WHEN families split up, there’s sometimes a bidding war for the affection of the children. It’s sad, expensive and totally pointless.

As the conference season ends, we all feel like one of those kids-in-the-middle.

First we had Nick Clegg offering to feed our children, if only we would love the Lib Dems like we used to. Ed Miliband said he would give us a hand with the gas and electricity bills, but we had to stop believing those nasty stories about him blowing the family savings.

Then, David Cameron offered us a tank full of cheap petrol and help with the mortgage.

Yes, he’s had to sell all our toys and the family puppy, but that was because Ed and his business partner, that awful Mr Balls, robbed the bank account for their hare-brained schemes.

But promises rarely translate into reality.

Free school meals for all will be an administrative nightmare for many schools. If oil prices rise, you can forget about an energy price freeze.

I’m not sure a subsidised mortgage for a house you can never afford is much of a present anyway.

When you want good advice go to the doctor and I heard some from a GP speaking on local radio about the other big promises – seven day opening for surgeries.

A great idea, he said, and the money the Government is stumping up might just be enough for a short pilot in an area the size of Durham and Teesside.

Because he and his colleagues can’t function without an army of receptionists, ambulance drivers, hospital staff, technicians, clinical waste managers, pharmacists. They all have to be recruited and paid.

We’ll need more reality checks as the votehungry politicians go on their rounds. Still, it’s nice to know they really do still love us.

I’ve said here before the FA Cup has lost its magic. Once an event that stopped the nation, it’s just another fixture in an overcrowded, commercialised calendar.

There’s one stage of the competition that retains its ageless appeal – the preliminary rounds, before the top teams arrive.

Some people find poetry in the names of long-forgotten rail stations and halts.

There’s a bit of that lyricism in non-league sides, for me.

At the weekend we had the likes of Goldhawk and Curzon Ashton, Tonbridge Angels, Whyteleafe and Chalfont St Peter in action, and of course, West Auckland and Marske flying the flag for the region.

The names will mean nothing to most people casually scanning the results. But to a few hundred grassroots devotees, they’re everything. It will end soon for them all – because this is one journey where they surely know they won’t reach the destination. Defeat will come, maybe in a Tuesday night replay on a boggy pitch.

Or maybe they’ll make it to the third round proper. There they’ll be soundly spanked by 11 overpaid mercenaries and earn a few patronising words about plucky underdogs.

They’ll return with happy memories, hangovers and hopefully enough cash to paint the changing rooms. By the time those mercenaries walk out at Wembley, shepherded by a neurotic manager with one eye on the Champions League, they’ll have returned to their proper station and a brief paragraph in the local paper.

But it will have been fun while it lasted and I hope they enjoy every minute.