SCHOOL hasn't even broken up for the holidays yet and already the British summer ritual of thousands of families queuing up to sleep on airport floors for days on end has begun. Suddenly, our planned 12-hour car and ferry journey, complete with four fractious youngsters, to get to our holiday destination in the west of Ireland appears so inviting.

TONY Blair's statement that he and his family will spend some of their holiday in Britain is hardly a great comfort to our beleaguered tourist industry. Given the long holidays MPs have, saying he won't be spending all of this time abroad is not the sort of unqualified support British tourism needs from the PM right now. It reminds me of a woman who replied, after much thought, when I asked if she was vegetarian: "Partly". You can't be both a meat-eater and a vegetarian. Just like you can't say you're supporting the British tourist industry by coming home to Britain after holidaying abroad.

AS the mother of a two-year-old boy who is currently going through that all-too-familiar toddler phase of stripping off at every available opportunity, I am thankful I live in England. The parents of an infant in North Carolina are to be summoned before the supreme court after their daughter was seen naked, chasing a kitten in their front garden. Social services are taking legal action to be allowed to inspect the family's home. What would they make of my two-year-old who has stripped off at his mothers-and-toddlers group and at the supermarket and loves running about at home in nothing but a pair of wellies? These social workers, perhaps because of the disturbing cases they deal with, appear to have a distorted sense of normality. Isn't there something perverse about denying such innocent childhood fun?

PROPOSALS to give children as young as three anger management training are absurd. The new education secretary has announced plans to involve health and other agencies to tackle factors that might contribute to a young child's bad behaviour. But irrational tantrums at this age are perfectly normal and should be dealt with by parents, whose best bet is usually to ignore them. Sitting toddlers down in front of a panel of counsellors would only make them more distressed, even stigmatised. Anyway, hasn't our education secretary got more serious matters to worry about - like improving the country's secondary schools?

STAFF at Blackpool Victoria Hospital generously offered to work unpaid overtime for Lomie the Gorilla, who is suffering from a tumour. You can almost hear a great, big collective "Ahhhhhhh" from animal lovers all over the country. But that will be of little comfort to those NHS patients on long waiting lists for similar treatment. Would things move faster if they bared their teeth, pounded their chests and roared?

TV chef Jamie Oliver makes a great show of visiting all his friendly, local market traders and his mates in small butchers shops, fishmongers and greengrocers as he gathers the fresh ingredients for his recipes on his TV shows. So why does he advertise for a huge supermarket like Sainsbury's, which is helping to put so many of them out of business?

TOM Cruise announced he was separating from his wife Nicole Kidman just days before their tenth wedding anniversary, which meant he wouldn't have to give her half his fortune, and denied the child she miscarried a few weeks later was his. Now she is making a claim for half the money after revealing she had tissue samples taken from the foetus which proves he was the father. I can't understand why they split up - this pair of materialistic, manipulative schemers are obviously made for each other.

AS I said at the beginning of this column, school hasn't broken up for the holidays yet. But last week, Debenhams had a Back To School display in the window. I guess they'll be urging us to buy Christmas decorations soon. And they wonder why a recent survey revealed we are all becoming increasingly fed up with shopping?

Published: Friday, July 13, 2001