If you listen, you might not like what you hear

Who knows what Dr Catherine Calderwood was thinking when she visited her second home – maybe it was one of those brain freeze parent moments like those times when you forget you have a baby and head off to the shops leaving them in the house, carrying a list and a niggling doubt there’s something you’ve forgotten type of thing. Not me, you understand. A friend.

But it was me who lost one in John Lewis and another on a cross-channel ferry – heart stopping at the time, but how I chuckled about it later after they’d found me and I’d had a few gins.

But there are teenage-sized kids, a dog and a husband in those pictures. Did none of them think to voice a helpful reminder? ‘But mu-um, you said…’ Just saying.

Anyway the former chief medical officer isn’t the only one blatantly visiting a second home, there are thousands of youngsters all over the country at it too, those lucky children whose parents have done the decent thing and separated, allowing their offspring to enjoy two harmonious Christmases, two holidays, two teas, two bedrooms and all manner of lifestyle benefits their pressure cooker nuclear family friends are denied.

Encouraged by the government – we were telt – it was OK to keep up existing contact arrangements after ‘a sensible assessment on an individual basis’. So Youngest Child conducted one and after a fortnight with me, took herself and her make-up hamper along the road to Other Parent’s.

Hmph. I’d thought we were bound together for The Duration, but this brought an abrupt end to the special mother-daughter time we were having. I thought we were having.

That is until Day One of Lockdown, round about midday, as she accompanied me on a walk that meant I could put a big tick next to Exercise on our new Daily Schedule. I was busy telling her (as advised on the Scottish government website parenty bit) that she could tell me about anything that was troubling her, that I was always there for her, and ready to listen, when she duly complied:

“Yeah, we’re starting to get on each other’s nerves now, aren’t we?” ■