There are plenty of ways to avoid saying `private school'

LAST WEEK was decision time for the tiny minority of parents in this country for whom the word "choice" in education has any meaning. Some, like my sister, actually had too much of it: for her oldest boy she could choose between a selection of grammar schools, a highly rated comprehensive, two top-of-the-league independent schools and a slightly less polished and independent school which had offered them a music scholarship. Despite a serious flirtation with the comprehensive she plumped in the end for the music scholarship, which seemed the best compromise between her own ideals and her Westminster/Cambridge educated husband's inclination towards the more "prestigious" schools. Their son is happy too - so it looks as if the school's policy of unlimited Club biscuits for the examination candidates paid off.

For us, there was only a momentary twinge of conscience as we turned down the offer of a place at a local comprehensive for our 11-year-old. He will follow his older brother into the tried and tested former grammar school (see, there are lots of ways you can avoid saying private school) where the rowing master looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I suppose chunky chocolate biscuits, and hunky teachers are as good a basis as any on which to decide your child's educational future.

British children are materialistic, selfish and hedonistic, according to research carried out by the London School of Economics. They all have televisions in their bedroom and are fed clothes, trainers and PlayStations on demand. Pizza Express on a Saturday night is a good place to see this mutant species of a child. There's usually a party of tweenies celebrating 12th birthdays - they are deposited there by parents who sit at the other end of the restaurant, thus giving them a sort of virtual reality experience of freedom. No longer free to play in the fields or streets, they are allowed instead to play at being grown up in restaurants. When we were there the other night spoiling our own materialistic, selfish and hedonistic brood, there was a table of pubescent girls next to us, all bee-sting breasts and scrawled blue lipstick. Every five minutes they would all get up and gallop into the lavatories like a herd of wildebeest that have just got wind of a lion, a phenomenon we had witnessed the week before with another party of girls at The Mongolian Barbecue. What do they do in there, my boys wanted to know. As this was not a question that could be dealt with by the standard "go and look it up in the encyclopaedia" ploy, I resolved to do a David Attenborough and followed them in. They were - and I quote - "the brightest intake ever" at St Paul's girls' school (must rethink my educational ambitions for my daughters), but not quite bright enough to explain the attraction of the lavatories. The boys will have to wait a little longer to unravel the mysteries of the opposite sex.

I, meanwhile, am still struggling with the complexity of the fox-hunting issue. I'm quite clear on the hunters themselves - they enjoy killing foxes but naturally feel obliged to justify their unsavoury bloodlust on conservationist grounds. But what I don't understand are the "liberal" commentators, like Alexander Chancellor and John Mortimer, who don't hunt themselves but support the principle on the grounds of "freedom". Does this mean that they also support the right of children to stone cats - also considered a sport in some parts of the country?

There's nothing like tales from the playground for reducing me to a gibbering wreck of motherhood.

My five-year-old, struggling with the politics of a friendship a trois, confided that when she felt left out she went and stood by her "favourite pole" and "thought about all the happy times they had together, and imagined how things could be". (I have a feeling she may have been reading The Little Book of Calm on the quiet.)

But, oh god, the pathos - other children have best friends, she has a favourite pole.