HOORAY for Susan Freestone. She's the head teacher of an independent school who has decided to bring back rugby onto the curriculum, just when many other schools are dropping it because it is too dangerous.

"There are risks in everything we do in life. It's a question of managing those risks as best you can," says Mrs Freestone, who has brought in highly qualified coaches and is not making rugby compulsory - and is also doubtless desperately crossing her fingers that they have no accidents.

Yes, of course, there have been some tragic accidents on the rugby field - as well as many minor ones, of which this family knows only too well. But we seem to have lost our sense of perspective. A young man is at far greater risk getting into a car with friends than he ever is on the rugby field, but we're not banning cars. We almost shrug our shoulders and accept that.

We know that stuffing sweets and burgers and fizzy drinks is bad for our children too. But I don't see McDonalds or Coca-Cola going out of business.

Meanwhile, a report by Ofsted says that many children are missing out on outdoor education because teachers are scared of being sued if something goes wrong. And yet another report last week said that most children are rarely allowed to stray more than 100 yards from their homes - which sounds pretty much like house arrest to me.

We are just beginning to realise that by keeping our children safely tucked up indoors, watching television, playing computer games, we're actually endangering their lives even more, as they succumb, ever earlier, to diseases born of idleness and sloth.

Mrs Freestone is right. Life is a dangerous activity and nothing is totally without risk. Surely the best thing we can do with our children is to expose them to some small risk so that they learn to manage greater ones.

If we wrap them up in cotton wool, they'll just end up choking on it.

PS: on the pro-hunt demonstration. When police get serious with protestors, they bring in the police horses. Demonstrators normally scatter and flee.

The pro-hunt lot, of course, stood their ground and merely produced mints from their Barbour pockets and soon had the police horses - literally - eating out of their hands, says my man with the packet of Polos.

Definitely a different sort of demonstrator.

DID you see Leslie Ash and Lee Chapman on television on Monday night, telling their version of their marriage and Leslie's broken ribs and punctured lung?

Did you find it hard to believe? Funnily enough, you weren't the only one.

OH how we smiled at the story of the housewife who, fed up with her local council dustmen, bought her own bin wagon.

Then Richmondshire bin men - for years so brilliant and cheery, efficient and friendly - not only didn't empty our bins properly last week, but left me a bag of someone else's rubbish as well. Now, if the council is going to start delivering rubbish instead of collecting it, suddenly buying my own bin wagon doesn't seem so daft.

EXAM results are getting better, aren't they? Standards are improving, aren't they?

Well, tell me this. If all our children know more than ever before, why are universities offering crash courses in basics - such as spelling, grammar and punctuation?

At least seven universities now provide classes for freshers in basic essay writing, the sort of thing most of us master in primary school but which is now apparently a lost art to some of our brightest 18 year olds.

Professor Joe Farrell, who teaches modern languages at the University of Strathclyde, said: "We are dealing with people who have no idea of the grammar of their own language so we have to do elementary teaching before we can begin on their target language."

It's not the students' fault: they've never been taught.

But when universities are having to teach the curriculum of primary schools, then we are in no position to crow about our education system.

SO now manufacturers of chocolate bars are going to modify their supersize bars - make them into two smaller bars in one wrapper. As if that's going to make any difference to the national waistline. It's not the enormous bars themselves that are the problem, rather the total lack of small sizes. It's almost impossible to find a small, really small, bar or packet of anything. At motorway service stations, for instance, the bags of sweets are always ENORMOUS. And I'm sure the standard size chocolate bar now is the same size as the big bar of our youth.

So, even if you fancy just a little smidgin of chocolate, you are forced to have a huge great bar.

Shame, isn't it?

MORE women than men are now being ordained into the church of England.

More women than men are becoming solicitors. More women than men are becoming archaeologists. More women than men are becoming doctors.

So, as women take over the professions, what are we going to do with the men?

ALMOST half the population have apparently been unfaithful to their partner says a new survey.

One in two, eh? So, by the law of averages, if it's not you, it must be him.

Wonderful what you can do with statistics.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/ griffiths.html