THIS week I watched a young lad in the park clearly having a great time rolling down a grassy bank. His mother wasn't so pleased when she saw him.

"You stupid, stupid boy," she shouted. "Look at you, covered in muck and grass stains. How can we take you into town now looking like that?"

What he looked like was a perfectly normal, healthy boy who had been happily playing outside. But it did occur to me then that children, on the whole, do seem remarkably well turned out nowadays.

When I was small, we wore the same clothes several days in a row. If I spilt something on my top, or got mud on my skirt, my mother would sponge it clean. And who could blame her?

Then, wash day was one day a week. My mother had a basic washing machine and a mangle. She considered herself luckier than her mother who had to scrub her clothes clean on a ribbed washboard in the sink.

Still, the washing took all day and was hard work. The damp laundry was sometimes strung all over the kitchen for days.

Now that we can have clean, spun and tumble dried laundry at the touch of a few buttons, every day of the week has become wash day. In fact, in our house, the machine is on about three times a day.

I am constantly berating the boys for chucking perfectly clean items into the wash just because they are too lazy to fold them and put them in a drawer. "It's easier," they protest.

I have even seen my 12-year-old niece change into a freshly laundered pair of track suit bottoms and T-shirt after a bath, only to drop them, one hour later, in front of the washing machine before she goes to bed. And all she has done in them is watch TV.

Washing may be easier, but we are now spending more time than ever doing it. Perhaps it's the fault of those nauseating washing powder adverts. The ones where we have perfect mums in perfect families producing perfect whites for their perfect children.

But life's not like that. And besides, constant use of the washing machine isn't good for the environment. Apart from all the pollutants in detergents, we use about 12 gallons of water every time we put on a load.

I'm all for a return to having wash day once a week. Perhaps then we'd be a bit more relaxed about the state of our children's clothes.

Playtime would be a lot more fun. And we could commend little boys in muddy, grass-stained clothes for doing their bit for the environment.

PLANNED changes to the university admissions system mean pupils applying for courses after their A-level results instead of before. This makes perfect sense. If only North Yorkshire County Council could follow suit when it comes to its secondary school admissions procedure.

Eleven-year-olds in areas with grammar schools now have to choose their preferred secondary school before getting 11-plus test results. If they pick the grammar school and don't pass the test to get in, they are often rejected by their second and third choices of popular local schools. Last year in our village, some ended up being given places in schools where they knew no-one, up to15 miles away. Some bright children won't apply to the grammar now because they don't want to take the risk. How can we ask 11-year-olds to take such a gamble on their future?