IT’S the standard dinner party question: What’s your earliest memory? Some say it’s darkness, a lot of blood, then blinding light followed by a gang of people dressed in green. They reckon it’s birth, but really it’s just a flashback to a corporate weekend of paint-balling, in which you crawled out of a tunnel and got concussed by a flying ball – the people in green weren’t surgeons but your mates, laughing.

For others it’s a traumatic memory, like finding out that it’s your dad who dresses as Santa every Christmas (or even more traumatic, accidentally opening his wardrobe door and discovering that he’s also the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and a States deputy).

My earliest memory was the gentle dunk of wood on the back of my head and then a cold sensation around my nether regions – my mother used to change my nappy on the kitchen table. The one thing I can’t remember was my first day at St Saviour’s School. I recall many of the kids there – twins Jonathan and Gerard and Donna and Vanessa. Jenny and Jennifer, a Sandra, a Richard and a Philip and my mate and sparring partner, Andy McCarthy.

I also remember the teachers: Mrs Schofield, Mrs Chantry, Mrs Sexton and Mrs Locket (as well as Mr Foxen and Mr Sebire – the headmaster, they both had beards – in fact, I thought the head was called Mr Sebeard).

I can remember the school, the drinking fountain, the bell rope, the stage in the hall, the violinist in assembly, the fields, the tunnels and the school bus. But I can’t remember the actual fear of turning up there on the first day.

The reason I mention that is that this week saw Little Red’s first day at school.

I thought I was going to get a phone call from the Gaffer saying that she had kicked, screamed, tore, bit and gouged her way in. But no.

‘We were stood in the playground for a couple of minutes when she just pointed at the gate and said: “OK mummy, you can go now.” As easy as that.’

I couldn’t believe it. Her elder sister’s school debut three years ago was like trying to get an LSD-crazed monkey into a safe.

A complete contrast.

When I got home I asked her what her day had been like.

She looked at me with all the worldly airs a four-year-old can muster and said: ‘We did maths.’

‘What about new friends?’

‘Ben,’ she said.

Not for her the company of other females (rivals?).

‘Not the Ben from playschool?’

‘No, another Ben. And I didn’t kiss him.’

What can you say to that? Are there words?

That night as she lay sleeping, I picked up the school cardigan that she had thrown on the hall floor.

And as I turned the outside-in sleeves inside-out, I thought: ‘God, it takes them ages to grow up.’

And it does. Yonks. I don’t believe these people who say, ‘Ooh, don’t they grow up fast?’

Well, no, they don’t. It seems a lifetime ago since we were in that delivery room with the Princess and it’s as if we were still fresh-faced youngsters when we were in there with Little Red.

So having kids is not the blink-and-you-miss-it experience people tell you it is. It’s really long and drawn out, like an EastEnders plotline (and sometimes, just as hard going).

This week I became an uncle.

Not the pretend uncle that I’ve been all these years, having nicked a nephew and two nieces off the Gaffer, but a real blood uncle. My sister, V, and her fiance, Ned, had a bouncing (8lb 3oz) baby boy.

The little tyke did things properly, of course, and like famous babies such as Castor and Pollux (Zeus and Leda’s nippers), McDuff in Macbeth, Gaius Julius Caesar (apparently) and Uncle Shack, he was born by Caesarean section (he, too, didn’t really want to come out, so they evicted him).

Though she was more than 24 hours in labour and there were scary complications, Albie George (a brother for Ambrose) took his first peek at his mum and dad on Friday 5 September (I only wrote that so I can pin this story to the fridge and circle the date in red felt tip, to avoid the embarrassment of forgetting his birthday).

When we went to visit, V was exhausted. She’d had no sleep for two nights and had received a constant barrage of visitors. At one point, like the chorus line at the London Palladium waiting to go on after Jimmy Tarbuck had stopped sucking up to the Queen Mum, there were six of us behind the curtains, much to the matron’s annoyance.

‘I can’t wait to get a good night’s sleep tonight,’ said V.

‘You’ll never get a good night’s sleep again, love,’ said her friend, Joanne, a mother.

So here, for Albie, a mixture of advice, anecdotes and sheer rubbish he can cut out and keep and  then lose.

1. Lasses. One of the greatest miseries of being a boy is that you will never, ever understand lasses. It’s also one of the greatest joys, because you will always try to (and sometimes you will think that you have succeeded – but believe me, ultimately, you won’t). So the best of British, Albie. Like the rest of us, you’re on your own there, mate.

2. Try not to become a white Rasta. Like fat rockabillies, bald heavy metallers, curly-haired punks or ginger goths, it just looks a bit silly.

3. Don’t bother learning maths at school. Me and your dad are of that age when we had to go through all the sweat and heartache of learning logarithms, base numbers, converting decimals to fractions and Pythagoras Theorem – then they went and invented calculators. So use maths lessons as an extended playtime and concentrate on art, history, literature and science.

4. Do, however, learn car/home maintenance, domestic electronics and plumbing – it’ll save you a fortune.

5. Don’t listen to fans of rubbish blues – it is all right to like country and western. In his prime, Johnny Cash would have whupped Eric Clapton’s butt (and I know whom I would have bet on to win in a game of slapsies between John Mayall and Waylon Jennings).

6. Seeing as your mum is from up north, here’s the advice a Yorkshireman gives to his son: ‘See all, hear all, say nowt. Eat all, drink all and pay nowt. And if you ever do owt for nowt, ollus do it for thissen.’ It worked for me.

7. I’ll never be able to teach you anything with a football (that’s your dad’s department) but when it comes to the banjo, Uncle Shack’s your man.

8. Always keep your mum and dad sweet. Remember, if you play your cards right, you can live off them for the next 16 to 18 years, maybe longer.

9. Always stay mates with your brother. You will never have a better mate than an older brother.

10. Have a good ’un. I won’t lie and say that life is easy. But when it’s good, there’s no better place to be. Oh, and if I’m still alive, it’s the uncle’s prerogative to buy you your first pint.

I wonder how much a pint of Guinness will be in 2026?