Who's the Daddy: Empty seat on Christmas Day

And it’s one so big that Alan Partridge would be proud of it.

Daughter #1 announced recently that she’ll be spending Christmas away with her boyfriend’s family and not with us, which came as a bit of a shock as you might imagine.

After last year’s washout when Christmas was about as much fun as the consultation process during a mass redundancy – plus everyone in our house got Covid – it’s no great surprise that she wants to live a little.

Apart from friends who helped us out by dropping off food parcels and taking the dog for a walk, the only callers we got during 10 days of cheerless self-isolation were nosey government workers ringing us every few days to check we weren’t breaking quarantine. Yeah, thanks for that. Happy Christmas to you too.

Of course, daughter #1’s festive plans (and everybody else’s in the country for that matter) may yet crumble to dust, depending on what side of the bed Boris Johnson rolls out of in the next few days. But then again his ‘rules are for thee, not for me’ shtick is wearing so thin now that millions will tell him, ‘**** it, we’ll do what we want, just like you.’

Maybe this Christmas will be a cracker after all now that expectations have been managed and the bar has been set so low you could stumble over it without even realising it was there. Boris and his cronies have pulled their collective surprised face at the new Omicron variant, when even someone with a dangerously limited knowledge of chemistry (CSE2 in 1986 and proud of it) knows that VIRUSES MUTATE.

But back to the empty chair at our table this Christmas. Me and the boss always wanted our daughters to be strong and independent. To do what they wanted to do without anyone holding them back and telling them what they can and can’t do.

Thing is, we hadn’t banked on filling them so full of deep-seated confidence that they flew the nest in their late teens and thrived in their own homes, enjoying their lives in a new city. And therein lies the problem, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.