TIME travel would be a marvellous thing. Never again would we have to miss birthdays or anniversaries – we could simply jump into our DeLorean and travel back to any occasion we’d forgotten and personally deliver a card or gift.

Just think about all those delicious brownie points we could clock up.

With time travel, milestone moments could also be etched more clearly in our memory as we’d know, with the benefit of hindsight, when not to let our attention wander. I’d be able to turn back the clock to earlier this year when I was deep in conversation with another mum during my son’s swimming lesson and failed to notice his breathless bid to cover 50 metres without armbands for the first time.

I’d be able to tell my past self to quit gassing and watch, to capture that moment, and then I might be able to trade the shade of guilt I’ve worn ever since for a warmer tone of pride.

Regrets, and I’m guessing we’ve all had a few, could be re-shaped to something more palatable if we could go back and change past events.

Given the chance, I would programme my DeLorean to take me back to the send-off meal my family gave my big brother before he set off to live on the other side of the globe. He’d talked about doing it for so long, I don’t think I took it seriously until he was gone.

For reasons I’ve forgotten (possibly the weather, the distance or my dislike of goodbyes), I didn’t make the 280-mile drive down south to see him off. That was 12 years ago. I’ve seen him several times since and Skype is a wonderful thing, but I still regret not being there.

York Press:

TIME: Dr Emmett Brown and Marty McFly with the DeLorean

Another family moment I almost missed was my son’s harvest festival earlier this week.

It was at 2.30pm on Wednesday – a bit late for a natural lunch break in my working day, and too far from the office for me to comfortably get there and back within the allotted hour. It took some juggling, running and poor parking for me to arrive a mere two minutes late, but that slight delay meant I was forced to watch my son’s recital of an autumn poem from the corridor outside the school hall, rather than in it, straining on tiptoe like other latecomers to see, and more importantly to be seen by him, over the heads of scores of more punctual people.

With several year groups involved in the event, equating to about 240 pupils, organisers could probably have guessed there would’ve been at least an equal number of supporters there. I don’t know if spectating figures actually reached that level, after all I couldn’t see over the rows of people in front of me to count.

But I do know I wasn’t alone in feeling frustrated. Other parents standing with me – at one point we were eight deep in that narrow corridor – also had to juggle work commitments to be there when, in reality, our children’s involvement in the festival was so short-lived to ensure everyone played a part, it was over in the blink of an eye.

With the possibility of time travel, I would rewind the clock and arrive ahead of all the other parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, and other extended family members who had blocked my view.

I’m not suggesting the school needed a ticket system – it was harvest festival for goodness sake – but I would politely ask other parents not to invite every living relative they have to such events in future if it means immediate family do not get a look in.

“He’s seen me, that’s the main thing,” said a neighbour, squashed in beside me. And that, ultimately, was all that mattered.