LAST weekend when it looked as if summer had landed, I spent a glorious day watching my son get his degree.

I’ve seen plenty of girls and boys in his class get theirs over the past couple of weeks and realised that they aren’t girls and boys any more, they’re men and women and my son is, himself, a man now.

Somehow I blinked and he grew. He has studied very hard for this degree and had to do a load of it online on the tail of Covid which didn’t give the people of this uni era the best experience.

I was told not to whoop when his name was called, so I had to do it inwardly with silent cheers and whistles, but I did clap very loudly. The sun shone, a perfect and happy day.

And I wore my mum’s ring and dad’s chain so they could be with us in spirit too. I know they’d be as proud as we were.

Well done, son. I know you don’t like a fuss, so I’ll leave it there.

Just when you think everything has been invented, you find it hasn’t.

Occasionally, people in the antipodes pass on a present for me to friends living nearby and this latest gift is a corker. It’s a bowl made out of cloth that you put any container into that is bound for the microwave, so you don’t get your hands burned when you take it out.

Absolute genius. How have I lived without it? I never will again. Now guess what everyone is getting for Christmas.

A strange week, another of my pal’s hit sixty and it feels so much bigger a number than 59 - I’m still reeling from that myself.

And the sad loss of my dear friend Maggie’s husband Derek Birkin, who I have known for decades.

He was a lovely man, daft as a brush, fashioned himself as ‘Cowboy Bill’ for my lads who used to go up and visit him many Sundays when he’d have made something for them out of wood, because he could make anything he put his hand to.

I remember their faces at seeing the huge wooden car complete with working steering wheel, but they also loved the swords which he’d paint up as well for he always did a proper job.

He was a magnificent gardener too – in fact he didn’t just have green fingers, the green went right up his arms and into his shoulders.

We will miss him and I know that his family are absolutely broken by him leaving them.

I just hope that heaven is a beautiful garden for him because if it is, he’ll already have his wellies on and the trowel in his hand to make it even better than he found it.