Rona Dougall: Every home is a haven. Hopefully, Ukrainian refugees find another here

I know many people will be delighted that the clocks go forward next weekend, marking the official start of what we laughingly call British Summer Time.

But I’m afraid I’m not keen on this time of year for all sorts of shallow reasons – the main one being that the lovely but unforgiving spring light highlights how dirty my windows are and how shabby my house looks.

The long, dark winter nights and gloomy mornings hide a multitude of sins. And candlelight is so flattering on tired old rooms, and tired old faces, as I keep telling the directors at work. Let’s do away with the harsh studio lights and use candles instead, I suggest. They’re not buying it, sadly.

I seem to wage a never-ending battle against keeping my home clean and tidy. Where does all this clutter come from? But I know I’m lucky.

Within these four walls we’ve brought up our children, cocooned during the long pandemic, closed the front door and kept the world at bay.

Yes, there are marks on the hall walls but what memories we have, of our daughters racing up and down the stairs. And the deep grooves on the kitchen floor remind us of drunken dancing in high heels at memorable New Year parties.

Looking out the kitchen window at the bedraggled garden, I picture our long gone and much-loved cat basking in the sun under the cherry blossom tree.

Everywhere there are comforting reminders of the life our family has built together.

As a nation we are obsessed with our homes, buying them, selling them, doing them up. Finding and creating the “dream home” is big business.

You can’t turn the telly on, it seems, without coming across yet another home makeover or property search programme.

From Grand Designs, where in a recent episode one couple spent £100,000 on a kitchen, to Love It Or List It, we can’t seem to get enough of them.

There’s even one called 60 Minute Makeover. Come on, that’s just a bit of a tidy up, isn’t it?

My granny was a serial mover and must have flitted every couple of years. I think she loved the idea of a fresh start. Most of us like to stay put though, don’t we? To put down roots and enjoy the security.

Our homes are our sanctuary. So it’s hard to imagine what the refugees fleeing Ukraine are going through right now.

Russia’s attack on its neighbour has triggered the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. The scale of the exodus is staggering and the plight of these people heartbreaking.

Nearly three million of them have left their homes, not knowing when or if they’ll ever go back.

There was a picture in one of the papers last week that stopped me in my tracks. It was of a seven-year-old boy with his head down, walking over the border into Poland. He’d lost his parents and all the wee lad had with him was a plastic bag of toys and some sweets. It was just awful.

I heard a woman from Kyiv being interviewed on the news talking about how she never thought this would happen to her. “I had a beautiful life. I had a beautiful apartment and I’ve had to leave it all behind.”

Thousands of people have signed up to the UK Government’s refugee hosting scheme. The Scottish Government has even proposed a super sponsor scheme intended to short-circuit a lot of the red tape and get Ukrainians over here more quickly.

The first minister hasn’t ruled out taking in a family herself. “I’m not going to ask other people to do things I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself,” she said.

Here’s hoping many of these refuges will find a safe haven in Scotland very soon.