I NEARLY hacked the top off my thumb recently, when I mistook it for a potato while armed with my brand new, very sharp, vegetable knife. "Serves you right for cooking," said a cheerfully unsympathetic neighbour in the village shop. And Glenys Kinnock would probably agree.

She gave a speech on International Women's Day and in it she re-cycled a lot of e-mail jokes at Delia Smith's expense.

You might know the sort of thing "Delia says put an apple in with the potatoes to stop them budding. Real women buy Smash"..."Delia says brush egg white over the pie crust to give a glossy finish. Real women buy Fray Bentos..." "Delia says freeze left over wine for casseroles. Real women say What left over wine?"

All good knockabout stuff.

But Glenys - who admits she's really a Delia fan - does women no favours. Of course most of us use ready meals to an extent that would shock our grannies. St Michael, God bless him, is the patron saint of working mothers. Mother's Day lunch in our house was pink champagne and Tesco Finest - my idea of a perfectly balanced meal for the occasion.

But providing proper well-cooked food is still a skill that should be nurtured and appreciated, not mocked and derided by a woman bright enough to know better.

It's alright for Glenys Kinnock, if she wants to cook something she is quite capable of getting her copy of Delia down from the shelf and following a recipe. But there is a whole generation of women - and men - who are absolutely clueless and couldn't even do that. They're hardly going to be encouraged to try now, are they, not if it's going to get them laughed at by successful career women.

Faced with a freshly killed rabbit or chicken, still in its fur or feather, our grandmothers could have coped easily. Most of us now wouldn't know where to start.

Maybe in another generation, our grandchildren will be equally baffled by a potato.

Still, I suppose it will save on Elastoplast.

FOLLOWING the deaths of two girls, swept away while river walking on a school trip, there has been calls for stricter safeguards, more detailed guidelines for teachers to follow.

There already were guidelines in place, which the school and teachers chose to ignore. As they chose to ignore the weather, the fast-running water and the understandable fears of the children on the trip.

It's not more rules that are needed to prevent teachers making children wade through a fast-flowing river when conditions are wildly unsuitable, just more straightforward, old-fashioned common sense. Which, sadly, doesn't seem to be part of a teaching qualification.

OH Burglar Bill and the Hungry Caterpillar, Postman Pat, and Thomas the Tank Engine, where are you now?

Along with scores of other books that were my sons' childhood favourites, they are stowed away somewhere in the attic, too precious ever to be given away.

More importantly, much more importantly, they are lurking in the back of my sons' murky brains, like old friends, hard to find among the adolescent rubbish, but still there somewhere.

We loved reading stories to the boys. They loved hearing them. When they were very little it got them into an easy bedtime routine. When they were older it was an uncomplicated time at the end of the day - even more important if the day had been fraught or bad-tempered. A bedtime story could put things right, make life secure again, and add a bit of magic, which is why we continued long after they could read for themselves.

Bedtime Reading Week this week is trying to encourage us to read more to our children. Start tonight.

The worst that can happen is that you'll be the one to go to sleep first...

MISS B is paralysed from the neck down. She wants the right to die and has been arguing her case in court, albeit by video link from her hospital bed.

Whatever the doctors might think, it is her right - and hers alone - to decide to leave the life she finds so unbearable. It is the one final control she has over the body that has otherwise let her down so painfully.

The irony is that she has made her arguments so cogently, argued so well and with such fearsome logic that it is clear that though the body is wrecked, her mind is as sharp and as intelligent as ever. She still has a great deal to contribute. It seems a great shame to deprive the world of that intelligence.

But it's not up to us and that loss is one we might have to live with.

A BAD day has not been helped by reading an interview with actress Helen McCrory from The Jury.

She loves her food. Often, she says, she has an enormous plate full of vegetables and even some soup for breakfast, followed by steak and chips for lunch and "a proper dinner". She belongs to a gym, but never goes.

There are those of us who swim every morning, walk miles every day, live on broccoli and cottage cheese and yet still wouldn't look out of place in the back row of a rugby team. I have just eaten two of my Mother's Day chocolates and have doubtless put on half a stone with each one.

Helen McCrory, meanwhile, tells us that she is so tiny she wears clothes designed for 12-year-old boys. There is clearly no justice in this world. Might as well have another chocolate...

Published: Wednesday, March 13, 2002