Who's the Daddy: Reasons to count days down

The bill for mum’s Covid-truncated funeral arrived last week, the service ran for barely a quarter of an hour and worked out at roughly £245 a minute. I nearly fainted.

That’s not to diminish the sterling work done by everyone involved. It’s just we were in the front door of the crem and out the back in less time than it takes to walk the dog around the block, and even then he’d look at you like he’d been short-changed.

Of course, there’s loads of incidentals that incur a charge, one of which is the interment ceremony which is scheduled to take place next week. The funeral was tough enough, the prospect of going through it all again isn’t something any of us are looking forward to.

There’s nothing anyone can say to make it better. But with both parents now gone, everyone in the family now moves up a generation. Me and my sister are now The Firm. And she’s the one in the partnership with the volcanic temper. I wouldn’t mess with her.

It’s a peculiar foible on our side of the family that we all die or are buried in March. Mum’s mum and dad, dad’s mum and my mum and dad all died or had their ashes buried in March. Only mum’s death in January that bucked the trend. That’s more than a coincidence, surely? This month still has three weeks to run, so I’ll be cheering April 1 when it comes (God willing) like the winner in the Manchester derby. Up the Reds! This has been the longest winter in living memory. Christmas feels like it was six months ago and the clocks haven’t gone forward yet.

And even though daughter #2 has inherited her mum’s work ethic and has grafted in a school and a supermarket since lockdown 1 last March, she’s counting the days until she moves into her flat in Liverpool with her mate and starts uni - 112.

Daughter #1’s coming to the end of the second year of a law degree and is already planning post-graduation Gap Year 2 after the success of her jaunt around South America two years ago.

I hear Mars is quite popular this time of year. She’s already been everywhere else.