ONE minute you have a bouncing little boy who can eat seven bananas in one day and still come up smiling, the next someone has stolen a decade or so of your life and he’s off on his first day at high school.

The wheel of time turns exceedingly slowly for children, when a week is a lifetime and a year an inconceivable measurement akin to those used to chart the life cycles of stars.

But for an adult time flies by... well, like when you’re a driver on a train. It seems like no time at all has passed between working out how to fasten the tapes on a disposable nappy when your fingers are full of Sudocrem to measuring him up for his first school blazer.

Off he went this week, clip-on tie adjusted in the mirror, shoes polished, blazer just a little too big (but you have to have growing room in these things, right?) to board the bus for his first trip to big school.

He seemed remarkably sanguine about the whole affair. I tried to think back to my first day at high school, but all I could properly recall was the absolute fact that was doing the rounds that “older lads” flushed first year’s heads down the toilet as a matter of course on their first day. That and the fact my blazer was two sizes too big.

As it turned out, I never got my head flushed down the toilet, nor did anyone, come to think of it. And my blazer remained two sizes too big as I wore it for about a week before realising that no-one else was wearing one other than those one or two kids who came to school in their parents’ cars and carried briefcases.

No-one wanted to mix with them. Although they probably all drive Ferraris and have holiday homes in the south of France these days.

The night before the boy started school, I lay awake staring into the darkness, wondering if he’d be able to catch the bus OK, anxious that he wouldn’t get any lunch, worried that he’d get lost in the busy corridors.

Then my wife gently pointed out that he wasn’t actually stupid, and I had to accept that he wasn’t a baby any more, that if he wanted to have seven bananas he could, in all likelihood, peel them himself these days. That he was all grown up now.

With that in mind, I have regretfully come to the decision that I can no longer really write in this column about what my son gets up to now.

He’s given me lots of good material over the last few years, but when a young man starts big school he probably has a right not to have his every move documented in the T&A, no matter how comical.

On the other hand, my daughter is still two years away from moving up to high school, so she’s still fair game as column material...