My maternal grandfather was born and raised in Glasgow. His genial and affectionate personality was a major influence in my early years, as he skipped around aged 80 in his slippers, bamboozling this five year old with his nimble-footed football skills. He had had a trial for Chelsea, but given that footballers’ incomes over a hundred years ago bore no comparison with today’s massive salaries, he opted for the safer life of being a printer in Fleet Street.

Being a Scot ran through him like the lettering in Blackpool rock, but it was a quiet pride. I do wonder what he would have made of the vote on Scottish independence, the results of which will be known as you read this. I spent the most of the first two decades of my life in Lancashire and have an abiding affection for the North which is certainly greater than my attachment to London where I was born and spent my first 18 months. I mention this only because if Lancashire were to seek independence from the rest of the UK, I would regard that as being just as perplexing as the desire of a lot of Scots to detach themselves from the United Kingdom.

I can only quote the only astronaut I have ever met, Mike Fincke, who told me that one of the many abiding impressions he brought back from hundreds of days spent on the space station, was the absurdity of border disputes and wars over boundaries. You only have to glance at what is happening between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and the Gaza strip, and scores of other parts of the world, to come to the conclusion that coming together must be better than allowing wedges to be driven for ideological or economic reasons.

A glance at any world map will reveal two little islands nestling close to the western edge of Europe. Surely it defies logic that those two comparatively tiny land masses should contain three different countries and four different administrations. The European mainland is vast and subdivision was inevitable, but many countries would now like to work towards a completely unified Europe which, all historical nationalism aside, is a much more logical way of conducting affairs. We are very lucky in the UK. We can be English and British, or Scottish and British – in whichever order we like. I think my grandpa Jock would agree.