I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is.

Look, I want what's good for everybody. I want to promote good state education for all. I want to raise standards for all kids, irrespective of race and class but why can't they all just do what I say when I know I'm right?

Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.

If one's honest about it, spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

I don't subscribe to the 'Doctor Who' magazine and we've only got the normal amount of 'Doctor Who' fridge magnets.

Does everyone turn into a truculent thirteen-year-old when they go home, or is it just me?

My theory is that one needs to be loved completely, unconditionally, and unfettered by parental disapproval, if one is to get happily through life which, after all, presents its own hurdles.