OH yes, the school holidays have started. Town centres echo to the sounds of sulking children, frazzled parents, threats, shouts and the slap of adult hands on children's skin, followed by the inevitable wails and tears.

And it's only the first week.

You could wonder why some people have children. They don't seem to like them very much. They drag them along literally, shout at them, nag at them. Or just ignore them.

OK, in town it might be just understandable. It can be miserable taking unwilling children on a shopping expedition. (So why not leave them at home? They can't ALL be buying school uniform.) But even when families are having fun it's nearly as bad.

Just watch them on the beach. For every family enjoying each other's company, playing happily together, there'll be at least two having a row, usually involving food, drink, or which one of them should have remembered the buckets and spades.

For those of us whose children have reached the age when they don't want to be with us any more, the sight causes a slight pang in the old heart strings. I actually looked forward to school holidays when the boys were young. I enjoyed their company, liked doing things with them, organised my days around them. Didn't, well not very often anyway, think of them as just an inconvenience. Is this really so unusual?

Though most, to be fair, aren't as bad as the mother convicted this week of jetting off on holiday and leaving her four children at home alone. Now that 's definitely getting away from it all.

No wonder holiday operators offer kids' clubs for every age from babies to teenagers. Not surprising, either, to find that some children are there all day and every day and have virtually totally separate holidays from their parents, albeit in the same resort.

Statistics prove that divorces rise immediately after holidays. Spending all that time together really shows up all the holes in a marriage. Maybe the same goes for parents and children too.

The next step will be American-style summer camps where children can be despatched and parents needn't even see them at all for a few weeks.

Still, I suppose it's better than being slapped and screaming in the centre of town.

SIR Elton John recently played a concert for 300 people (no tickets, but suggested donations of £1,000 each) in a Russian palace. Before the Revolution, the 18th century Catherine Palace was the summer residence of the Russian royal family.

Ornate and gilded, by Sir Elton's standards, it probably counted as stark minimalism.

WHEN you put too many rats together in an enclosed space, they get very angry and start biting each other's tails off.

Passengers on economy flights are kept waiting and then cooped up in a confined space with not enough air to breathe. If you're trying to eat a piece of rubber chicken with a plastic fork, with the person in front's head-rest hovering over your orange juice and the person behind's knees in the small of your back and a couple of drunks arguing alongside you, and your ankles swelling like balloons, is it any wonder that air rage is on the rise?

Drink, of course, makes it worse. ccording to a new survey, 80 per cent of air rage incidents involved drink. What a surprise.

Once upon a time people thought it impossible that we would ever have No Smoking flights but now they're the norm. One day, airlines might see sense and introduce No Drinking flights.

Until then, don't be surprised if passengers start biting each others tails.

THE extra club in Ian Woosnam's golf bag earned him a two-stroke penalty, which meant he missed wining The Open, lost over £200,000 and has probably missed his chance to play in the Ryder Cup.

Amazingly, he says he's not going to sack the caddy whose fault it was.

But as they start each match from now on carefully counting up to 14, I bet he never lets him forget it, either.

FOLLOWING the decision in Northern Ireland, the Welsh Assembly has decided to abandon league tables for schools based on exam results.

About time too.

League tables were introduced to raise standards but they are a very crude way of judging a school's standards. Some schools have been putting the need to look good in league tables above the needs of their pupils. And now we've had a rash of teachers accused of helping children in tests to make the results look better.

Parents have always known which are the good schools. League tables have only confused the issue, not made it clearer.

So when is England going to follow the Celtic fringe and show some common sense?

GREAT pictures of Bob Geldof and his family on holiday in Disneyland, including a happy, smiling Tiger Lily. She's half sister to Bob Geldof's daughters, the daughter of his ex-wife Paula Yates and her lover Michael Hutchence. Despite opposition from some her father's family, Geldof has been cheerfully bringing her up with her sisters after Paula Yates' death from a drugs overdose.

Seeing the family having such a good time together is amazingly cheering - that out of such a bitter mess, some good has come, as seen in the face of a beaming five-year-old.