Students these days only want one thing: tea towels

Monday evening saw me trailing round Ikea with my daughter. On Tuesday, we managed a quick dash to Primark. Wednesday? Why, TK Maxx followed by a Tesco superstore, of course – and not for the first time I was caught muttering, “Damn you, Marie Kondo…”

My girl’s off to uni, you see, and we’re shopping for cutlery and door hooks, toothbrush holder and chopping boards. Straightforward enough, you’d think. Unfortunately, it all has to spark joy. Even the tin opener. Especially the tin opener, because she’ll be so far away.

I’ve palmed her off with as much stuff as I can from the basement – the saucepans inherited from my mother, stumpy yet unbreakable wine glasses, my third-favourite coffee mug – but she’s got the heightened aesthetic sensibilities of the Bloomsbury Set.

“Can I take that priceless Lalique jug? Those Fabergé eggs?”

“No, but it would be great if you took your crested gecko. I had no idea they lived for 20 years.”

But she’s off, glued to Tiktok, awash with second-year students passing on their wisdom to freshers. “I will need a lot of tea towels,” my daughter asserts. “Everyone says you go through one every two days. And they get stolen.”

I wonder aloud why this might be. In my day, students weren’t the most house-proud of citizens. “I don’t know what happens to them,” she whispers, hoarsely. “But you can never have too many. I was thinking…”

“Five or so?”

“No! Thirty!” she looks aghast at the prospect of being judged by her paltry tea towel trousseau and found horribly wanting. So I reassure her we’ll come to some arrangement, which we will.

Readying her to face the future alone is all rather sweet, if tinged with half-empty nest melancholy. It’s actually a great consolation that my fledgling will have a new fleecy blanket, chic salt and pepper grinders and considerably more teatowelery than I ever had.

Oh, look, silly me, I think I’ve got something in my eye. I suppose it makes up for having nothing left in my bank account.