IN a few weeks, I will see my parents again – and I will be getting my trusty yellow notebook out.

The latter is something I started to fill in on our last holiday, inspired by the film Crossing Delancey, a beautifully crafted 1980s romantic comedy.

It’s one of my mother and I’s special films, the movies we have watched together over the years (‘wimmin’s fillums’, as my dad would describe them), and one scene has come back to me in recent years.

The key love interest encourages the leading lady to write down the stories told to her by her grandmother, urging: “these are diamonds she gives you.”

And only now have I recognised the importance of preserving as much as possible of our family’s past for my future.

I started with key details, obtained from them over an outside table one sunny evening. I thought we’d best begin with siblings, schools and any other straightforward business before getting into the nitty gritty.

My father was delighted to witter to me at length, supplying the many details of his successes with the air rifle team in the Commonwealth Games and his more recent experiences as an Olympic judge.

But my mum, surprisingly, clammed up the minute that I tried to get her to talk about specific elements of her own family’s past.

How very Irish, to clam up about the drama, but I am determined to get it out of her at some stage. I will plan my assault very carefully, waiting for a moment when she’s relaxing on the sofa unaware and seemingly in the mood to chat, before I silently get out my pen and commence my gentle interrogation.

I want to be able to tell my daughter as much as possible about mum and dad’s histories when they are no longer here, to explain to her where they came from, where they got to, and the things which made them unique, their own stories.

And if they aren’t willing to write it down themselves – I bought them both books for this purpose a few Christmases ago, books which have been completely ignored – I am bleeding well going to have to set about this task myself.

One of my biggest regrets is that my grandparents were all deceased by the time I was a proper adult. They never lived to see my daughter and I was never able to make the most of all of the little nuggets they used to reveal about their lives during the war, working in big houses and so on, by capturing it just as they expressed it.

Mum and dad, no matter how reluctant they are, are not getting off the hook.