DURING the past 20 years, I must have taken the boys to well over half of all the children’s films released in that time on the big screen. But when I announced that I wanted to see the new Paddington 2 family movie, they all declared they were much too old for that.

The 15-year-old looked at me as if I was mad and the 18-year-old laughed when I asked them to go with me: “But it’s supposed to be really funny. Critics have described Hugh Grant’s cravat-wearing villain as brilliant and hilarious,” I said. Even my husband turned up his nose: “Paddington? The bear?” he said disbelievingly.

“But it’s got a cast as top quality as a jar of Tiptree, thick-cut marmalade,” I said. “You all love Peter Capaldi, Tom Conti, Julie Walters, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Richard Ayoade, don’t you?”

They were unmoved.

Feeling that I could hardly go to see a children’s movie on my own, I resorted to bribery: “I’ll even buy you a slushy and a bag of pick ’n’ mix. Please?” I begged the boys.

They shook their heads: “But it’s about a talking bear, mum.”

I reminded them of the cinema-going sacrifices I have made for them. From cartoons to action and disaster movies, dinosaur tales, spy thrillers, superhero and fantasy adventures, I’ve taken them to see the lot. And not every film was as good as Toy Story, the Lion King and Wallace & Gromit.

I’ve wasted hundreds of hours of my life sitting through a host of tedious movies featuring everything from irritating singing chipmunks and ridiculous gangster sharks to garden gnomes which come to life.

I recall one piece of particularly sentimental tosh which the boys loved, involving a father who died in a car accident, only to return to his family as – of all things – a snowman one year later.

Some were even more far-fetched than that, but I never complained, because all these films, combined with exorbitantly expensive snacks, kept the boys happy, and, more importantly, quiet, for two hours or so.

And, besides, those interminably long films which I could never get into, such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter films – all eight of them – at least gave me a chance to sleep without feeling guilty in the middle of the day.

Although it didn’t appeal to me, we even took the two younger boys to see the mind-numbingly dull Murder on the Orient Express recently, because they were so keen. I fell asleep again.

But now that I needed them to let me take them to a film I really wanted to see, they refused to be persuaded.

I knew I wasn’t alone, as other friends with older children felt the same. One resorted to going with a group of other mums from work.

And when another friend mentioned she’d like to see it too, we decided to go on our own, to a low-key matinee performance, where there wouldn’t be any children in the audience.

This adult-only showing was sold out. And the critics were right. It was clever and witty, a rip-roaring hoot. And I didn’t nod off once.

A GOOD friend recently became a grandma. She was teaching at her remote village primary school when her son texted to tell her the good news: “You’re a grandma. It’s a boy!” he said.

As there wasn’t a good phone signal, she had to wait until break-time to go outside and get a better reception to text back.

“What are you calling him?” she asked.

She returned to the staff room, scratching her head: “They’re calling the baby Yano,” she told her colleagues. “I don’t know where that’s come from.”

There was much discussion, some people thought it might be Scandinavian. Others Japanese.

It wasn’t until she saw her son later in the evening that it emerged the baby was actually called Harry. “But you said he was called Yano,” she said. “No,” he said. “That was just Yorkshire text-speak for ‘You know’. Don’t you remember? We told you Harry was our favourite name for a boy.”