No wonder many of the baby-boomers are these days finding themselves so short of cash.

Millions of over 50s are almost permanently overdrawn, says new research from the price comparison company uswitch. Instead of learning how to look after their pennies, the grown-ups are deeper in debt than ever.

Maybe it's because they're all off sailing and ski-ing on Saga holidays. Or going on gap years, or having their wrinkles smoothed or their stomachs stapled.

Maybe they're struggling to see children through university or supporting twenty-somethings who can't afford to leave the nest. Or shelling out to help them with their first mortgage.

Maybe. But maybe it's something else.

Because another report by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority shows that more and more women in their late forties and early fifties are having babies, many of them through IVF - which can cost a fortune even before you see that little line in the testing kit.

So at an age when they should be considering their pension, these baby-boomers are spending their money on nappies and nannies and Bob the Builder and Barbie. And there are still 18 years to go before university fees. No wonder they're broke.

CONGRATULATIONS to Pauline Prescott as she turned out with John on voting day. She'd dressed stunningly, her big hair making a bold statement.

She strode out and looked confident and in control - including of her husband.

She wasn't asking for pity or sympathy and certainly wasn't going to start weeping.

She had the air of a woman who was there because she had decided she wanted to be. For now...

That should concentrate John Prescott's mind. And other bits.

MIDWIVES say mothers should feel the pain of childbirth. Are they mad? They're worried about the increased use of epidurals during labour.

I had one baby with epidural and forceps and the other with gas and air and a lot of shouting. And I know which I preferred - and it wasn't the shouting.

The general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives says "the pain of labour is a productive sort of pain". As if that makes it alright then.

I don't care how productive it is. Pain is pain. I can do without it.

And I bet a lot more pregnant women would feel happier if midwives felt that way too.

FLT Lt Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, 32, has this week become the first British servicewoman to die in overseas combat since the Second World War, killed with four colleagues when their helicopter was shot down in Iraq. She was an ambitious operations officer, not content apparently, with the safe option of a backroom job back home.

Modern warfare is increasingly about sophisticated systems and high tech training - where women compete on equal terms with men and often do better. Women may still be protected from close combat fighting, but they are in a man's world and increasingly, literally, in the line of fire.

It is in grim contrast with the safety and security of office life, where some bright young women are still too keen to see themselves as victims and sue for harassment when things don't go their way.

War is too messy to have nice neat demarcation between roles. More women join the services with their eyes open knowing the risks involved. More women will get killed. That is the price of equality.

THE writing of this column was interrupted by a house martin, which flew in through the dining room window and took up residence in the study. When I opened a huge window to let it out, it kept battering its wings against another, smaller, closed, window. No wonder they call them bird brains.

But my mother (Welsh) and mother in law (from Shildon), both deeply superstitious, would have been in hysterics at the sight of a bird in the house, believing it to bring bad luck. My grandmother wouldn't even have a picture of a bird in her home. Has anyone any idea why birds indoors are so unlucky? Except of course, for the inevitable mess that a frightened bird makes in a confined space.

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