SO have you got them ready to go, then? If your baby's leaving home for the great exciting world of university, have you packed them off with nice new duvet, shining pans, dazzling pillows?

If so, get out to the car and unpack the lot, right now.

Yes, I know you want them to feel loved and cared for and reminded of home and that their mummy loves them. But new duvets, shining pans and dazzling pillows are wasted on your average student. You really don't want to know what they'll do to them. And the chances are you won't find out - because you'll probably never see duvet, pans or pillows again.

I thought I was being clever with Senior Son. I sent him off with the old duvet off his bed and kept the nice new one at home. I dug out a few bashed pans, a stash of those glasses they kept giving free with Coca Cola, the Nescafe mugs and the cutlery with the names of hotels or education authorities, that just magically appears in the drawer now and then.

I piled them into nice big storage boxes ("They'll be useful for you, sweetie.") And sent him off.

Remember, he spent last year in a room in a hall of residence, a small square box of a room that was spot-checked once a month and which he had to clear out completely and finally when he left.

For weeks after his return, most of his stuff mouldered quietly in the back of his car. Bit by bit I winkled them out. The duvet needed nearly a week of sunshine on the line to get it looking vaguely respectable. The sheets and covers appeared one by one in the wash - as if he knew that dumping them all at once would be too much for my nervous disposition.

Then, back in August, it was time to get packing again, when he went back to start his work placement year. He had a brief burst of organisation.

"Could you get me some storage boxes?" the lad asked.

"I bought you some last year, two big ones."

"Did you?"

They had vanished. The pans, apart from one battered omelette pan, unwashed since he slung it in the car, had also vanished. "Knives and forks?" I asked, "Pillows? Mugs, plates, glasses, tea-towels?" How could anyone lose so much in a room the size of your average bathroom?

Senior Son looked blank. Never in the history of the world has anyone looked quite so dozy as he did right then.

"Oh," he said.

Eventually, from the morass in the boot of the car he produced a bath towel, a tea towel and a big square plate that wasn't one of ours.

"There!" he said triumphantly.

Somewhere floating round Manchester or deep space are a couple of storage boxes, probably packed with pillows, pans and plates. And also probably a few socks, pants and the missing essay that he had to reprint via e-mail from someone else's computer. If anyone finds them, I hope they prove useful.

So you can see, can't you, why this time I sent him off with the fraying towels, the greying pillows, the faded duvet covers and just one knife, fork and mismatched spoon?

And I strongly recommend that you do the same - unless, of course, your new student is totally different from all the others.