Julie Jay: I was never much of a hugger, but now hugs are a big thing in our house 

I have often wondered, how many times is too many times to tell my kids I love them

Having grown up in a quintessential Irish family household in the ’90s, the closest any of us got to a hug was somebody performing the Heimlich manoeuvre when we started choking on our deep-pan Goodfellas pizza.

This week with my students, I revisited the poem ‘A Call’ by Séamus Heaney, who like leather jackets never goes out of fashion.

The poem recalls a telephone call to Heaney’s father’s house, with the wait that follows leading to a rumination on the passage of time and the inevitability of death.