AS a teenager – in the days when I still knew everything – I swore that if I ever had children I would never, ever, be like my mother...

Chance would be a fine thing – I couldn’t come anywhere near her dauntingly high standards.

She worked full time, cooked a meal from scratch most evenings, and at weekends washed and ironed and scrubbed and polished our huge Victorian house until it sparkled.

She also had time to knit beautifully, play golf to a decent standard and made the world’s best chocolate cake, bread and butter pudding and steak and kidney pie.

But when I was 13, I thought she was absolutely the Worst Mother In The World. Now, of course, I know differently.

Ironically, I see my mother every day in myself – and not just the wrinkles when I look in the mirror, or, these days, grope for my reading specs.

When I’m mixing a cake, it’s her hands I see on the bowl and wooden spoon, the way I cut bread, hold up a pie dish to trim off the surplus pastry, make the bed with hospital corners, wash the dishes before I go out, tidy up before bedtime, or start cooking supper almost as I come through the door and before I take off my coat, that’s all my mother.

The older I get – and when it’s too late to say so – the more I admire her hard work and high standards and bitterly regret my adolescent impatience with her when she must have been just plain shattered.

But it was as a grandmother she really triumphed. She was still working part-time well into her 70s, but would turn up laden with cakes, jumpers, sweets and treats and – while I dashed off to work – would have all the time to play with my boys that she never had to play with me.

I would come home to happy children, a clean house, the ironing done, supper cooked and a gin and tonic waiting. Wow.

I’m still fairly new at this grandmothering lark myself, but she set the standard. So I hope she’s sitting up on her cloud, heavenly G&T in hand, having a laugh at that.

Happy Mother’s Day.

MEANWHILE, my in box is overflowing with naff, sickly and downright bizarre ideas for Mother’s Day presents. Nothing to do with filial devotion and all to do with a wonderful, emotionally- blackmailing retail opportunity.

Don’t play into their hands.

So I’ve always told the boys “no presents”. But if there’s no card, they’re dead meat.

AN emergency dash to Tesco, at Catterick Garrison, was made much more fun last week by the presence of the Military Wives’ Choir singing in between the cosmetics aisles and the mobile phone counter.

They were brilliant.

Buying toothpaste and shampoo has never been so enjoyable.

SINGING nun Sister Cristina Scuccia, in veil, habit and specs, a competitor in Italy’s version of The Voice, has set a YouTube record with 30 million hits in seven days.

And that’s without even twerking.