BOREDOM is good for you. And it's especially good for children. So ditch those after-school activities now. Well, maybe not all of them. But now experts say that we should leave our children to their own devices a little more often. They have even discovered a new problem - "middle-class syndrome".

That's what happens to all those children who are constantly ferried to dance classes, gym, riding, swimming, music, tennis lessons, so much so that the poor scraps never have a second to call their own.

Well, you can have too much of a good thing. Children, say the experts, need time to think for themselves.

You could dump some children down in an earthly paradise - field, stream, bridge - and they would just stand there, helplessly, waiting for a Playleader to come and tell them what to do. I know, I've seen it happen.

The good news - for those parents who have neither the time, money, nor inclination to ferry their children back and forth on an endless round of activities - is that these constantly occupied children actually don't gain much from all this activity, except maybe an ability to do handstands or to have a good forehand.

But as for the rest of things, like Life, your children are probably as well off sitting round, picking the scabs on their knees. If they've done anything active enough to get scabby knees, of course.

The Devil finds work for idle hands, we know. We also know that bored teenagers go looking for trouble and invariably find it.

But maybe that's because they haven't had enough practice in thinking of constructive things to do with themselves and their time. So start them young.

A study at the University of East Anglia showed that by keeping children constantly occupied, parents were stifling their creativity. Education expert Audrey Curtis says children need time to themselves because that's when they do their best thinking.

Too many adults are already running round like headless hens between work and leisure. Why should we inflict the same on our children?

I've always thought children thrive on a little neglect. Now could be the time to start. For their sake.

AH quelle joie! The blessed Delia (surname no longer needed) is going to teach the French to cook avec La Cuisine Facile d'Aujourd'hui and 150 of her best recipes are published in France later this year.

About time too. Despite their reputation, the French have been getting lazy about cooking. First of all they adopted the sliced loaf instead of the baguette. Then they discovered Marks & Spencer and, like the rest of us, fell in love with the idea of meals that had to be assembled, rather than cooked.

Nationalists huffed and puffed, but the working mamans of France abandoned the stove and took to the freezer and microwave instead.

After dealing that blow to their national heritage, the least we can do is send them Delia to make up for it.

I HAVE, in the past and despite my lack of perma-tan, been mistaken for Judith Chalmers. Then, long ago, it was a woman in Neighbours.

Now my foolish sons have decided I'm a dead ringer for Eileen in Coronation Street. Well, she's ten years younger than I am. But I'm still not sure if this is progress

ALLIANCE & Leicester has taken the folly of centralised phone numbers to ridiculous extremes.

We liked the story last year from a lady who was bounced all round one bank's telephone network, pressing all sorts of buttons, waiting to a variety of canned musak and was assured that the operator could answer any of her questions.

But when she finally got through to a real live person in Glasgow, they couldn't, after all, tell her if she'd left her umbrella in the branch in Bishop Auckland.

Anyway, now most of Europe has the Euro, the Alliance & Leicester has a wizzo scheme to hoover up all your old spare holiday cash that's sitting in the pot on the dressing table, and change it into English money to help the NSPCC.

Right, I thought, I'll do that. But I couldn't remember where my nearest Alliance & Leicester was, so I rang a 24-hour number given on the back of the envelope. My call was in a queue and would be answered shortly. No, it wasn't.

No matter, I'd look it up in the phone book. Quicker and easier.

But Alliance & Leicester don't have addresses of the branches in there any more. Just a long list of phone numbers. There were numbers to open accounts, numbers to manage your account, to get a Visa card, to report a stolen card, to change your account.

But nothing, nowhere to tell me where I could find a branch with real live people and a box to put foreign money in.

Ringing one of the numbers just got yet another menu of buttons to press, offering all sorts of services that were neither useful nor relevant. So I gave up.

And for the moment, my collection of francs, guilders, pesetas and lire will remain, uselessly in that little pot on the dressing table.

And would I trust my savings to an organisation so lacking in common sense? Well, what do you think?

A television advert for the Telegraph has a couple going on holiday checking they've got their pesetas. Has no one told the Telegraph that Spain uses the euro now?

But maybe they couldn't find an Alliance & Leicester either.

OF course Transport Secretary Stephen Byers is entitled to a holiday. Those who criticised him for going to India while the railways were in chaos should realise that even politicians have to be allowed to have a life occasionally.

Anyway, if he waited for a holiday until the railways weren't in chaos, the poor man would never get away.