SO, once again, the question is not 'can women have it all?' but rather 'do we want it all?' Lisa Gordon, corporate affairs director of Chrysalis and the youngest woman appointed to the board of a Stock Exchange listed company, is stepping down to spend more time with her children.

Although she managed to take them to school most mornings, she was usually not home until 9pm and wants to be able to spend real time with them and watch her son play rugby on Wednesday afternoons.

She will, I guess, not drop out completely, especially as she said, rather snidely really, in passing, that her husband didn't earn enough to keep her.

But she will definitely be down-sizing and is the latest in a longish line of high flying successful mothers who have decided that breaking through the glass ceiling isn't really worth the effort when you have children at home wondering who that woman with the briefcase is.

It is a dilemma that will never be solved. While working women can reach the top, and increasingly (hooray!) do, working mothers are different creatures altogether And, increasingly, so are working fathers who are slowly but surely making family commitments more socially acceptable in the world of work.

But although the Lisa Gordons of this world make the headlines, all over the country every day, there are women making similar decisions. Women who choose to miss out on promotion because they won't spend half their nights away from home, or who won't do almost compulsory overtime. Or who just don't want the supervisor's job because it means earlier starts and later finishes.

Women with careers which took not just their time, but so much of their thought and energy, change direction. So you find former lawyers making children's clothes, accountants running toy shops, city slickers growing organic veg, financial analysts writing best sellers, all so that they can find a lifestyle that puts the family rather than work at its centre.

Women have proved they can do the top jobs. They are also proving that the top job isn't always worth having. Which must be healthier for family life.

But when Lisa Gordon is standing on the touchline on a freezing winter afternoon, hands like ice and feet numb, watching young Freddie sliding through the mud with 15 young rugby players trying to pile on top of him, she might just have the briefest of second thoughts.

DO you know what a fruit is? Or a

vegetable?

If so, could you please tell Heinz.

They are claiming that their tins of spaghetti are the equivalent of one portion of fruit and vegetables, as in the Government's Five A Day campaign to get us eating fresh fruit.

Excuse me? A tin of spaghetti is a vegetable? Not forgetting the extra salt and sugar it contains.

Now the Department of Health is apparently "drawing up detailed nutritional and technical criteria to clarify the foods which count towards the five a day message."

Maybe we need technical criteria to recognise a banana.

But I've never seen spaghetti tins growing on trees.

MORE than 200 people are dead because of the Miss World contest. Not the organisers' fault, but it does rather cast a gloom over proceedings, wouldn't you say?

Now the contest is to be held in London instead. But do you think if 200 people had been killed demonstrating against Miss World in, say, the streets of New York or London, that the contest would still go ahead?

In the week of the public autopsy, there has been much discussion about respect to the dead man involved. But not much about respect for the 200 dead in Nigeria. Or maybe, being black and far away, they don't count.

IT was only the third week in November, but already Shildon was sparkling and twinkling with Christmas lights. Lots of windows have already got pretty impressive displays up long before the rest of us have even thought of going up into the attic to hunt out the decorations.

When the boys were little and we played the Christmas Tree game - fiercely competitive, spotting the lights in the windows from each side of the car - Shildon always had far more, far earlier than anyone else. It was always a highlight of the journey home from tea at Grandma's.

But I still can't get used to it. In my childhood we never had our tree until Christmas Eve and I still leave it as late as possible before decking the halls and blowing the fuses and trying to find the fairy in all the carrier bags of tinsel.

Why is Shildon so quick off the mark? Does any other town start Christmas so early?

And does the glitter really not wear off by Christmas Day?

ANNE Diamond looks fat and miserable in Celebrity Big Brother. Normally, I have a natural, sisters under much-too-much-skin sympathy with stars who have piled on the pounds, especially people like Anne who've had a rotten time over the years. Get your pleasures where you can, I say.

But Anne Diamond made a video telling us all how easy it was to lose weight and stay slim. She took money and clearly, it's not as easy as she tried to tell us.

Sorry Anne, those who profit from the thin and fit culture are doomed to be judged by it.

And I bet if she watches the videos of the show, she'll be back on that diet quicker than you can count a calorie.

Published: 27/11/2002