Daddy Cool: 'I can't remember such a struggle to fight back tears'

FORGET New Labour's Dawn, the Dodgy Dome and the Millennium Bug that never bit, 2000 really was a landmark, at least for the Dry family.

It was the first year since No 1 son was a baby that we dared take a beach holiday. We'd been convinced that until he was eight, we couldn't have a moment to relax in the company of such a hyperactive child. Our timing proved perfect. The magic of the Sicilian sun and a bustling children's club that wore him out from dawn till dusk with football, swimming, tig, and "bandito" gave his parents the first real quality time they could recall since their courting days.

Rather a paradoxical choice of destination, you might think, for what could be the last holiday we have trois. But that's where we'll be headed next week, before our young man heads off for the life of university (in every way superior to the university of life) and we have more quality time than we know what to do with.

Of course, our Italian jaunt wasn't just about getting shot of the ankle-biter. It was when he first showed signs of becoming the young man we now know. It was suddenly a joy to sit down to posh nosh instead of junk and engage in civilised talk of the day's excitements without the interruptions of the TV or telephone.

Yes, nostalgia is thick in the air as we celebrate the boy's coming of age and he has been gracious in letting us have a good wallow before he makes himself scarce in just two weeks.

The highlight for me had to be our trip to see Toy Story 3 on his 18th birthday. It would have been enough that the film's hero, Andy, is himself about to go to college, is never off his laptop, and has taken ownership of the family car. That our boy has every toy in Andy's toy box and home movies of himself playing with them was almost too much. I can't remember such a struggle to fight back the tears. Mum was completely overcome.

But also there was the reminder that watching the original Toy Story on its UK release way back in 1996 was the first cultural experience in which we truly shared (he wasn't yet four). Since then we've been to everything from panto to Shakespearean tragedy, Star Wars to Godot. But I'm not sure even Samuel Beckett wrote a line full of more existential angst than Woody's "I'm lost. Oh! I'm a lost toy!".

Time's up, so this Daddy Cool bids you all adieu, secure in the knowledge that, as No 1 son flies the nest, he will always "fall with style".

• This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on August 29, 2010