NOW that Patricia Amos is in detention, perhaps she's having to do lines as well: "I must send my daughters to school. I must send my daughters to school. I must send my daughters to school."

Jailing a mother for her children's truancy seems a bit harsh - and what would they have done if the daughters had not had an older sister to look after them while Mummy's in the slammer? - but apparently the authorities have been trying for two years to sort the problem out and this was the ultimate sanction. Because, as any decent parent knows, you cannot constantly make threats of punishment and not carry them out. So now the courts have been and gone and done it.

And it should certainly concentrate the minds of a few others. What's more, the sisters are now going to school so, in that sense, at least it has worked.

What it has also done is stress parents are responsible for their children and we cannot just opt out, much as we would sometimes like to. (Believe me, I know that temptation only too well.)

Children will always try and skive off school. My aim was to spend as little time as possible there and I generally succeeded, but it was tricky, largely because I went to a small school in a small town, so the risk of being spotted and recognised was high. We also wore a very strict uniform which was quite difficult to disguise en route from the gap in the hedge behind the gym to the cafe in the town centre.

In any case, if it was a school hour and a school day, the cafe owner wouldn't serve us. He would ask suspicious questions about why we weren't; at school, as would policemen and staff in shops.

Not only did we not go shoplifting in Woolies - we were barely allowed in through the door.

The point was that the whole community had a vested interest in keeping us chained to our desks and also felt that they had a right to challenge us. Children roaming loose are trouble. A tremendous amount of petty crime is carried out by children who should be in school. Most of them are not even real villains, just bored, which is why glue sniffing gradually becomes to be more appealing than grappling with tectonic plates or working out percentages, something that still confuses me. They must have done that on one of those days when I opted to stay in bed instead.

Now - with the occasional worthy exception of some shopping centres -parents are largely on their own. Some of them inevitably can't or won't cope. Whether we could ever get back to the days when every adult felt they had a right and a responsibility to challenge an errant child, seems unlikely.

But I bet after the Amos case that there are a few more children at their desks in schools throughout Britain this morning and fewer bored youngsters out on the streets looking for entertainment and trouble

Which could, in the long run, make life a lot easier for the rest of us.

WE were so used to seeing Diane Pretty in her wheelchair, head supported, fed through a tube, her voice an artificial synthesiser, that only her smile reminded us of the bright and vibrant woman she had been. Did you know that she and husband Brian met on a day trip to Clacton when she was 15? They kissed under the pier and that night he told her father he was going to marry her.

They had never been abroad until the court case for her right to die. And until recently, she was still going to bingo every week.

Hers was a very ordinary life made extraordinary by cruel circumstances and her amazing courage in facing them.

She may not have changed the law, but she has sparked off a debate on one of the most important issues of our time and set us all a tremendous example.

BRILLIANT - schools are to be encouraged to send letters home to parents via e-mails. This is one of the most sensible uses of technology ever.

At least half of all letters home probably never reached here anyway - they drifted from pockets, were discarded from back packs and were used as missiles on the bus home. And when they did make it, they were often largely illegible.

Well, you try reading something that's been wrapped round soggy swimming trunks, muddy football boots or kept under a warm and melting pizza.

It gets no better even when they're in the sixth form. Even these days, the first I see of most letters from school is when I find them under the bed months later.

So with only a few more week's of the lad's school career remaining, if school has anything to tell me - the e-mail address is at the top.

THE Test the Nation IQ test on Saturday night aimed to find the most intelligent people in the country. 95,000 people tried the quiz on the Internet. According to the BBC programme, twins, blondes and celebrities are the most stupid people in Britain and those from Leicester are the most intelligent.

No. The most intelligent people in the country are those who had more interesting things to do on a Saturday night than play games with a computer.

POOR people give proportionately a great deal more to charity than do the rich, says a new survey. The rich, in fact, are mean. Well, of course. That's how they got rich in the first place.

SCIENTISTS could have solved Scotland's tourist problem by inventing a machine that clears an area of the dreaded midges.

Brilliant. Do think if we all chipped in a fiver they could develop it to deal with human pests and creeps as well?

Seven out of ten for trying

MANY of the players off to the World Cup are millionaires. None of them is actually short of a bob or two. But nevertheless, each player is being kitted out with £10,000 worth of goodies, everything from lap tops and luggage to cufflinks and wash bags .

Well, you'd think they'd already have had something at home to put their toothbrush in, wouldn't you?

Everything will have the cross of St George and the player's squad number on. Sweet. Like those pictures on the coat pegs at nursery school for children too little to read their own names.

If the players' game is as good as their kit, they'll do brilliantly. Let's just hope they're not outshone by their washbags.