Fresh Fields

A few weeks ago the papers did their annual round of opinion pieces by parents talking wistfully about dropping their 18-year-olds off at university, which reminded me that I’d been dragging my heels on my own wistful post about exactly that—for so long, in fact, that he’s now nineteen and has just started second year. Time to pull out the draft and finish it, or I never will. At the end of August last year I undertook the rite of passage of so many parents in the UK: helping your eldest child undertake the rite of passage of leaving for university, by loading up the car with their stuff and driving them there for the start of fresher’s week and their first year. W. had turned eighteen six months before, which meant he finished high school as an adult; not something I’d had to do back in the 1980s, but it was just how his birthday lined up with the Scottish school year. Now he was able to start his adult life properly, after years of preparing for the moment with Nat 5s, Highers, and…