From Strasbourg to Paisley Park

Meldrum Academy for a parents meeting about Sam's Strasbourg trip. Every time We go to a school meeting I think we'll get rumbled as the abnormal, unadjusted parents that we are but no, we are still getting away with it. Tonight we just about resisted the urge to skip through the daffies just to embarrass Sam.

The trip has had to be repeatedly risk assessed because of European events of late, it's such a different world to that of my school trip to Italy when the biggest risk was not finding the Smiths on Italian imprint vinyl or having to eat a bowl of mashed tatties every night at the hotel because vegetarians were an unknown quantity back then.

The trip sounds amazing though, but the question is, can Sam look after himself for a whole week away? Course he can. But that doesn't mean I won't be a complete nightmare of a worried mum the whole week he is away.

As we were leaving, Dave let me know that the charismatic purple one, the misfit that perfectly belonged, had left the building. So young but he surely packed in the experiences of a lifetime 10 times over. His music always takes me back to a couple of long hot summers in my youth. When anything was possible and a lifetime seemed endless. I hadn't really thought of him in years, other than singing along to his classic songs if they came on the radio. If we were all to become even a little more Prince, the world would be a more interesting place. If we were all to become just a little more Victoria Wood, the world would be a much funnier place. If we were to all become a wee bit more Alan Rickman, the world would become deliciously more wry. And If we all become just a swig or two more Lemmy, the world would have much better all nighters. Instead, too many of us are a little more vacuously Kardashian or egotistically Trumpish and the world is all the more worse for it.