The great declutter has taken on Olympian proportions as the son is down from Glasgow to empty the attic. Long-time readers will be aware of the oppression of the attic. It’s not so much what’s up there, though there’s a lot of shite that isn’t mine, but not being able to get up there and sort it has frustrated me for over a decade. There are boxes up there that have not moved since we moved in, and really, we can’t need a box of china that’s not seen the light for nearly 14 years.

Some things are easy to let go of: the assorted dollhouses and the boxes of books the kids don’t want to keep. There are Gplan footstools and coffee tables that would maybe sell, but with so much stuff, it’s hard to know what’s worth the hassle of Facebook Marketplace. Everything has gone to charity.

There are the much-discussed Star Wars toys, assorted Thunderbirds vehicles and Tracy Island. The full-size cut-out of Star Trek’s Jean Lu Picard has mysteriously vanished, off to seek out new life and new civilisations, no doubt.

The son does not claim the Star Wars toys, even though it is his birthright. He doesn’t have room, he sighs, shoving assorted X-Wings, Death Stars and figures into the shed.

I’m trying to be grateful for all his hard work, so I don’t mention that I don’t have the bloody room either.  Suggesting that one of his brothers will have them, I’d hoped long-buried sibling rivalry would kick in, but he only sighs again.

Some of the things in the attic are long-lost treasures. An Edwardian trinket box is now by my bed. A box of photos, taken a lifetime ago, shows us looking impossibly young and enviably thin, our babies younger than our grandkids now.

Some things are trickier to let go of. Boxes and boxes of paintings and school reports, exercise books, and pictures.

I am brutal in bagging it all up, but then relent and beg for the bags to be brought back in, rescued from the recycling men with minutes to spare.

What am I going to do with them? Who is ever going to look at them? Some of these pictures sat on the fridge for so long, they became part of the fabric of our lives. Instantly recognisable, they transport me back to those mothering days.

But I don’t want them on my fridge now. I don’t want to read year 8 school reports that say boy no. 3 is doing well, is polite and kind, but could do with working on his maths.

Calling my daughter, I pass the video over a box of stuff that I hope she will save.

‘You can bin those,’ she says, indicating two handmade dolls she made as a tween.

‘I can’t,’ I blanche, horrified.

‘Well, I don’t want them.’

‘Well, you can bin them,’ I snap, the trauma of putting their tiny hand-stitched bodies in the bin too much to bear.

‘You can always put them back in the attic’, she laughs.

‘Fuck off,’ I hang up.

The son is gone now, back up North, taking the grandkids but not the Star Wars with him.

My attic is empty. There is room to breathe. Or there would be if not for the bags of pictures in the middle of the bloody living room.

I am trying to sort my life out, Stacy, but some things we just seem destined to cling to.

Son no.2 did very well in his year 10 biology, you’ll be pleased to know.