so it’s good to see The Guardian’s back page going in a fresh direction with an Obama riff: “Yes, we can – England finally win a World Cup penalty shootout…”

The photographs are great too, with Pickford’s save captured, alongside many shots of the celebratory scrum as the players piled on top of Harry Kane.

I can’t pretend to know an awful lot about football, but I am old enough to remember the 1966 World Cup victory, and it would be encouraging to no longer have to witter on about that.

It’s been a long wait, hasn’t it?

Last night’s match ended in adrenaline-shot fashion, with England seemingly condemned to stick to the preordained script of losing on penalties – and winning instead, thanks in good part to Gareth Southgate and his lucky waistcoat (made in Yorkshire, according to BBC Look North).

As an occasional viewer of football matches, my thoughts aren’t worth a lot. I did enjoy last night’s glorious tussle, although it seemed to be a bad-tempered affair. The Colombian side shoved and pushed and quarrelled and generally behaved in a calculatedly aggressive manner. From where I was sitting, they deserved to lose.

Next stop, Sweden.

Yesterday I suffered another squash defeat at the hands of the unconquerable opponent. No headline writers attended this ritual misery, but at least the word shapers were able to put their skills to optimistic use on behalf of England.

If  – no, when – the unbeatable one is beaten, I will write my own headline.

THE heat is rising as I start my fight with the rambling rector. This is not a reference to the creepy cleric on Poldark with a foot fetish, but the name of the rose.

At least we think that’s that it’s called, as we didn’t plant the beautiful thug. It was here when we arrived and has possibly been here since dinosaurs roamed this part of York and unwisely trod on the thing.

In flower it is covered in a snowfall of white petals, but these are mostly gone now.

My wife is preparing to lay gravel nearby as I contemplate the thicket of thorns. What you need to know about this garden is that it is huge – 300-ft of tasks needing to be done. Being out here is my wife’s busy joy; and letting her get on with whatever needs doing while I read the newspaper and listen to music is my lazy joy.

But sometimes I do my bit – a bit that’s generally much shorter than her bit, but there you go.

I get the ladders and the cutter, and set to work, only that’s not the lopper but the shears, as my wife points out. Properly armed, I peer into the vicious bush that runs along a wall, goes over an arch and climbs into a tree.

I have been told to leave the new growth and cut away the older shoots. This is the sort of responsibility to bring a non-gardening gardener out in a rash. What’s new and what’s old? Then I see that the new shoots are bright green and don’t carry dead flowers.

I spend a couple of hours pulling, untangling and cutting. The falling sprigs leave scratches on the way down. After that another hour or so is spent tidying up the mess and trying to bag up the armed debris, a job that entails more scratches. This rector, like the one on Poldark, fights back. Even the lopped-off branches can still spring and snag. Soon my scratches have scratches.

This is a lot of gardening for me to manage in one go, and as I am easily distracted I begin to wonder. Firstly, I wonder why it is that some people like to find ways of staying busy while others don’t so much. A big garden is the perfect way to stay busy and is just the thing if you are the sort of person who’s always on the go while also feeling guilty about all the jobs you haven’t done.

If you didn’t have a big garden, there would be no need to worry about all the jobs that need doing. But then you wouldn’t have a big garden.

After such thoughts of unprofitable circularity, I begin to see that this thicket with its endless biting loops and armed branches might almost be a political metaphor. You spend ages trying to negotiate your way through something and all you end up with is red scratches and a sense of not having progressed very far.

Such are the observations of the non-gardening gardener.

The heat is rising and I am done. My wife surveys my handiwork. “You’ve done a good job there,” she says.

It’s a job only half done, as that rector still rambles. A return visit with the lopper and the ladders will be needed. More scratches to come, more prickles, spikes and barbs to be untangled before uncertain victory can be claimed.

And if that doesn’t sound like Brexit, I don’t know what does.

“Boomerang children who return to live with their parents after university can be good for families…” report in The Guardian, June 30

OUR boomerang girl is setting up her new wi-fi so we can watch the England match. She gets this done in record time and soon her laptop is linked to the TV, letting us catch all those goals against Panama.

The girl and her mother start to tackle something that arrived in a flat-pack. I try to watch the game in the gaps between limbs engaged in furniture assembly. I am not that bothered about football, but very not bothered about flat-packs, and anyway it’s the World Cup.

