I’m not fanatical about green issues but, doing what I do, I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of recycling. Spending time with Dodge has reinforced that belief too. So, having a daughter working in an industry which encourages a ‘wear once and chuck into landfill’ attitude is … well, at the very least, strange.

And, given the relationship that Jools and I have, I sometimes wonder whether she has chosen that sort of work just to annoy me.

Mothers and daughters, eh? I qualify in both categories and I still can’t work it out.

When I’d got through on the phone to Jools, I had been surprised that she sounded positively benign. I wouldn’t go as far as saying ‘welcoming’ but at least not downright adversarial. When I arrived at the flat, I discovered the explanation. She was pissed.

Not aggressively pissed, benignly pissed. Thank God. She’d been to the launch of some new online fashion magazine and clearly had a good time. She’d met some of the editorial staff and thought there was a good chance of her getting some work for them.

The fact that I have never read any of my daughter’s fashion journalism might be seen as yet another example of bad parenting. But I have asked on many occasions to see in print or be given an online link to her writing and always received the same rebuff. ‘No, Ellen, it’s not the kind of stuff that would interest you.’

When I arrived at the flat, frazzled after my long traffic jam, I found Jools had been benign enough to have opened a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and already poured me a generous slug. I was so desperate after the hours that I’d spent in the car that the first thing I had to do was fly to the loo. But when I returned, I took a grateful slurp of the red.

It was only then that I took in what my daughter was wearing. I’m not that old, but Jools’s choice of clothes sometimes makes me feel very, very old. Jurassic old, at least. I know in my youth I wore some fairly ridiculous ensembles, but I think back then we did have a concept of things going together. Well, that was out the window so far as Jools was concerned.

That evening, for the event she’d just returned from, she had favoured leggings in a swirl of what would once have been called ‘psychedelic’ colours, a short shocking-pink lacy skirt and a blue PVC gilet over a yellow rugby shirt. Her feet were in silver trainers studded with purple sequins. Her make-up was a homage to the Addams Family. To complete the effect, her hair was gathered into two buns on top of her head, giving her the silhouette of Minnie Mouse.

What was terrifying about it, for me, was that what she was wearing must actually have been fashionable. Jools wouldn’t be seen dead in anything less. God, I felt even older.