I'm feeling decidedly old today. Middle Son has attained the ripe old age of seventeen. How did that happen? I blinked, turned around, stretched a bit and the cherubic blond angel has turned into six foot two of young adult with a hair style that the Big Lad last night described as looking like it had been cut with garden shears. That hair cut cost me £20 thank you very much. Middle Son had gone to the barbers clutching a magazine, showed the nice lady a picture and asked her to make it happen. She did and while no garden shears were evident when I returned to pick him up, I have to concur with the BL - I could have done it for nowt and a lend of the neighbour's hedge clippers. However MS is happy and isn't that the point of the exercise? Teenagers don't do happy much I find and one must exploit the situations where it is displayed. So following the success of the barbers we made a trip to Forbidden Planet in order to extend his collection of comics - sorry graphic novels - do you know how much comics cost nowadays? I cast a fond memory towards the days of the Beano. He's still smiling. I'm on a winning streak here and go all out on a trip to Fat Face. I refrain from all comments and just proffer the switch card. Money cannot buy you happiness but it can buy you a fleeting smile from the face of your teenage child and that's priceless. This morning he reminded me that underneath the coolness and grumbling there still lives that funny wee boy who used to put on his clothes backwards in the style of Backtofront from the Raggy Dolls. The shopping list was sitting on the kitchen table - unless I write it down you've buckleys chance of me remembering - under the M&S list where I'd written 'birthday cake' he'd added 'Try to get the Chocolate Caterpillar.' Bless.

Do you know that in some cultures birthdays aren't celebrated per se? There's no cake and candles and pressies, however Mothers are thanked for giving birth to the person. Myself I use accounts of the day of their births as blackmail material or as leverage. 'Do you know how long I was in labour with you? I suffered hours of agony having you and you won't even make me a mug of coffee.' It used to work instantaneously until the BL let slip that the longest I was in labour was two and a half hours and that it's the one thing I've ever done in my life with a sense of urgency. I retorted that if he was trying to get something the size of a football out of there he would have been trying to get it over and done with too. That makes mugs of coffee appear sharpish. Children do not want details of that sort, anymore than they want to consider what you and daddy did to 'make the baby that is them.' As far as they're concerned number of children in the family = the number of times you've done it. In fact they actually believe that they are the result of immaculate conception.