The England goals fly in, and it’s not often you can say that, and the flat-packed thing turns three-dimensional.

Today, and every other moving day, I am the driver. I have been driving cars and vans filled with the offspring and their belongings for years now. To university and then back again, many times. First that well-travelled road led to Preston and back; then to Salford and back; and, finally, to Newcastle and back.

Now the university runs are over. Our boomerang girl lived with us after university, went to Australia for a year, then boomeranged back from Perth in March.

Now she is moving into a small rented house with a friend. The bed has already been brought over and assembled while I was hiding at work.

A day passes, and I am waiting with a big red VW van at the top of Micklegate. The van is in the way and the usually punctual daughter is late, so I have to pull up onto the pavement. This van is bigger than our car, I think; where’s that girl, I think. Then I spot her breezing through the arches of the old gateway. She climbs aboard and the big red van lumbers off the pavement. It’s easy to drive, as these vans usually are, though the lack of a rear-view mirror always catches me out.

We drive home, load up the van, my wife hops on board, and we drive our boomerang girl to the new house. Two hours later, having deposited our daughter, we return the van. “That was quick,” says the woman. She tells me I’ve driven seven miles.

That’s probably why I struggled to get any diesel in the tank, I tell her. That’s three pounds I’ll never see again, I think. But you rarely see any of them again.

We cross the road from the van place and order coffee in a sunny backyard that transports us to the south of France. By some miracle, our holiday at home has coincided with a heatwave.

The Guardian headline said that returning children “enrich the whole family”. I’ll go along with that, even if having your children back as adults is a little strange – for you and them.

Earlier research published this year suggested that returning adult children “trigger a significant decline in their parents’ quality of life and wellbeing”, according to The Guardian report.

This latest study, by the London School of Economics, finds advantages for parents and children – “Daughters were happier than sons, often slipping easily into teenage patterns of behaviour, the study said.” Ah, that would explain the loud pop music that followed her around. Now the house has returned to silence, if you discount all the noise we make.

The LSE report mentions parents’ expectations of the “post-children” phase of their lives. Is there such a state? You’re never really ‘post’ them, but it’s encouraging to see them establishing their own lives.

It was positive and happy having the boomerang girl here for three months, but it’s nice having the place to ourselves, and good that she’s doing her own thing (she is nearly 25, after all).

We’ve not seen her for a week, but she’s back this afternoon for a meal, bringing two of her girlfriends. That’s the thing with boomerangs: they do return, but only for a few hours at a time now.

JOURNALISTS do a job that sometimes is dangerous. Mostly those at risk are out in the field, reporting from unstable parts of the world.

World Press Freedom Day on May 3 calculated that more than 2,500 journalists had been killed since 1990, according to a report on the BBC website.

That report was published as ten media professionals were killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan. In one incident, reporters who gathered at the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Kabul died when a second suicide bomber, disguised as a journalist, blew himself up.

The journalists who died yesterday in the US at the Maryland office of the Capital Gazette were doing what should have been a less risky job. The five members of staff who were killed were named as Wendi Winters, 65, editor and community reporter; Robert Hiaasen, 59, assistant editor and columnist; Gerald Fischman, 61, editorial writer; John McNamara, 56, reporter and editor; and Rebecca Smith, 34, sales assistant.

Ordinary people doing an everyday sort of job on the newspaper that serves their local community. The sort of people you’d meet in any regional or local newspaper in this country. The sort of people many of us worked alongside. The sort of people we used to be or still are.

Sadly, such dedicated people are an endangered species, with a report commissioned ahead of the Cairncross review into newspapers finding that the number of frontline print journalists has “dropped by more than a quarter… from about 23,000 in 2007 to 17,000 last year”, according to the Press Gazette.

But let’s remember and celebrate those five people in Maryland who died while working in the office of their local newspaper. Reports suggest that the alleged killer, Jarrod Ramos, had a long-held grudge against the newspaper after losing a defamation case.

Anyone who has worked in a local or regional newspaper office will have encountered less extreme displays of hostility. Readers love their local newspapers. But sometimes they hate them too, or love/hate them in a potentially unstable manner.

Partly this is the nature of reporting. This inquisitive art should sometimes involve putting your nose where it’s not wanted in the name of uncovering news that is important to readers.

The Capital Gazette did what newspapers usually do. The show went on and a new edition was printed today, featuring photos of those who died.

