When the student’s away, nostalgia’s at play...

My sister, who has a daughter in her last year at university, called to ask for an understanding ear recently, thinking I would be sympathetic with her plight on account of the student also being away at university. She explained that she had been sent away overnight by work and as she was staying fairly near to the town where my niece is studying, arranged to take her out for dinner.

The niece turned up, used the hotel room shower (as they had no hot water or heating in her student flat), had a three-course dinner with wine, walked her mother back to the hotel, conked out snoring on the hotel bed – so that my sister had to sleep clinging to the edge of the bed – demanded my sister sneaked some breakfast up to the room for her the next morning, then claimed she had no money for her train fare back to university.

“I felt like I’d been mugged,” my sister complained and I muttered sympathetic noises, but the truth is the tables are turned at Penman Towers.

I received many compliments on my beautiful necklace recently and brazened it out, accepting compliments graciously while not letting on that I had found it on the student’s dressing table at home.

Because of the way she is, these jewellery pieces could be either left over from Christmas crackers or incredibly precious items given to her by loving relatives on her 18th birthday.

All are treated the same and bunged in the drawer.

There is an extensive collection of goodies which she has deemed unnecessary for uni life and which I find myself increasingly drawn to, on the pretext of dusting.

Who knew that there are so many beauty items of a ‘bronzing’ nature?

These intriguing products have been used on a regular basis by a peely-wally mother of a certain age, desperate to believe their claims of radiance and glow.

As I dress up in make-up and jewels, I am struck by a memory of a wee girl doing the same at my own dressing table many years ago.

The tables are turned at Penman Towers