6,000 miles and as close as ever

Back then she was more or less nocturnal. Out all night and flat out all day.

We would cross paths for maybe 20 minutes at dinner time, grunt at each other and then go our separate ways. Our two rescue alley cats kept more regular hours.

But six weeks into a three-month “gap yah” road trip and not a day goes by without an Instagram update, with pictures from the top of the world showing colours so vibrant that it makes you realise just how drab, grey and dull boring old England really is.

At the time of writing, daughter #1 and her pal are in deepest, darkest Peru in a place called Arequipa (no, me neither) but the photos look like something out of National Geographic.

They travelled there from Copacabana, not the hottest spot north of Havana, but the one on the shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. It is the highest lake in the world, 12,507ft above sea level - it says here on Wikipedia.

She FaceTimes us a couple of times a week, texts us, even calls occasionally and posts on Instagram like she’s famous.

To be honest, me and the boss were apprehensive, to say the least, before they set off in mid-February.

Waving them off at Lancaster railway station felt like the opening scene from one of those horror movies, before the mood quickly darkens and the soundtrack changes to a minor key.

But having read the papers and watched the news recently, this country is just as stabby and shooty as anywhere in the world, with the exception of South Africa which has just over 19,000 murders a year - about 52 a day. To put this in context, if you lost that amount of people during a war, the Government would be asking some serious questions.

Anyway, as if things couldn’t get any more exciting, our intrepid adventurers are off to the Jockey Club in Lima next week to see the Arctic Monkeys who are on tour across the cities of South America. Having said all that, we’re counting the days until she’s back home - 55.