AS far as my kids are concerned, I’m a fashion disaster...

an embarrassment... someone who shouldn’t really be seen out in public.

Naturally, I don’t agree. Just because I don’t wear my jeans halfway down my backside in order to show off my designer boxers to the world, doesn’t mean I’m not with it.

“Dad, what do you know about fashion?” sniffed my 16-year-old son, Jack, dismissively, when I actually complimented him on a new T-shirt.

He followed through with the ultimate teenage put-down: “You shop at Marks & Spencer for God’s sake.”

It’s a funny thing about M&S.

When I was a kid, my mum used to buy my dad’s cardigans from there and they were really old-fashioned.

Now I’m 48, I find M&S has suddenly become much trendier.

I recently bought a pair of ‘deck shoes’ from M&S to wear without socks when I’m messing about in the summer. I was really pleased with them, but Jack thinks they’re ridiculous.

“Dad, why on earth did you buy them?” he asked.

“Yeah, Dad, they’re really stupid,”

added Max, 13, giggling behind his hand.

This is the same 13-year-old, by the way, who’s just bought a poncho off the internet for £30. You know the kind of thing I mean – Clint Eastwood wore one in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly when he was sitting on his horse or round a campfire.

I was genuinely baffled. Max hasn’t got a horse and we haven’t got a campfire – we’ve got central heating.

When the poncho arrived in the post, it was the wrong colour.

He’d ordered cream, but they’d sent a grey one so we had to get into protracted email correspondence with the poncho company in Ireland to sort it out.

I don’t remember seeing that in the parents’ job description: “You must always be on hand to sort out your child’s poncho order on the internet if they send the wrong colour.”

“Why did you want a poncho, anyway?”

I asked him “Dunno,” he shrugged, as he watched The Simpsons in his new purchase. “Cos it’s cool – you wouldn’t understand.”

He’s right. I don’t understand. In fact, there’s lots of things I don’t understand. For example, I don’t understand why boys these days spend their lives in those saggy jeans, but then persuade their parents to spend small fortunes on three-piece suits and cravats for their prom night.

We got by without prom nights when we were kids but, all of a sudden, they’re part and parcel of growing up.

“Oh, you’re going to have to go to work in your deck shoes tomorrow,”

declared my wife as we lay in bed one night last week.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Jack needs your black work shoes for the prom,” she explained.

I sat bolt upright at the audacity of it. We have hundreds of shoes piling up in our hall and I only own three pairs: black ones for work; my tennis trainers; and my new deck shoes for casual attire.

“I can’t wear brown deck shoes with a work suit,” I protested.

“You’ve got no choice,” she said.

“We went shopping for black shoes but he couldn’t find a pair he liked.

Could you give them a polish in the morning?”

So that was it. I had to go to the office, looking like a pillock in a suit and shoe combination that simply didn’t work, and my teenage son went to the school prom in my best shoes.

“Jack looked gorgeous,” cooed my wife when I got home. “He’s borrowed a pair of your cufflinks as well.”

Not such a fashion disaster now, am I?

THE THINGS THEY TEXT

MY wife’s boss, Leon Jones, who lives in Darlington, was so proud when his second baby was born that he texted round the details: “Baby boy. 12lbs 8ozs. Joshua Theo. All well.”

“Blimey, that’s a whopper – how’s Lisa?” my wife texted back.

“For 12lbs 8ozs read 8lbs 12ozs – caught in the moment for a second there,” came the reply.

Phew.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

SHIRLEY Millman, of Kirkby Fleetham WI, remembered the time she was a primary school headteacher in Essex.

Whenever the governing body was due to meet, Shirley encouraged the children to help cook their lunch. When one mum arrived to pick up her son, the little boy ran up and shouted: “Mum, mum, I’ve been cooking for the Government!”