Who's The Daddy: A long weekend that proved we still belong together

The last time we went away together as a family was to St Ives back in 2015, so long ago it’s hard to recall who was Prime Minister then.

Four years later the four of us were part of a family group in a villa in Mallorca - which is all a bit of a blur, coming a couple of weeks after smashing my left elbow and wrist to pieces in a cycling accident and being high as a kite on strong prescription painkillers and in a cast from withered bicep to swollen knuckles.

But what with Daughter #2 being home for a couple of months from working on the world’s biggest cruise ship that sails around the Caribbean and Daughter #1 having a rare gap in her social calendar - off to Madrid with a dozen of her closest friends next week - in the words of Peter Kay, we booked it, packed it, ****ed off.

We arrived in a biblical rainstorm and only found the place thanks to the what3words app, but were in the log powered hot tub well before dusk as our sighthound Walter ran around the garden in hysterics as his brain tried to compute why all his human slaves were sitting in the bath.

The next day was a trip to York which was nothing short of magnificent.

We sat sipping our drinks outside a bar in the early autumn sunshine in the shadow of York Minster and talked of plans for the next phase of our lives.

Our daughters sank a pint in The Stone Roses Bar and took pictures in its photo booth with artwork from the Roses’ debut album in the background in the absolute prime of their youth that’s so life-affirming I’d like to be buried with it.

Then back to the cabin for another long soak in the wood-fired tub, followed by an evening around the fire pit, as Daughter #2 showed us the entertainment itinerary for a day on her ship to keep 7,000-plus passengers happy.

After sleeping like toddlers for nine hours, it was off to Whitby where we walked along the piers, took the obligatory photo at the entrance to Arguments Yard and marched up the 199 steps to St Mary’s Church graveyard looking for Dracula.

But the best part of the trip was how well we all got on. Parental relationships with adult children can be tricky.

But the stat about after the age of 18 you’ll only spend a total of one year in the company of your children should be written on parents’ souls in letters of fire.

But the healthy relationship we have with our adult daughters is the thing I’m most proud of in my entire life.

Anyway, it all passed off without serious incident. We even got through a fiercely contested game of Scrabble without an apocalyptic row, and agreed to do it all again, God willing, after Daughter #2 finishes her third tour of duty pootling around the Caribbean with 7,000 American tourists some time next March.

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