Not Taken

One of the many blessings I wish to place on record is that I am not like the character played by Liam Neeson in the film Taken. His attitude towards his teenage daughter was one of paranoid overprotection. By contrast I think I have a good relationship with my daughter - bearing in mind that fathers and teenagers are often not the easiest combination. Of course we have our disagreements and she can find me embarrassing in public, but we have fallen into a small ritual which really cheers me up: If we happen to pass each other as I am returning home from the paper shop and she is on her way to school, then despite the public setting and the dozens of commuters and other teenagers, we always acknowledge each other with a shoulder-height 'high five'. No words are spoken and often no eye contact is made (she is trying to catch me unprepared), but we've been doing this for years and I still appreciate it.

A second blessing is that my daughter has more than once travelled through Paris with a teenage friend and neither of them have been abducted by criminals and sold as slaves to rich foreigners.