Are we losing our birthright?

He is delighted. She is delighted. His adoptive mother seems fine about it and John Prescott has cheerfully accepted a Tory voting foxhunter into the family and managed to beam about it. Great stuff.

Apart, of course, for the 40-odd years in between.

Which is how long Pauline Prescott, despite her happy marriage and two more sons, spent yearning to find out what happened to her first born.

Hard to believe now, isn't it?

We are so used to seeing young girls going almost straight from playing with dolls to having their own babies. Coronation Street's Sarah and baby Bethany might have been a dramatic storyline but they are depressingly realistic. We hardly bat an eyelid when 14-year-olds are pregnant. We might tut tut but we still expect them to have the option of brining them up on their own, to have the choice whether they do so or not.

We even put up with exceedingly stupid 30-year-old women boasting proudly of being the nation's youngest grannies.

You don't have to be old to remember when it was very different. When double standards ruled and young girls would rather die - literally - than have a baby on their own. Or when, however desperate they were to keep their babies, it was just impossible.

Friends of mine had babies, had them adopted, came back to school and got on with their lives to a greater or lesser extent. Only years later when we had our own babies did we realise what it had cost them, why they looked so haunted.

Nobody could ever wish those days, those attitudes back again. And in barely one generation, those attitudes have been turned upside down.

But now, it seems, we have a new problem.

Young people who have frequent unprotected sex are suffering from record rates of chlamydia - a sexual disease that can cause infertility.

A generation ago our fear was that we would have babies before we wanted them. Now it is more likely that by the time we want babies, it will be too late. The damage will be done.

And it will be a lot harder to make a happy ending out of that.

ETON is considering abandoning GCSEs as pretty worthless and letting students do half a dozen AS levels early instead, possibly followed by the International Baccalaureate. Other schools will follow.

And yet another great gulf will open up between top schools and bog-standard comprehensives.

Wouldn't it be nice if, for once, standards were levelled up rather than down?

IF you want to know the state of our national fitness, then just spend 20 minutes sitting at the top of the abbey steps in Whitby as I did last week and watch how people get there.

Most men looked grimly determined, refusing to puff, pant or look as if it was an effort - though the clenched jaw gave them away.

Small boys ran up and down and back again and teased everyone else in the family.

Older women took them steadily, with a few stops and arrived at the top still able to conduct a conversation.

Younger women went straight up and huffed and puffed and laughed as they did it - and waited a moment or so to catch their breath.

But the real worry was the teenage girls. Nearly all of them found those steps a real struggle. Either they were too fat, so had too much weight to carry, or they were so thin they hardly had the strength to lift their limbs. Either way, they were really struggling. A couple of them even collapsed panting on the ground - while their grannies carried on walking and talking.

If your teens are meant to be your peak of physical fitness, then the future does not look good for those girls.

There were some severely overweight men, too. They didn't even attempt the steps - they just drove round to the top.

Incidentally, why do we say there are 199 steps? Everyone who counted them (difficult not to) made it 198. Have we lost one somewhere?

NUMBER Ten have accused the late Dr Kelly as a "Walter Mitty fantasist".

Remind me - just who was it who thought there were weapons of mass destruction?

SMALLER Son is flying off to Dublin for less than it cost his father to get by train from Darlington to Gretna, just across the Scottish border. Senior Son is flying home from Ibiza for less than the cost of a standard train fare from here to London.

Given a couple of hundred pounds, you could buy a posh-ish train ticket to King's Cross - or fly to New York.

Planes are certainly cheap, but train travel is extortionate.

The skies are full of cheap airlines but what we could really do with is someone down on the ground to run the railways. Ryantrain? Easytrack? Thomas?

Bring back the Fat Controller.

FIFTY years ago women were much fitter. Stay-at-home housewives used far more energy doing the chores and the shopping and didn't need the gym, even if they had the time.

Which leads me to my new diet. It's called the Fridge Free Diet.

Very simple. You just get rid of your fridge.

This means that (a) you have no ready supply of tempting food and (b) when you're really hungry, you have to go out to get something.

If we just threw the car keys away as well, we'd all be stick insects by Christmas.

THE city fathers in Venice have brought out rules for tourists which include dressing appropriately and not picnicking in places such as entrances to churches.

The hot weather brings out the worst in British summer dressing. If only some brave council would follow the Venetian lead.

IF anyone wants a reason for working from home, this weather should do it.As soon as I've typed this, I'm off to sit in the garden. Enjoy your stuffy office.

Published: ??/??/2003