YOU may be frail and grey with arthritic knees and haemorrhoids, but as long as you have a parent still living, you remain a child . . . if only in their eyes.

That must be the reason The Mother decided I should have a party next week.

Well, not so much a party - as in getting legless and forgetting your name - as a Birthday Tea with little pink and yellow fancies, a cake with candles (is there a cake big enough?) and a splendidly gooey trifle, smothered in cream and with glace cherries on the top.

There's just one thing wrong with the idea, I thought. It's about 50 years too late.

But then again, we've always been late developers in my family.

There was a stocking at the end of my bed every Christmas till I was 18 and for my 21st birthday my grandma baked and iced a wonderful chocolate cake and decorated it with Smarties.

When I was 40, The Mother bought me a furry Kermit the Frog glove puppet and last year it was a Winnie the Pooh pyjama case, although I don't ever remember wearing pyjamas.

However, we all have to mature - eventually. So I tried to let her down gently, to tell her that in my opinion I was a trifle (sorry, couldn't resist that) old now for buns and balloons.

"It's a nice idea," I said in what I hoped was a soothing tone, "but I think my friends would appreciate something stronger than fizzy pop and musical chairs."

I didn't add that, quite frankly, I felt far too old and frazzled to lay on the sort of shindig they would enjoy.

"We could always invite MY friends then!" said The Mother, but seeing the expression on my face, she wisely refrained from pursuing that suggestion.

"What I really fancy," I said, feeling all grown up and slightly malevolent, "is spending my birthday totally incommunicado. If I could, I'd lock the front door, take the phone off the hook and hibernate for the day."

"Do it then, I won't stop you," said The Mother, hostility brewing in her voice. "You've always been a misery. Even on the day you were born you made a fuss and howled when the midwife bathed you. She said most babies liked their first bath, but you were different, you were a really whining, complaining baby . . ."

Nothing changes then.

So, having failed to reach any agreement regarding my birthday celebrations, or lack of them, The Mother and I retreated to our separate corners and all communication ceased for several days.

This, for two women who could natter for Britain in the Chatterers' Olympics, was a serious matter indeed.

The breakthrough came with a phone call from The Mother. She missed the cut and thrust of our debates, she said. And admittedly, I missed the air of tension, too.

"Come for tea," she said. So, of course, I did. I took her a peace offering - half a bottle of Gordon's and a carton of Silk Cut. The Mother, you'll note, is Very Grown Up.

We went into the dining room and there, in the centre of the table, was a splendidly gooey trifle smothered in cream and with glace cherries on the top.

'Oh, mum!' I said, feeling quite emotional. 'My favourite. And it's not even my birthday . . .'

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.