SSPRING has arrived - and I've got a new hairstyle. This is big news, I assure you. After years of safely sticking with what suited me, I thought it was time I had a revamp. But as with all changes, it's taking a while for us to adjust.

To be honest, it's not vastly different to what I had before. It's still short and dark. But now, instead of looking like Thelma in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? I could pass for Posh Spice - or maybe Posh Spice's mum.

Iwas pleased with the result until I went to pick up Eve from nursery that same day. She screamed at me and refused to leave the arms of her nanny, which shockingly suggests that Posh Spice is now scarier than Scary Spice.

Indeed, Eve was frosty with me for most of the Bank Holiday weekend until I'd got fed up with all that scrunching, teasing and blow-drying and had let my hair return to its usual flat mop. This pleased Eve, but my husband was disappointed. I could tell, because he called me Hank and started humming Apache.

Iwon't give up on the New Me, however. This week I'm going to sort out my wardrobe. I don't care if Eve would rather see me in old jeans stained with flicked globules of blackcurrant fromage frais or tee shirts splattered with something orange and indelible.

For my own self-esteem, I've got to regain a sense of style.

Ican't blame the baby entirely for me losing touch with what's hot and what's not.

My husband will dispute this, but I happen to hate shopping. I'm sure a nun spends more on clothes than I do. In the past year we've been to two weddings and both times I wore outfits I'd bought at least five years ago.

It's not that I don't like the clothes I see. It's that I can never make up my mind. In the end I force myself into buying something I think is okay, only to spot the thing I want as I'm about to leave the store. And then I'm too embarrassed to go back and do a swap.

Meanwhile, all sorts of trends have been passing me by. I was wearing brown long after it had stopped being the new black. And I've completely lost track of where pink is in the pret-a-porter spectrum.

This season, though, I've got a new strategy. I've done my research (i.e. read Marie Claire, watched Lorraine on GMTV and stared at people in Churchill Square) and have concluded that the de rigeur items for the summer are cropped trousers, swing macs and black clumpy mules.

All I have to do is go and buy them. No messing about, I'll just walk in to the shops, grab them, pay for them and walk out. If only it were that easy.

Mind you, now that Posh and Scary and all those other young style-setters have become mums, the stained jeans and dirty T-shirt could well become all the rage. Wouldn't that be marvellous? I've already got all the gear. For the first time since my ra-ra skirt days I'd be back up there with the fashion elite.

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