As one of the paper’s reporters, blessed with the suitably go-getting name of Chase Cook, tweeted: “We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.”

President Trump sent his “thoughts and prayers”, as he always does, while also reportedly walking away from reporters who wanted to ask questions about the shooting.

What prayers can the gun-loving National Rifle Association call upon? Only the hope that its deep pockets prevent any curtailment of America’s crazy gun laws. As for prayers, how about this: “Jesus loves me and my guns.” That slogan was splashed across a T-shirt worn by a retired baseball player at the association’s “prayer breakfast”.

And with thoughts like that, the rest of us don’t have a prayer.

This latest atrocity in the US cannot be directly linked to Trump and his futile “thoughts and prayers”. But it is fair to say that his endless hostility towards the “fake news media” puts journalists at risk.

Obviously, I didn’t know those people who died. But looking at the photographs makes me feel I did. They fit right in with a long line of ordinary, hard-working journalists I know and have known.

A truly terrible day, but well done for getting a paper out and paying tribute to those you have lost.

Investigate your old albums and something becomes alarmingly apparent: the past is a long time ago, and that vinyl canyon is full of echoes.

In 1973 this collector of scratched records and sticking memories was heading for the sixth form at grammar school. John Martyn’s Solid Air, already chronicled here, came out that year. Also, out was my long-lost Afro-fuzz hairstyle – and this third album by the LA rock band with the laidback sound and chords that roll like lazy waves on a hot beach.

Little Feat were led by Lowell George, who sang and played slide guitar, sliding the notes down the neck rather than in the usual ‘up’ direction. The Rolling Stones liked the band’s sound, which finds echoes on Exile On Main Street.

Another US guitarist, the great Ry Cooder, is rumoured to have influenced Honky Tonky Woman – a Cooder song in a magpie shirt run up for Mick Jagger.

The Rolling Stone review of 1973 makes the Stones comparison, hinting at a two-way borrowing, with the sound on Dixie Chicken being “thickened” by a female chorus led by Bonnie Bramlett, much as the Stones do on Exile.

Anyway, the Stones roll on towards the geriatric rocking chair, while Little Feat are long gone, with Lowell dying in 1979 at the age of 34.

The fantastic title track is said have inspired the Dixie Chicks, who took their name from the song. It rolls in on honky-tonk chords, those slide guitar notes, and Lowell George’s deliciously lazy slur of a vocal.

It’s a barroom tale. A man talks about his undying love for the woman he is going to spend the rest of his life with, only to find that – one by one – the other men in the bar have been fooled by the same Dixie Chicken.

As Bud Scoppa – what a name – wrote in his Rolling Stone review, each side of the album starts at full throttle, then subsides into something low-key. Side one goes from the throaty rattle of Dixie Chicken to the gentle Kiss It Off, while side two opens with the electric piano roll of Fool Yourself, then wraps up with the slide-guitar instrumental, Lafayette Road.

In between are songs to treasure: Fat Man In The Bathtub, with its “Oh Juanita” chorus, Two Trains and a cover of Allen Toussaint’s On Your Way Down.

All together now: “If you’ll be my Dixie chicken, I’ll be your Tennessee lamb/And we can walk together down in Dixieland…”

That song never fails to cheer me up, and that’s something worth having.

I’VE always assumed myself to be a man of the north, so long as cheating is allowed. But a professor on the BBC Today programme dismisses my claim.

And should you be feeling smug because you were born in Manchester or York, where my northern roots lie, you’re not northern either. At least not according to Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones, an academic in town planning at Newcastle University (defo in the north).

The contours of my personal geography are shaped as follows: born in Bristol, moved to suburban south Manchester as a young age, lived there until going to university in south London, stayed in that part of the capital for ten years or so, then moved to York 30 years ago.

By rough calculation, that makes a third of my life spent in the south, two-thirds in the north. That makes me a proud man of York, by way of all those other places.

I certainly feel more northern than southern, even though deeper family roots tether me to Essex, the East End of London and Southampton.

Prof Tewdwr-Jones has redefined the north with what the i newspaper called “a perplexing piece of cartography” (above). On this new map, the border between north and south wanders all over the place. This does away with drawing a line through Birmingham and having everything above as the north.

