THIS week ‘The Daughter’ starts secondary school. She’s been sharpening pencils and polishing sharpeners while I’ve organised a secondary mortgage to pay for the must-have uniform list.

You’d think she was going on a Himalayan expedition and providing for the sherpa’s family too. After all, since when was a ‘skort’ vital equipment?

For those unaware of schoolgirl fashion trends, this is a sports skirt with in-built shorts. And is a gumshield really compulsory for food science? Her pre-packed bag weighs a small elephant and would never make it through check-in at a provincial airport.

We’ve also invested in a new winter coat. It’s a designer Superdry one, so at least she shouldn’t get wet if it rains. It is also, apparently, the ONLY thing to be seen in (though I hope she doesn’t mean this literally or I’ve wasted a packet on trousers and jumpers).

The hard-liner in me knows I could have found her an outer layer elsewhere at half the price but my soft-Mum-insides are glad she’s setting off to the bus stop both happy and warm. Her grandfather as a child had desperately wanted a toasty duffel coat and so, a generation later, I was lovingly toggled off each day like Paddington Bear, finding a peg in the high school equivalent of Deepest Darkest Peru, then shivering my way through northern lunch breaks to avoid being frozen out by my peers.

Footwear, too, is always rife with peer determination, and we’ve been suffering with the pain of new shoes. Not the blistering pain of new strappy sandals, but the chronic pain of traumatic shoe shopping.

I’m normally a big shoe shopping fan, but by the fifth shop on the third day when ‘The Daughter’ would countenance nothing the school might deem suitable, I would nearly have paid Jimmy Choo prices just to avoid the torture of further retail units. Fortunately, the ever-closer threat of starting big school with feet coloured black by permanent marker forced her hand, and feet, and saved the day. So now we’re ready for the new school year. Best foot forward, everyone!