IT was my seven-year-old's school sports day yesterday. I watched one race before having to leave to get to the office.

Pondering it later, even before he asked why I had left so early as soon as I picked him up at 3pm, it dawned on me just how much of my life work takes up.

I'm not moaning in a sense of being workshy, of course. Journalism is a tough old business - it always has been, but even more so these days with fewer numbers yet a greater thirst for news than ever before due to digital developments. I work very hard and I'm proud of mine and this newspaper's achievements over the 15 years I've been here.

Working in this game is a privilege, even on the hardest of days. Thousands of graduates yearn for a shot at working in the media and many never get to fulfil that ambition so I feel very lucky indeed to have had a long newspaper career. For six years of it, I pretty much watched AFC Bournemouth play football and wrote reports and headlines about them. Full-time. Not a bad gig in anyone's book.

But as I looked into the boy's eyes as we walked to pick up his elder sister from the school up the road, I realised that daddy being at sports day is a pretty big deal for a seven-year-old.

It upset me, as it is now having just told both of them to 'please' amuse themselves while daddy writes his Saturday column at the 11th hour.

Although he's bright enough to know work pays the bills and, more importantly for him, covers the cost of us swimming on a Saturday and playing golf on a Sunday, there's an innocence there that I'd love to go back to myself.

At seven years old, he doesn't have to think too much about the world today, which is just as well given some of the atrocities we've had to endure as a nation of late, not to mention the testing moments that lurk around the next corner.

He doesn't have to worry about wages falling so far behind the cost of living, about Donald Trump's finger on the trigger or many of the more local issues we cover on these pages.

It's a glorious time, being seven years old. And as I can't go back to that time in my life, I just wish I could step back from the level of life intensity people of my age face and talk to him more. Shut off and whisk myself away to the world from a seven-year-old's eyes. Even just watching him go about his childlike business would be enough some days, as the heat of the laptop starts to burn my legs.

Even my parents see the generational challenges us thirty-somethings face - and they were always traditionally the first to say how hard they had it when they were my age. Perhaps being grandparents has opened their eyes, for they yearn for as much time with the sprogs as I do.

We only realise how much of our children's early years we miss when they turn around as teenagers and ask that we don't attend events like sports day because "it's embarrassing". By then it's too late and there can only be regrets.

As Sinatra sung so beautifully, 'I've had a few'. I could certainly do without too many more.

2017 feels a little like 1996 to me at the moment. England (albeit the under-21s this week) have just lost to the Germans on penalties, there's a musical movement crossing the political / artistic divide (2017 Grime is 1996 Britpop - so Stormzy, I suppose, is a rapping Noel Gallagher) and there is a Labour leader with a genuine case and ambition to walk through the door of 10 Downing Street.

Who would have even thought that two months ago, let alone said it?

I was lucky enough to be visiting family in South Kensington 24 hours after the polls closed and the Royal Borough fell to Labour.

As daylight became night, I joined in with a chant of 'Ohhhhhh Jeeee-remy Coooooorbyyyyyn' to the White Stripes' 'Seven Nation Army' in a Chelsea pizza restaurant.

Again, who would have thought or had the misfortune to see that two months ago?

Politics (and too much lager)... It's is a funny old game, isn't it?