It wasn't all that compulsory drinking of beer during Fresher Week that caused it, though...

The university had his name on their list. They had given him student accommodation. UCAS had granted him his student loan. But his name wasn't down on the most important list of all – his Business Studies course.

It wobbled him a bit. Enough for him to make a call lasting more than six minutes to his mother.

"It's so disorganised," said the lad who could easily gain a first class degree in chaos. I pointed out it was probably an administrative error. That they had thousands of new recruits to deal with.

"Well, you'd think they'd know how to do it by now then," he huffed.

Fair point.

I desperately wanted to phone up university admissions and play merry hell, but before I could even offer, he was telling me to leave it to him to sort his own battles.

I bit my lip, but fearing this phone call would be my only one for several days, I seized the moment to ask a small selection of carefully worded questions from the scores that had buzzed through my head just before sleep.

I enquired, as casually as I could, if he'd eaten any of the stuff I'd packed him off with.

"No. I've just had toast," he said. Toast for lunch (Obviously, he wasn't up in time for breakfast). Toast with cheese, to line his stomach before hitting the pubs. And another few rounds lashed with peanut butter before he staggered into bed.

By superhuman feat I managed not to lecture him on the need for vegetables in a balanced diet. Instead, I enquired in casual tones if his bed was comfortable.

"Dunno. I'm drunk every time I get into it," he mumbled.

I took a small shred of comfort from the knowledge that he'd clambered into his own rather than someone else's. And patted myself on the back for getting that one past him without him realising.

This mothering from a distance thing is tricky. You walk a tightrope. On one side of your balancing pole is that need to nurture; on the opposite is your teenage son's need for independence.

And all the time you're tiptoeing, some heinous creature is perching on your shoulders, frothing at the mouth and voicing your deepest, darkest fears of what could possibly happen to your child. Alcoholic poisoning. Choking on vomit (preferably his own) in his sleep. Getting stabbed in some bar room brawl. Setting the toaster on fire, from which flames might leap up and engulf the entire kitchen. Running out of peanut butter...

As heinous creature rants in your ear, your son's fragile male ego is bouncing up and down on the high-wire two feet in front of you.

I was right about the phone call; there was no follow-up to it. My call to him, and two texts, went unanswered.

But as the days slipped by I realised I was fretting about him less and starting to enjoy the freedom his university life has also bestowed on me.

But no sooner had I started to notice how much tidier the place was without him, and Bloke and I had relaxed into our new-found privacy with a bit of slap and tickle on the sofa, than he was home.

It wasn't home or us he'd missed; he was back in Sheffield for a friend's weekend birthday bash. And, needless to say, he was starving hungry so we had to stretch the cosy little supper he walked in on three ways.

We tried to chat as he ate. He did proudly tell us he had sorted out his place on the course, then became as uncommunicative as he had been right the way through school. (All parents know those teatime question and grunt sessions).

Then he clapped his hands to his head and let out an almighty groan.

Toothache? Stomach ulcers? Surely not cirrhosis of the liver already?

Nope. He'd forgotten his washing!