‘We closed the door of her room and I fled, bursting into tears’

Radio Ulster current affairs producer and broadcast journalist Karen English travelled to Scotland last week to help her daughter Sarah-Jane settle into St Andrews University in what she says was a “bittersweet” journey.

Karen (55), who lives in Bangor, is married to BT engineer Brian McEneny (59) and also has a son Joshua (16), who is studying for AS levels at Sullivan Upper Grammar School in Holywood.

Leaving her daughter across the Irish Sea hit Karen harder than she ever expected and she went through all the emotions — joy, pride, delight and loss. She explains: “Now a fresh saint (the term for undergraduates at St Andrews) I was ecstatic that she had secured a place at the uni she had set her heart on to study international relations and politics.

“And seeing her wreathed in the university’s famed distinctive red academic gown, when she joined fellow new students to walk along the pier, a tradition that dates back centuries, I was beyond proud.

“I was delighted, too, that unlike her parents she had made it to university and a prestigious one at that, founded in the early 15th century and ranked in the 2018 Guardian University Guide as the best in Scotland and third in the UK behind Oxford and Cambridge. Its alumni includes Prince William, footballer Danny Blanchflower and the writer Fay Weldon.

“However, when it came to returning home to Northern