IN my next life I'm going to live in Piccadilly Circus - it will probably be a lot quieter than our house.

Senior Son technically left home three years ago. But of course he keeps boomeranging back - not to see his mum and dad, oh no. His visits are entirely dependent on the party scene in Richmond. There are a lot of parties in Richmond. It usually means he comes home, dumps his dirty washing, has a shower, floods the bathroom, scoffs down my carefully prepared meal, and charges out again with dripping hair and a mouthful of pie. Hello son. Nice to see you.

This summer he's spent most of the time hopping round on crutches which hasn't kept it at home much more, just made him more helpless when he is.

Smaller Son, meanwhile, always more independent, has been living a semi- detached life for a year or more even while still at school. He's been away all summer and when he's here, he often isn't, if you see what I mean. He tends to himself, goes out to work and comes back after we're in bed. Or he goes away, or he stays the night with friends. We communicate a great deal by txt msg.

Much of the time, the boys have been like the little people in the weatherhouse - when one is in, the other's out.

Then suddenly they're both home together. And they both want something. Not just food and clean clothes and money for petrol, ("Please mum, oh go on, if I don't put petrol in the car, then you'll have to give me a lift and that will cost you petrol AND time..") but other things.

Senior Son's "little bit of work" he had to finish, turned out to be a massive project that needed typing up. Yesterday. It took him hours on the computer - which of course, I was waiting to use.

Meanwhile Smaller Son has a great wodge of documents to fill in about university courses and accommodation, most of them written in goobledogook and requiring large sums of money.

Phones ring. Doors slam. Mobiles trill. Friends in cars sound horns on the drive. Two TVs upstairs play different channels, the one downstairs a third. The washing machine rumbles, The tumble dryer revs, music blares from the computer because it "helps me concentrate, mum"

Then 24 hours before he was due to fly to Ibiza (Ibiza! Yes I've seen those documentaries), Senior Son loses his passport,. We turn the study upside down, his bedroom, the kitchen drawers. I spend half a lifetime on the phone to the Passport Agency who tell me, yes, there is now a passport office in Durham but, no, you can no longer just turn up with your papers and get a passport instantly. Help!

Finally - in a stroke of genius - I find the passport in one of his old jackets, about to go on the Oxfam pile.

Don't know if I'm relieved or disappointed The thought of Senior Son in Ibiza is enough to chill the marrow. That boy has a talent for trouble. He can cause chaos in Richmond. What on earth will he manage with an entire island and all those clubs to go at? Think, briefly, of stuffing passport down side of sofa.

Instead I say "Oh sweetie, you will be sensible, won't you?". And sound just like my mother.

But in just over two weeks, they'll both be off to university. Senior Son will take himself (if he's not in an Ibizan jail) and I will load up the car and head to Nottingham with Smaller Son - passing on the way all those southern parents taking their children and equally loaded cars up to York, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

Then it will just be the two of us at home and all will be silence again. Calm and ordered and peaceful and tidy.

Until the next party in Richmond...