The Perplexing Prof says of his eccentric division: “There are several ways you could define a Northern region, including the ‘post-industrial North’ or the North-Eastern peripheral region – but perhaps the most pertinent question is where does London end?”

And if your answer is “Just outside the M25, matey”, then you are not playing by his rules. His definition of the north is based round commuting distance to London. As York, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, for example, are all roughly within a two-hour commute, that puts them in the Not-North; or the south if you insist, as the Perplexing Prof does.

This took me back to my early days on what was then called the Yorkshire Evening Press. The editor of the day was much taken with this sort of thing and sent reporters to York Station to track down long-distance commuters who were rumoured to be doing the two-hour haul to London.

From memory, only one or two such unfortunate travellers were found, and the editor’s excitement proved unfounded (not for the first or last time). But all these years later, that eccentric new map of the north is based in part round the idea of commuting from York to London, so perhaps he’s been proved right, even if he died a while ago now.

I’m not sure that redefining the north by relative closeness to London is all that helpful. Much of Yorkshire slips out of the north by that method, and if you can safely say one thing for sure about Yorkshire, it is that it’s in the north for sure.

Thirty years ago, people might have needed to take that long train journey on a railway line that has been much travelled and much troubled ever since. The line has just come back into temporary public ownership after another unsuccessful experiment with privatisation. Making everything private was all the political rage back then. With regards to railways, the experiment can hardly be called a success.

Anyway, back then you needed to travel as the internet was in its infancy and had yet to wreak havoc with the newspaper industry and other industries.

Nowadays someone living in Leeds, York or Manchester can work at least partly from home, avoiding the need for the long commute the Perplexing Prof uses to redefine the North.

When I first saw his map, I wondered if it might not be showing the route of another train to have become lost while trying to navigate north.

The anger over the failure of Northern Rail – or ‘Northern Fail’, as columnists and bloggers in the North are obliged by statue to refer to that company – show a different definition of the north. This is one where all the money stays in the south and those of us living in the north must put up with an inferior service. If you live in the Lake District, or wish to travel there, that service is not inferior so much as non-existent, as all trains have been cancelled while Network Rail (sorry, Network Fail) puzzles over its new and improved timetable.

Anyway, this proud man of York by way of Manchester remains convinced that both places are in the north.

ONE day perhaps we will no longer have to mutter the words ‘Brexit’ or ‘Trump’. Sadly, that day hasn’t dawned yet.

To begin, here is a footnote to the appalling separation of illegal migrants and their children at the Mexican border.

The past week saw this practice rescinded by the very man who caused it. President Trump was prodded to act after desperately sad photographs of crying children were published by what he no doubt considers to be the “lying, fake-news media”.

He even expressed his distaste for separating children from their migrant parents – as if it had nothing to do with him. In a similar display of appalling chutzpah, Theresa May yesterday attended a service of celebration for the Windrush generation – the very people who have suffered terrible collateral damage thanks to her immigration policy. It’s a wonder they let her through the doors.

On the BBC website you will find a short video explaining the reality of a child being separated from their parent at the border.

Cisary Banz Reynaud-Villeda entered the US illegally on June 13 and was detained along with his eight-year-old daughter. The BBC video clip reports that authorities took her away to another centre, and he has not spoken to her since.

“It’s a shock – like being hit with a bucket of cold water,” Cisary tells the BBC in a phone interview from a jail in Texas. He says that his daughter was clinging to his leg when they pulled her away.

Just one more piece of the jigsaw of shame that is Donald Trump and his heartless immigration policy. Forget the blizzard of distracting tweets; forget the endless contradictions; forget the attention-seeking soap opera. Instead just concentrate on what an appalling man America has for a president.

It is being reported that Trump will be granted a full state visit after Brexit: an unearned honour for a dishonourable man. Still, perhaps “after Brexit” will be a long way off.

The pro-Brexit newspapers this morning mark the second anniversary of the referendum with the usual guff. First prize for absurdity goes to The Sun for placing Boris Johnson’s face on a toilet roll – a fitting location, it is true.

“Boris warns PM not to deliver a…BOG ROLL BREXIT,” chunters the headline.

Below this frankly disturbing image, is a quote from an article Johnson has written for the newspaper: “Britain doesn’t want deal that is soft, yielding and infinitely long.”

Inside there is another visual association of the Foreign Secretary and the stuff used to wipe bottoms: “Say no to Andrexit.”

