THIS week's column comes to you all the way from Hell. Well, something pretty close.

I'm in a shoe shop. Children's department. One-and-a-half weeks before the new school year starts.

Empty boxes and tissue paper are strewn all over the floor. Children are wailing. Parents are pleading. Pale, wild-eyed assistants, who have gone without lunch all week, are tearing at their hair.

Of all the jobs of motherhood, this is the one I hate most. Even more than cleaning up sick and changing particularly dirty, overflowing nappies.

We have been issued with a ticket on arrival and I am scribbling this while I wait for our number to be called out. From past experience, I know we will be waiting some time. I am not so much in a queue as just one of a huge horde of parents who have descended on the store. And there is panic in the air.

Like so many others up and down the country, we have, insanely, waited until this week to tackle the dreaded task. This is because, while we want our youngsters to have new, shiny shoes on their first day back we won't buy them until the last minute. Children, you see, are notorious for having huge growth spurts during the summer holidays (something to do with all that fresh air and exercise).

When I had just one little toddler, shoe buying was enjoyable. We would wander at leisure, trying on the cute little red Kickers shoes and the lime green Doc Marten boots with coloured laces until we found the perfect pair.

If only it were that easy now. I'm with the 11-year-old today (I've learnt to take the boys one at a time) and, as well as black leather school shoes, we need white gym shoes, trainers and football boots.

The black slip-on shoes he wanted didn't fit because he had the "wrong shaped feet". After trailing round many shops, we couldn't get gym shoes in the right size and ended up with a smallish pair the assistant said "should do him for a few months anyway".

Since he now has the same size feet as me, perhaps I can wear them eventually. (Interestingly, I notice they now make boys' shoes up to size ten.) Thankfully, we haven't got to the stage where he's demanding £100 designer trainers. The £32 I hand over for his bog standard ones, along with £40 for his black leather shoes and £18 for the ill-fitting gym shoes is enough.

I am sure I can see pound signs reflected in the shopkeeper's eyes as I give him the cash. "It's hectic in here today," I comment. "This is our Christmas," he says. "We take more money in these two weeks than in a normal three months."

I'll be back soon to give him some more money with the ten-year-old, who would live in his football boots and flattens the heels of all his shoes because he's too lazy to untie laces. Then there's the seven-year-old who hasn't mastered the art of tying laces but refuses to have Velcro shoes because they're too "babyish".

The four-year-old is going through a stage of liking girly things so I'll have to steer him away from the pink Barbie pairs.

Still, after today, it's one down, three to go. Except that, since I've got back from the shoe shop, the baby has started pulling himself upright and walking round the furniture. Perhaps I'd better make that four...