Sharon Griffiths writes...

It's the sort of thing that other mothers might say as a joke, after too many late night glasses of wine. (My fantasy was always to leave my teenagers, complete with smelly trainers, in a box on someone else's doorstep.) But actually to do it...Takes your breath away really.

It's not the way we expect mothers to behave. And most of us don't. However good, bad or indifferent most of us are as mothers (and my sons have lists as long as both arms of things I've done wrong over the years) most of us would fight to the death - literally - to protect our children, however old they are.

Men, however much they love their children, usually find it easier to walk away. It's the way they're programmed. All those years away hunting, exploring or fighting wars. Young lads can father half a dozen children with different girls and not care much about any of them. The girls, meanwhile, however hapless and hopeless, struggle on with their babies, stuck with them for life, because however much they may or may not have wanted them, once they're here, they're here for ever.

Why else would women in their sixties and seventies still dream of the baby they gave up for adoption half a century ago, still remember birthdays, still wait for the letter, the phone call?

Fifteen is almost grown up and that's what makes it so dangerous. It's easy to be fooled by their apparent ability to cope with everyday things in thinking they've got life sussed. They haven't. Their brains are awash with hormones and still half-baked. They still need a lot of looking after before they can be let loose on the world.

Mothers still long to keep their children safe, even when the children are grown up and with children of their own. It's why our hearts reach out to those mothers we have seen recently speaking so sadly and with such dignity about their adult children killed by murderers, terrorists or tsunamis.

In a world where the standards and morals of previous generations have been turned upside down, abandoned as out of date and irrelevant, motherhood has been the constant. For most of us, whatever else may change in the world, whatever else may go wrong, your mum will always be your mum and always love you.

Motherhood never stops. And in a way, that's what makes the story of Elaine Walker so reassuring.

Yes, such stories probably do happen more often than the rest of us realise. But the fact that when they do, it makes headlines, that the rest of us are so shocked, can't understand how a mother can do such a thing and are generally disapproving, proves just one thing.

Despite the occasional exceptions, motherhood is still going strong. Our best may not be brilliant, but we're still making a reasonable fist of it.

And at least we can say to our children we haven't left you homeless with £25 and tittled off to Turkey with a toyboy....

MEN and women apparently really are on different wavelengths. According to new research, men use different parts of their brains to listen to men's speech or women's speech. The result is that they don't hear it very well.

Ah yes, but that's not the problem.

The problem is not that men don't hear. The problem is that men don't listen. Either way, we'll just have to shout louder.

SO now we have a loaf without crusts. It has been designed by Hovis because most children don't like crusts on their sandwiches and never eat them.

We already have yoghurt without bits in, fish without bones, grapes without pips, chicken without skin, meat without lumps of fat. Anything to make life easier.

If children don't like things, our immediate instinct, it seems, is to make life easier for them - whether it's crusts on sandwiches or hard sums in exams. Don't make children tougher for the challenge, instead make the challenge easier for the children.

And we do our children no favours. Life has got bits in, lumps, bumps, crusts and gristle. And the sooner we learn to deal with things like that the better. It's those lumps and bumps and tough bits that make life interesting and worth living. It's the grit on the oyster that makes the pearl.

The new bread has been described as bland and tasteless. Now, why doesn't that surprise me?

A BRIGHT yellow sign in the front of Darlington buses says "Revised Fares In Operation." What it means, of course, is that fares cost more. So why don't they say so?