I'm 83, you know

I am turning into a little old lady.

The Littlest Latte is growing up. She is in preschool five days a week. Next September she will be in school. In less than three months she will be four, and I will no longer be a Mother Of Small Children.

What's more, I don't seem to have learned anything. All the memories I thought I was storing up for my old age seem to have fallen out of my head. It has been my job to keep children alive for 8 years, but I can't actually recall how I did it. When faced with a new baby, I have turned into one of those irritating mother-in-law types who pick them up when they don't need it and can't remember how old they are when they wean. I now know why my own mother-in-law thought the Littlest Latte was late talking when she refused to utter a coherent sentence at six months old. You forget; and all babies look the same age until they get a school uniform on.

A couple of days a friend rang me and told me how grateful she had been for my advice on new motherhood when her first child was born. She had passed it onto so many people, she said. It was the most important advice from anyone at the time and she remembers it to this day. She repeated some of it back to me and good grief it was good. Trouble is I can't ever remember coming up with it. I came off the phone convinced she had mixed me up with someone else, apart from the fact I had given it to her in Brucciani's cafe in Preston, and I always remember a cafe.