Who's The Daddy: Life moves so fast, take time to stop and appreciate it

Ever since her first six-month tour of duty ended in January, me and The Boss had got used to her being around again. Apart from midweek and weekend trips to wherever she fancied. That and a winter sunshine break in Gran Canaria with The Boss for some much-needed R&R.

But the thing about a 6am flight is you need to be checked in two hours before boarding (4am) which means setting off from home a couple of hours before that (2am) and getting up half an hour earlier (1.30am). Once upon a time, when John Major was Prime Minister, that was an early night for yours truly and his merry band of perma-drunk colleagues on the newsdesk of a highly reputable daily newspaper. These days a 1.30am alarm call feels like some form of community service, especially when you’re not even going on holiday yourself.

Put it this way, the airport run on that dark, chilly March morning was completed with the minimum of fuss and in near complete silence. It’s hard enough waving off your youngest daughter for five months without having to do it with so little sleep you can’t tell what’s real and what’s hallucination.

Anyway, after queueing for an hour at check-in, an absolute pain at the best of times but like a particularly cruel round on a Japanese game show when it’s before dawn, Daughter #2 gave us a jaunty wave and marched off through security. The flight to Heathrow lasted about 35 seconds and she got a free “poor man’s upgrade” when the seat next to her on the Miami flight was empty and breezed through US security, jumped in a taxi and was at the hotel in the blink of an eye.

The next day she was on board the world’s biggest cruise ship that she’ll call home until the end of August and was put to work the same day. These cruise companies really do not mess about.

We’ve had a few voice notes (which we now live for) and WhatsApp messages as progress updates - basically up and running on Day 1. The ship is bigger than the small town I grew up in so Daughter #2 reckons it’ll take her a couple of weeks to get her bearings, which is way easier in golden Caribbean sunshine than the icy blast of a North West January afternoon that greeted her when she landed back in Manchester after her first sun-kissed six-month stint.

Finally this week, tomorrow is our scarcely believable 27th wedding anniversary. I say scarcely believable because even though it took place in 1998 - and we have the pictures to prove it, not the first couple to tie the knot at the Ashton Memorial but around the fifth or sixth - it feels like it happened about three weeks ago. Like Ferris Bueller said in 1986: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

And to The Boss, Amazon Prime’s delivering your medal later today. You’ve earned it.

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