… is that you miss them when they’re gone, so you have to make the most of them while you can.

When I first separated four years ago, my daughter didn’t speak to me for over a year. It was awful. I’m really glad to say that we made up and are really good again – I met up with her for lunch yesterday at the excellent Brigade on Tooley Street, for instance, and she knows she can talk to me about anything. My son and I see each other regularly and get on really well too.

I love them to bits and can’t imagine what it would be like to be without them. So nothing will come between us.

Which is why I feel so sorry for families torn apart for sometimes bizarre reasons, perhaps with their children thrown out onto the streets, especially (in some cases) when they were the subject of custody battles, or where a child is abducted by a parent living abroad, for instance.

One moment your life can be happy and content with your family around you and everything you could ever want and the next it’s all collapsed around your ears with bitterness and emptiness because of a serious lack of judgment or changed circumstances or maybe blinded by false promises or the grass being greener. What a nightmare!

So I’m happy to count my blessings and know I can talk to my family whenever I want from wherever I happen to be. And that’s A Good Thing.