Unfair for our students to be burdened with so much debt so early on in their lives - Sarah Todd

Typical that after always being on the move, either behind a combine wheel in the vast corn fields of Australia, or negotiating hairpin bends in Southeast Asia, staying still for a fortnight on a beach has left him less than relaxed, trying to find an alternative route home.

Meanwhile, letters from the Student Loans Company keep coming for the wanderer’s return.

This is the lad who has had a job every summer since he was 16, right through college and then university. Now he’s having his first ‘holiday’ in eight years.

To say the tone of the letters piling up at home is unpleasant is an understatement. Of course, as soon as he’s back, he’ll get a full-time job and start paying the debt off.

It’s just struck a chord, that these young men and women shouldn’t be starting out in life with this ever-increasing debt (because of the astronomical interest rates) hanging around their necks.

It just doesn’t seem fair they are under the cosh to pay, when so many others - who haven’t lifted a finger towards working - get thousands in benefits.

The reason we hadn’t had a family holiday for so many years was because we had been paying for both children’s university accommodation - to prevent them having to take, like so many youngsters must, that debt on top of tuition fees.

It sounds like a stuck record, but working and paying into the system isn’t rewarded these days. Seeing our offspring starting out in life with debts to pay would be fine if we lived in a fair world. But not while they are destined, like their parents, to have their noses to the grindstone while so many continue to sponge.

Just the other day, on the radio, there was a lady talking about how she struggled to pay the bills and feed her three children on her part-time wage after her husband left. It took ages for any benefits help to kick in.

Now that is wrong. If you have paid into the system it should be there to help you during times of crisis, such as family breakdown, illness and bereavement.

Our £334bn social security system payouts tally is bonkers. Best not even get started on the approximate £5.7m being spent every day putting up illegal migrants in hotels.

If ever your correspondent stays in a hotel, the - taking us back to where we started - prospect of a decent night’s sleep is always eagerly anticipated.

It’s our own fault, with a mattress bartered from a stand at the Great Yorkshire Show when The Daughter was a baby (she is now 25 years old).

Firstly, the deal was struck because it was made in the county. Secondly, we’d had a super day because granny was babysitting and needed to waste a bit of time before driving home.

How silly, being sentimental about a mattress. But we were young and had so much fun on the stand, finding it via those gentlemen offering free samples of wine in the hope of getting a signature for a case or two.

There may no longer be an excuse for keeping hold of it, as the farming press has reported that a UK bed manufacturer has launched a 100 per cent British wool mattress range. So getting one of these would be another good yarn.

The Wrought Iron & Brass Bed Co is claiming to have produced the first and only mattress range filled entirely with pure British wool, without synthetic blends or imported fleece.

An added touch is a traceability system, linking each mattress to the individual farm that supplied the wool.

This is a grassroots environmentally-sound initiative and one, like using wool - a non-toxic alternative to fibreglass as well as being a fire-retardant and humidity marvel - to insulate new-build homes that should be being championed.

Forget flying to climate conferences on the other side of the world, blaming cows or covering farmland with solar panels, it’s time politicians stopped pulling the wool over our eyes and got real.