I want to share with you the hazy beauty of standing with my ponies in the grass at 5.40am, and the salty crunch of a cheese toastie with cheddar that behaves like cheese, and the surprise I feel at the banks of wild flowers on so many roundabouts, and the delightful feeling of unwrapping newspaper from my old kitchen plates as I take them all from three years in storage and recreate my home, since all these things are happening every day. And I will, I will, soon, again, but immediately today I want to talk with you about the things that’s pressing down on my temple, a throb of anxiety I know is there and cannot ignore, and that’s how I tackle the extremely contentious issue of whether or not my almost-14 year old daughter should now be given a phone.

Sometime last year, I wrote a piece for The Times about how none of my children would have phones until they were 17. When I wrote it, I absolutely believed it. So it’s a bit of a climb down to say, um, yeah, in theory that’s exactly what I want, but now I am not so sure.

Evangeline starts school next week, and is lobbying me hard for a phone, one that has text, photos, music, WhatsApp (this seems essential in England, unlike America, where hardly any adults use it, let alone children), and perhaps SnapChat, although that’s the contentious one between us.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve done a bit of research into the different phones and settings, so I wanted to share this with you, and also explain how I have managed phones up until now (she’s not a complete stranger to SnapChat already, and TikTok too recently, but we have a system that’s been highly controlled and worked until now with it). I’m going to share how I'm managing screens right now with Dash and Lester, too, who are now 12 and almost 10. As ever, it would be wonderful if you could share your experience in the comments, as I think that we can help one another with this one.