Who's The Daddy: Bagpuss was magical, early morning calls certainly are not

Parents of grown-and-flown children will tell you how sprawling and empty the family home feels once your youngest has high-tailed it out the front door, leaving you to effectively work for the increasingly demanding, possessive and cantankerous children’s ageing pets. More on those furry maniacs later.

I suppose it’s a compliment in some ways, that we’ve raised our two daughters to be strong and independent, and at 24 and 21 they stand on their own two feet. Miles away.

And it’s not like they only contact us when they want something, like to tap into the never ending line of credit from the Bank Of Mum And Dad, Est.1999.

We get FaceTimes or texts most days. In fact one of my proudest achievements, if you can call it that, is our healthy relationship with our adult children. Maybe it’s because they were raised in a calm house with clear rules (laid down by the boss, I just did what I was told for 20-plus years and counting), compared to the absolute madhouse we grew up in that I left first chance I got.

But one lives in a leafy part of Manchester while the other shares a student house in the middle of Liverpool, so we generally see them by appointment or on special occasions, such as the weekend after daughter #1’s 24th birthday, both lured back to Lancaster by the promise of a world-class Sunday lunch at Quite Simply French.

And boy, they didn’t disappoint. When the food arrived it really did “all go quiet over there”, and then again when dessert was served up. You know, you think you can cook until you eat at a restaurant with chefs who are more like magicians. We paid up, left a nice tip and vowed to return as soon as we were all together again.

Anyway, our lunatic animals that rule our house now. Nighttimes at our place are like some deranged episode of the 1970s children’s show Bagpuss. In that when our sighthound wakes up like clockwork at 5.50am, whinnying to be let out for a wee, our teenage rescue cats wake up too, and notice the dog’s helped himself to all their kibble and run around the pitch-black house in hysterics, screaming for their bowls to be filled. Hangry cats sound like a smoke alarm on a dark winter morning.

Then, because it’s cold outside, the cats prefer to use their newly purchased Shigloo, rather than their usual alfresco dumps in the neighbours’ gardens, which turns into the world’s worst lucky dip when it’s your turn to fish it all out before dawn.

All that’s missing from this nightly, demented pantomime is the mice on the Mouse Organ, Madeleine the Rag Doll, Gabriel the Toad and Professor Bleedin’ Yaffle. Bagpuss was magical, pure gold. 5.50am wake-up calls from entitled pets are most certainly not.

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