Jeremy Watson: 'My IT support department has disappeared'

EVEN the cat could sense she was going. Like a demented furball, he wrapped his front paws around her neck, digging them in, and looked her in the eye, as if to plead: "Don't Go!"

But she went anyway – off to university and a new life. As the head of the science faculty, herself a mother with two university-aged children, explained the next day at a reception for openly-blubbering parents, it's no easier the second time around.

When the first child leaves home, the bitter pill is sugar-coated by the fact that the second is still around, trashing her bedroom, coming home late at night, emptying the fridge, creating mess. The fledgling is still in the nest. When the second departs, a chasm opens that no amount of "see-you-next weekends" will ever replace.

It's not just that I will miss their ever-cheerful demeanours, their constantly smiling faces and the way they used to throw themselves into household chores with reckless abandon. No. I'm unlikely to miss any of that. It's just that my IT support department has disappeared with them. How am I supposed to survive in this gadget-crazy world without at least one person who knows how to work the damn things?

I was secretly pleased when video recorders were overtaken by DVDs because I never really mastered the art of pre-recording programmes I never watched anyway. However, the task was dutifully performed by my daughters. The same goes now for my iPod. Running low on battery? Just toss it to whichever child was available and, eventually, after a little bit of prodding (from me) and griping (from them), it would come back refreshed and ready for action. I am now going to have to learn how to do this myself.

Playing Guitar Hero is also going to be a bit of a challenge. Up to now, I would simply enter the stage seconds before the song was due to start, pick up my axe and launch into rock god mode. Like roadies, they would have set the whole thing up on the Wii before I deigned to join them. No self-respecting rock star should have to do all this stuff for himself.

The list goes on: downloading songs; getting back to normal texting mode when I have accidentally triggered the predictive version; creating invitations for our next party. Between you and me, I can't wait for next weekend. I'll hug them to death as they come through the door then hand them my iPod.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 3 October, 2010