The boxes are packed, the cupboards, drawers and wardrobe are empty and the black sacks ready for the tip are mounting up. There’s an air of excitement but behind the smiles I’m feeling a smidgen of sadness and pretending that my watery eyes are due to a cold and not the occasional tear that I’m fighting back.

Lovely big son number one is flying the nest…again! This time it’s for good. Before now his room was still very much his room. Full of his “stuff”. The awful posters on the wall, the piles of computer games, the books on how to survive puberty, make your first million or survive on a fiver a week as a student. Gone are the boxes of old uni notes and shelves of Poundland aftershave and other lotions and potions that have long gone out of date and have turned a “funny”colour. Found are the odd socks that never made it to the laundry basket, all the birthday/Christmas cards he’s received from the year dot and bits and pieces which we have no idea of what they actually are! His room has until now been the place he returned to during uni holidays and when living on next to nothing as a practically out of work graduate became impossible. This was always considered home.

Tomorrow this will cease being home and a small cottage on the edge of Salisbury Plain will become home. My lovely big son and his lovely girlfriend are moving in together and in a couple of months the two of them will become three. A family.

Tomorrow will be a big day for the two of them. Tomorrow will be a big day for me. Another chapter in my family life has ended, but it’s a big book and there’s still a lot of exciting chapters to get through. Meanwhile though, I’ll keep the tissues close at hand for those pesky watery eyes!