If I might descend to the mood of the piece, I guess you need lots of toilet paper when you are dealing with a load of shit.

The Daily Express rolls out its own pro-Brexit bog roll with: “OUR FANTASTIC FUTURE OUT OF EU.”

Oh, hold me back before I shred my nerves with excitement. What can this be based on? An interview with David Davis, that’s what. You know, the bumbler in charge of ‘delivering’ Brexit. Yes, David Deliveroo; except he keeps getting flat tyres and the takeaway went cold long ago.

“We’ll look back and wonder why we ever doubted Brexit,” says Davis, the man brilliantly immortalised in the Radio 4 comedy Deadringers as the Brexit Bulldog, forever phoning Theresa May only to get the answer-phone again.

In the ‘exclusive’ piece, Davis says something so dumb it might almost come from a Deadringers’ script. Here is a quote from the Express article: “Mr Davis said Brexit Britain would benefit from English being ‘the best language in the world for doing commerce, science and medicine and so on’”.

There you have it. Brexit is going to be a wonderful success because we speak English. And if we shout a big louder, we might just manage to order a coffee.

Whoopie, looks like I’m in the money.

You see, there’s this thing called the ‘lottery dividend’ and here’s how it works. No need to check your results, you just assume you’ve won and spend the money anyway.

We could do with a holiday and I’ve seen a car or two I fancy. If only someone had told me about the ‘lottery dividend’ before.

Now it doesn’t take a leap of imagination to guess that I am not really writing about the lottery, or at least not that one. My true topic is the ‘Brexit dividend’ – often to be seen, like my ‘lottery dividend’, wearing a pair of apostrophes. That grammatical garment suggests the word or words being clothed might not be all they seem.

This is certainly the case with the ‘Brexit dividend’ – an uncertain amount of extra money to come Britain’s way at an uncertain time, quite possibly the third Tuesday after the apocalypse.

Yet this neverland bonus is being waved in the air by the government as a reason why we can afford to pay more money into the NHS.

If your memory is long and scarred, you will recall that this ‘Brexit bonus’ is a shameless echo of the old and discredited Boris Johnson lie about the extra £350m a week we’d have to spend on the NHS once we’d left the EU.

A promise so threadbare that in the end even Ukip’s Nigel Farage gave up believing in it.

In other weary words, Mrs Maybe’s 70^th birthday present to the NHS is an old idea found squashed under the Foreign Secretary’s shoe. It’s a political punt and a grubby gamble.

Oh, and we will all have to pay extra taxes as well to cover this £20bn annual boost to the NHS. Nothing wrong with extra taxation to fund the NHS but wrapping it all up in a ‘Brexit dividend’ gamble is just shabby. Even with such a welcome cash boost, the NHS will be standing still, thanks to barely adequate funding in the post-Labour years (the Blair/Brown tug-of-war government may have ended in disappointment, but at least the NHS and education were turned around after years of neglect).

Linking the extra NHS funds to the ‘Brexit dividend’ has been denounced by Tory rebels as a cynical distraction. One unnamed Tory nailed it in a quote for the Observer: “It is sickening if this money is being linked in any way to Brexit. It is truly pathetic.”

The good old Obs also mentions that the Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons that “Brexit has reduced rather than increased the funds available for the NHS (and other public services) both in the short and long term.”

In that cold light, a ‘Brexit dividend’ looks as likely to come about as my ‘lottery dividend’. It will pay to be wary on this, as the ‘Brexit dividend’ will surely be dragged into play more now as the negotiations with the EU – and within the squabbling Tory party – continue to go nowhere much.

At this rate, I’ll be running out of apostrophes.

Incidentally, I’ve not checked my lottery ticket yet. If you see me driving off on holiday in a shiny new car, you’ll know that the ‘lottery dividend’ is true.

But I suspect that ticket will sail into the bin on a sigh. That’s what happens every Wednesday.

Just imagine if your ranting racist uncle had been made president of the USA. Well, you don’t have to picture this as that appalling scenario has happened already.

With every assault on immigrants, Donald Trump seals his reputation as that embarrassing relative. His latest unseemly outburst comes as a prickly spot of self-defence following the controversy about separating migrant children from their parents at the border.

