IT has been back-to-university month – emotionally tough, physically even harder. I’m not one to complain but I have a stressful job, with long hours, and I need the weekends to rest. But all I’ve done lately is drive up and down the A1 like someone on an unpaid work experience placement with Pickfords.

First, it was down to London in a removal van with my daughter’s “stuff”, most of which had been piled up at the back of our lounge throughout the summer.

Hannah has joined a post-graduate dance company and will be living with four other dancers in a tiny, but hideously expensive, house in Tottenham before going on a tour of the world and living her dream.

She travelled to London by train and my wife and I followed in the rickety old van a couple of days later.

We eventually got there after a fivehour drive, moved her in, stayed overnight in a nearby hotel, spent hours the next morning trudging round and round Ikea to buy a storage box and a lampshade for her bedroom, and then set off home.

It seemed even longer on the way back. It may have had something to do with the fact that my wife made me listen to The Archers. I honestly think I’d rather walk round Ikea.

The following weekend, with a hard week at work sandwiched in between, it was our son Jack’s turn to be moved, along with all of his rubbish which has spent the summer blocking the hall and what we call “the quiet room”.

Off we set again, this time to Cambridge.

It isn’t quite as far as London so we decided to go there and back in one day to save on the cost of a hotel.

Jack is moving out of halls of residence into an old town house this year and his room is on the first floor.

He is studying English so he has lots of boxes of very heavy books.

I started humping the boxes up the stairs while my wife supervised and Jack greeted one of his flat-mates who’d arrived at the same time.

Naturally, they had a lot of catching up to do and they also needed to compare rooms in minute detail.

So I just carried on, lifting Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wordsworth, Dickens, Uncle Tom Cobley and all up the blessed stairs. And tell me this – why do they all have to be hardback?

I’d just shifted the last box, and I was dripping with sweat, when Jackemerged from his flat-mate’s room to ask: “Is there anything needs doing?”

Just then, another car pulled up outside, jam-packed with boxes, suitcases, and pots and pans. A young man leapt out and bounded up the stairs to catch up with his flat-mates.

I watched from halfway up the stairs as his dad began to wearily unload the car. I went outside and introduced myself.

“I’ll give you a hand,” I said, and started the long climb with another box.

It’s what dads do.