WE’VE done this before, the old car and me. Six or seven years ago each of us had fewer miles on the clock. On that occasion the Volvo estate was packed to the ceiling with the belongings of number one son on his return from university.

Now car and driver are sitting outside a large and scruffy student house in Salford for another return. Soon the car will be filled with amplifiers and guitars, a computer and a TV screen, bedding, kitchen items, clothes, rarely touched weight-lifting gear and a box of food. On closer inspection, the food items will be seen to contain an unopened pot of gooseberry jam made by me and labelled “2012”, alongside a similarly untouched pot of jam from my mother dated a year earlier than that.

Soon the car is filled and the neglected bicycle with the flat tyres is stowed on the roof. Then another box is found and the car has to be partially unloaded. When the car is so full that a fugitive fly would have trouble finding somewhere to hide, two large bin bags are spotted in the hall. These I carry out to the car and then stand scratching what used to be the hair on my head. Where the hell will they go?

“That’s rubbish,” says son number two as he emerges from the house.

This was a comment on what the bin bags contained, not a slight on my packing abilities, which do tend to the “let’s shove this in and see” philosophy of filling cars.

Yes, we’re been here before, me and the old car. Journeys to and from universities in Lancashire, Salford and Newcastle. Earlier this summer the pair of us headed to Newcastle to pick up our daughter. No guitars or amplifiers were transported on that occasion, although an awful lot of shoes and clothes were. The car groaned back like a mobile Top Shop.

Soon the car outside the scruffy house in Salford is full and we drive round the corner to drop off the key at the landlord’s place. Then we head for the motorway listening to the blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa, a Father’s Day present from son number two. I worry that the car might have blues of its own, so low on the road does it sit, but the journey passes without incident.

After our first son returned from university, it took him a few years to settle on a path. An initial ambition was thwarted so he chose another. He has a job and a career. Now it’s time for his brother to make those sort of decisions.

The next journey will be this weekend, back to Newcastle to relocate our daughter’s remaining belongings from her student halls to her newly-rented house.

And so my sideline job as parental removal man goes on. One day you are taking them round the corner to a friend’s house. Then it’s lifts to Haxby or wherever to see new friends. And then it’s Salford and more miles on the poor old thing. And the car has a few more miles on it by now too.

 

• MY long-ago path to university led from the local grammar school. My middle brother attended the school too. But the youngest brother failed his 11-plus and had to catch a bus across town to the secondary-modern.

This is the thing people always forget about grammar schools: while they may have provided opportunities for some, they pushed those who failed the test into a less admired category of school.

According to a BBC radio documentary at the weekend, Prince Charles used to harangue David Blunkett, the former Labour education secretary, about this matter, saying that more state grammar schools were needed.

As the future king was educated at lofty Gordonstoun, it is hard to know where he got his keenness for grammar schools from. Maybe he found it under a tree, alongside all his other enthusiasms.

Prince Charles has a reputation for interfering/being interested in things, depending on your view. Well, he has been waiting for his “proper job” for a long time now and he has to fill his days and his mind somehow or other. But it is still worth pointing that grammar schools can divide children into winners and losers. Not much of a start, is it?