My daughter Pippa got it into her head that what she wanted from me for Christmas was a watercolour painting of a trout and that the trout had to be pink.

Pink!

And in order that the idea would not drift away, she dropped it every now and then, into conversations she was having with her mum. I was privately pleased that, at a time that most gifts come off a shelf or a cloths rack, that Pippa should ask for something that would, in our own particular way, engage us both more personally. It says a lot about her.

And so eight days before Christmas I took out the paintbrushes to make a start on the painting. I had no pink paint but, of course, pink is easy to mix up. I did have doubts, though, about whether pink had the depth to offer strong enough contrast to bring the little trout to life and so, jettisoning at least a part of my brief, settled on another colour when rummaging through my tubes of watercolours: cadmium red.

I have to say the “brown” trout came out looking pretty nice even though it looked as though it was wearing fancy dress. This is no particular credit to me. Brown trout are as pretty as you might hope anything to be and so all that was required of me was to create a plausible likeness. Catriona found a nice frame when she went Christmas shopping down on the coast and now the cadmium trout looks happy and at home inside it.

I hope that Pippa enjoys her little painting and that it should remain a little connection when we are separated in time and space. Who knows where it will end up? Maybe on a wall that none of us now even know exists?

And I hope that little not-quite-pink trout will swim strongly into a future that we will share together and maybe even beyond that into a future that belongs just to Pippa and to people who are not even here yet.

Not quite pink!