The only encouragement to be drawn from this horror show lies in the response to this cruel zero-tolerance policy. The separation tactic of forcing nearly 2,000 children to be pulled apart from their parents has drawn intense criticism from all sides – with Laura Bush, former Republican First Lady, saying in a tweet that “…this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart”.

Trump being Trump ignores the growing chorus of condemnation and blames the Democrats – lashing out as always.

His argument that the Democrats were to blame was dismissed by Hillary Clinton, who said it was an “outright lie” to claim that family separation was mandated by law.

Clinton added: “We are a better country than one that tears families apart, turns a blind eye to women fleeing domestic violence and treats frightened children as a negotiating tool.”

That “outright lie” is important and Trump should be called out every time he tells one of his gristle-packed porkies. He told another one when he lashed out at Germany for admitting immigrants and swiped at Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that crime in Germany was “way up” because of immigration. This is wrong and was pointed out as such on the BBC – an encouraging move – and is referred more delicately in today’s Financial Times as “an incorrect assertion”.

Trump needs calling out every time he spits out one of his weaponised lies. I’d go as far as to say that the media’s most important job is to keep track of Trump’s lies.

The Washington Post is doing just that with its  Fact Checker feature. As of May 1, the paper calculated that Trump had made “3,001 false or misleading claims” since taking office 466 days earlier. This important work should be congratulated.

My first thought on hearing Trump’s latest rancid rant was to make the obvious point that the USA is a country of immigrants – that’s everybody who cannot claim direct lineage to the original native inhabitants.

The USA has in the past officially recognised its role as a land of immigrants, although the New York Times reported in February that the federal agency that issues green cards to people from foreign countries has stopped characterising the country as “a nation of immigrants”. The agency had quietly dropped the honourable phrase about securing “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants”.

I’m not interested in repeating the Trump-era weasel words that have replaced that fine statement. But it doesn’t matter, for the USA is and always has been a country of immigrants – as witnessed by the German/Scottish twerp who is president.

THE middle boy is home for the weekend and I am telling him the story of the lost keys times three.

The first missing key mystery arose after my sister-in-law popped my keys into her bag then drove home. “Ha,” says the boy. “That’s because you’re all getting old.”

This is a bit of a slap in the face, but the sting can wait, for now we must address the most recent missing key mystery. Four days tearing out what remains of my hair. Those lost keys were even reported to the police. They were mentioned at university as the bunch included the key that admits me to an office I share.

Four days scouring everywhere ten times, then ten times more. Unlikely theories are mentioned many times. “I think I dropped them in the rubbish when I emptied the bin” – a mantra I repeat at will.

Then my daughter wanders downstairs and says: “Are these your keys?” She’d picked them up by mistake and popped them in her bag. What is it with the women in this family?

The other lost key mystery came when I left my keys on the outside of the backdoor for two days. That door was opened and shut, locked and unlocked from the inside, with the lost keys dangling there, before I spotted them through the window and thought, “What an idiot.”

I relay all this to my son, the one who thinks we are all getting old, as we shop for ingredients for his brother’s 30^th birthday cake. My wife and daughter make the cake and it goes wrong. I am on hand to help by eating all the shavings from the surgery. Then the cake goes spectacularly right, helped no doubt by me scoffing the sweet wastage.

We get the taxi to our son’s birthday party, arriving with the spectacular cake. A party of 20 celebrates that first little boy turning 30. There he is, six ft two, bearded and smiling, a primary school teacher and all.

It’s a lovely night but this getting old thing follows me home like a lost dog. I recall my own 30^th birthday party, that seems only the other day, and the three parties that have followed.

In the morning we drive to Manchester to see my dad for his delayed party. He’s 86 and spent his birthday two weeks ago just out of hospital, following a bad brush with pneumonia.

My two brothers are there. “We’re all getting old together,” I think. And there’s our dad, frail now, but full of spirit. Full of prosecco, too. He’s having a good afternoon and seems much like he always does, just frailer.

You grow old together in a family. The shy little boy turns into a confident 30-year-old, as his dad wanders the scuffed corridor from 30 to 60. I can’t avoid noticing that my dad is getting old at last, while my middle boy thinks we are getting on a bit. Which we are, but that’s OK – better than the alternative at any rate.

I drive back to York, make a pot of tea and have an old person’s nap, before trying some of the beer the kids bought me as for father’s day. Lovely beer, lovely kids.

I tell that lost dog to go and follow someone else.