SO teenage drinking's out of control. What a surprise. And now the Government wants to do something about it. Too late. For generations, pubs were for grown-ups. Then brewers and pub owners wanted young people in. So they installed flashing lights and loud music and invented new drinks that tasted as sweet and sickly as pop but with a kick of alcohol. Drinks that were no longer brown and bitter, but as brightly coloured and appealing as sweeties in a jar.

Youngsters were used to fast food, so the bars gave them fast drinking as well - not to taste and savour and enjoy it, just throw it down your neck as quickly as possible.

It was drinking for children. And it worked. It worked so brilliantly that now youngsters don't go out for a drink, they go to get drunk. Many bar managers are quite happy to serve people who can barely stand, people who aren't old enough to be drinking anyway.

Of course, it's tricky to tell someone's age in an instant in a crowded bar. And last year, only 56 landlords were found guilty of selling to under 18s.

Yet any of us unfortunate enough to be in town on a weekend night can usually see a plenty of teenagers out of their minds. Kids who are clearly under 18, staggering, shouting, swearing and throwing up. We can see that many of them are underage - not just a bit borderline, maybe a few months or a year, but clearly not old enough to leave school, let alone get legless.

And is this why we lovingly fed them the best, sterilised their spoons, made them drink their milk and eat their fish and healthy apples?

Now the Government wants instant fines plus an extra tax on pubs and clubs. But there are already plenty of laws to cope with the problem - laws that say you can't serve underage children, laws about being drunk and disorderly, laws about serving drunks. Yet they are increasingly ignored. Just think of the police time an average Friday night takes.

And to think that when Cliff Richard started his career, the rebellious hot spots were milk bars.

Teenagers didn't create this culture. It was created for them in a deliberate and cynical move. And it worked brilliantly. The drinks manufacturers, the bars and the brewers are making their money - £30bn last year - and the rest of us are paying the price.

A WOMAN'S work is never done - especially if she's a mother. Especially if she's a granny. New research has proved what most of us realised all along - that babies need grannies. Families with grannies tend to be healthier and generally more successful. And women are designed to live long after the menopause simply because they have a role in helping bring up their grandchildren.

Just as you think you've got your kids off your hands, and can put your feet up or swan off round the world, it looks as though you're back on the babysitting front line. Is there no rest?

And it doesn't stop there. Not only are parents now expected to support their student children until well into their twenties, more of us are apparently helping them out with buying a house. What with? I ask myself. Magic beans?

And then - as Senior Son sprawled on the sofa reading the paper pointed out - some experts are now saying that grandparents should start saving to pay their grandchildren's university fees.

All I can say is that there'd better be a bunch of flowers on Sunday.

LULU is just one day younger than I am, looks absolutely stunning, has just started a UK tour and is receiving rave reviews from the critics. And has spoken - blissfully - about brilliant sex with younger men.

Well yes, it should make me happy to see a woman of my age defying the rules of age so gloriously. But funnily enough, it doesn't. Not a bit. Just hopelessly inadequate. Again.

WHEN the miners' strike started, I was pregnant and, as such, was one of those entitled to get a supply of scarce foreign coal. A social worker - a young man in a beautifully soft grey leather jacket - came to interview me. The coal eventually turned up too. It was Polish coal and lethal. It spat out of the fire like gunshot, through the bars of the safety gate. So we went back to the old ways - my two-year-old and I and, by now, the baby, trawling the countryside for firewood.

We would come home with the pram piled up with wood and the baby almost invisible beneath the branches. As our fire also fuelled our central heating and heated the water, it was worth getting. The search for wood became obsessive.

Do you realise how much wood it takes to keep a fire burning all day? Think of this when you see sentimental Christmas cards of old women gathering sticks in the snow - there'd barely be enough to heat a pan of gruel. There are many, far more serious legacies of the miners' strike. But 20 years on, I still stagger back from walks dragging half a tree or so.

And doesn't everyone go to the seaside to fill the car boot with drift wood?

A DEBATE is raging among high level feminists over whether it's acceptable to refer to a grown woman as a "girl". They should think themselves lucky. I still remember the shock of moving up here and constantly being referred to as "pet" - usually by some intellectually challenged doorman who didn't want me in his precious workingmen's club. But we've come a long way since then. Haven't we?

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Published: ??/??/2003