This column is dedicated to all the dads (and mums) whose children have left home for university this month...

FOR as long as I can remember, there have been two main passions in my baby girl’s life: food and dancing.

When she was six, she told me: “Daddy, I love you almost as much as I love cheese sandwiches.”

She really loved cheese sandwiches, so I took it as a huge compliment.

She went on to show her love of dancing at the age of eight when she walked across the dance-floor at a New Year’s Eve party and told me to sit down because my disco moves were too embarrassing.

It is that artistic judgement, those high standards, which have earned her a place at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and led to her leaving home.

In the days leading up to the Big Move, my wife had sorted her out with trips to Ikea and the supermarket, buying stuff for the new home she now shares with three other student dancers in Leeds.

New poppy-patterned bedding, cutlery, crockery, pots and pans, a wall clock, food supplies and other bits and pieces had all been ferried down.

When the big day came, after she’d given her Mum the longest parting hug in history, it was left to me to drive her down the motorway with the last of the belongings she wanted to take.

“We’ll stop for breakfast on the way,” I promised and her eyes lit up.

In view of her lifelong love of food and eating out, it seemed the right thing to do. Not the last supper, but the last breakfast.

We stopped at Wetherby Services, ordered two full English breakfasts, and reminisced.

I told her about the hardest thing I’d ever done: when she needed an emergency operation as a baby and I’d had to carry her into the operating theatre and hand her over to a surgeon before crying all the way back to the waiting room.

“I know, Dad,” she sighed. “You’ve told me a thousand times.”

Breakfast over, we completed the journey to her new house and began to move her things up to the room where she’ll be sleeping, without us being on the other side of the wall.

There wasn’t much really – just her portable telly, some books, and a few odds and ends.

Spread-eagled on top of the box of books was her threadbare, glasseyed, old teddy. It had been her Mum’s when she was a little girl and it was dressed in a tiny cream babygrow all four of our children had worn down the years.

That’s when the lump in my throat began to thicken. It had been hard enough when we’d left her older brother, The Big Friendly Giant, in his student house in Hull two years ago, but this was even harder. This was my only baby girl.

She was far too excited, meeting up with her new house mates, to worry about me. I gave her a cuddle on the doorstep, told her I loved her nearly as much as cheese sandwiches, and walked away.

It was only when I looked back and saw her watching me through the window panel of her new front door that the world finally turned all misty.

P.S. When I got back to Darlington that day, I attended the freedom parade by members of the 3 Rifles regiment who had recently returned from Afghanistan.

What struck me straight away was how young many of them were. One, only 19, had lost a leg in a bomb blast.

If it’s hard enough when your child leaves home to go to a dancing school in Leeds, what must it be like for those parents who have to watch their children go off to war?

THE THINGS THEY SAY

AT Guisborough Women’s Luncheon Club, Margaret Cowell remembered the time her friend’s son, Dylan, aged four, asked: “Does God control the sun?”

“I think he must,” replied his Mum.

“Well, send him an email and ask him to turn it down a bit,” came the reply.

FOR Lucy Richardson, one of our Teesside reporters, car journeys with five-year-old daughter, Maisy, have turned into Mastermind.

On a recent supermarket trip she covered procreation, photosynthesis and the periodic table. Then Maisy asked where paint and cars were made.

“That’s easy – in factories,” Lucy told her.

To which Maisy replied: “Why are so many things made in fat countries?”

WHEN deciding where to go for lunch one Saturday lunchtime, Maisy asked: “Why don’t we go to Pizza Express – or maybe Pizza Barratt’s?”