FRIENDS with daughters tell me about mother-daughter days out together. Shopping, trips to the spa, afternoon tea, that sort of thing.

Boys don’t tend to go in for any of that. In fact, they don’t tend to go in for days out with their mums at all.

But son number three, who has just started his second year at Manchester University, turned 20 last week and I really wanted to see him on his birthday.

Since he’s always hungry, I thought I’d appeal to his baser instincts: “Let me buy you a birthday lunch,” I said. “I could take you shopping for your birthday present too.”

I also had plans to take him to the Whitworth art gallery which, as well as exhibiting works by Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry, boasts a stunning glass cube construction called Café in the Trees, which juts out into surrounding parkland.

But since the boys have always hated me dragging them round art galleries, I thought I’d best raise that suggestion – with heavy emphasis on the huge, mouth-watering pastries they serve in the café – later.

Patrick was free until 3pm so said he’d meet me from the train at 11am. Of course I had to give him a big, birthday hug and sing Happy Birthday to him when we met: “Enough,” he said, pulling away before I reached the end of the first line.

“What do you normally do until 3pm then?” I asked him. “Sleep,” he grunted, in the manner of someone who had been dragged, unwillingly, out of bed at an unearthly hour.

“I’m hungry, I haven’t had breakfast,” he said. So I told him he could pick a restaurant and we’d walk there, stopping to take in a few city sights on the way.

We arrived at Patrick’s chosen burger bar an hour later. This was not the sort of place I imagine a daughter might select for lunch with her mum.

Although it was midday, it was dark inside, with flashing lights and what sounded like drum and bass-style music, so it felt like we were in a night club.

It was full of bearded hipsters in checked shirts and our drinks came in jam jars with straws. I could have done with a searchlight to read the menu but had to make do, to Patrick’s embarrassment, with the torch on my phone.

The restaurant was in an old warehouse, and looked like the interior designer had set about bashing the walls, floors and ceilings with a sledgehammer to make it appear as dilapidated as possible.

Added to that, the place was full of vintage/retro/upcycled items, which a less hipster-ish Mancunian might refer to as a load of old tat, as well as a life-size plastic cow.

I had to use my phone torch again to make my way along a long, winding dark corridor, full of old tat, to the loo. It felt like I was in a ghost train at a fairground, but without the train.

When I got back to the table, our burger meals had arrived in odd, red plastic baskets that looked like they had been upcycled from the Seventies. But Patrick assured me they were really cool.

I noticed one of Patrick’s sneakers had come apart at the seam: “Let’s get you a new pair for your birthday,” I said.

Patrick, like all my boys, hates shopping and tends to buy the first thing he finds that fits. But I hadn’t realised I had given birth to what, on the high street, is clearly considered a freak. Because Patrick has size 12 feet.

After the fourth shop, where yet another assistant went downstairs to discover they didn’t have size 12 in the shoes we wanted, we were losing the will to live.

“Couldn’t you just tell us what shoes you do have in a 12, and we’ll pick one?” I pleaded. But no, they could only check for specific styles, they told us.

Eventually, after what seemed like hours, we found a pair of 11.5 sneakers which my giant of a son insisted would do. They cost £95 but, by that stage, I would have paid double that for anything that fitted.

He only had about 20 minutes to get to his lecture, so we got a taxi to the university and I headed to the gallery alone.

“It only takes about 20 minutes to walk to the station from there,” Patrick assured me when I told him I couldn’t risk missing my train as the multi-storey where I parked closed at 7pm.

Luckily, I set off early as Patrick hadn’t allowed for my tiny size six feet taking twice as long to get me there. Running the last half mile, I made the train with 30 seconds to spare.

“Thanks – only just made it,” I texted Patrick, cold sweat still dripping off my forehead.

It might not have been anything like the sort of day friends with daughters seem to enjoy. But now I really want to do it again.