In the past, adults thought nothing of keeping kids in check but now we're too scared to tell them off

OK, I admit it, I'm not proud. I'm a coward. Absolutely hopeless. And I have failed the exam to be an Interfering Old Bat - otherwise known as a Caring Citizen.

Ten days ago, on a glorious Saturday, we were walking, as you may have read, on the Durham coastal path. All dog daisies and way marks and skylarks. A lot of thought, effort and money had gone into the making and upkeep of that path.

And, as we had met so few people along its course, it was heartening to see a group of teenagers making the most of it. They were having a picnic, enjoying the view of the sparkling waves and making a lot of noise, as teenagers do. As they walked past me, heading home, I smiled benevolently at them. They sort of grunted, but I still beamed.

Then I came to their picnic site. I could tell you exactly what they'd had to eat and drink because the evidence was still there - coke cans, crisp packets, sandwich packs, chocolate wrappers... all just left, abandoned where they had fallen.

What I should have done - what I wanted to do - was yell at them to come back and pick up their mess. It's certainly what any adult would have done when I was a teenager.

But I didn't. And you know why I didn't, don't you? Because I'm a coward. And in any case, I knew they wouldn't do it.

(It was my second encounter with a group of teenagers that day. Earlier in Horden on my own I'd met a gang, who'd looked at me long and hard, walked towards me and shouted, "Oi woman! Are you f ****** Polish?" - which was so bizarre it just made me laugh.)

I should even have picked up the rubbish myself, of course, but there was too much and I had no carrier bag. So I walked on, feeling useless and a failure and pathetic.

When I was a teenager, we were surrounded by Interfering Old Bats and Cantankerous Old Men, whose prime purpose in life was to stop teenagers having fun. They felt - because they were adults and we weren't - that they had a God given right to tell us what to do. And even though it was the so-called Swinging Sixties, when we were all meant to be such rebels, we generally muttered and moaned and grunted, but did just what we were old. Probably because they all knew our parents.

That doesn't mean much now. Once, up at Osmotherly, I asked a couple of ten-year-olds, very gently, not to throw stones at some paddling toddlers. At which point, a big chap in a Middlesbrough shirt came round the corner and told me that his boys would throw f****** stones wherever they f****** liked and if I didn't like it, I could f*** off before they threw them at me too.

So no, I didn't challenge those teenagers. But I feel so feeble about it that next time, I might be braver.

Or, at the very least, take a carrier bag with me.

THE 16-year-old who raped his teacher when he was just 15 was jailed for life this week. But apparently he could be free in four years time.

Not for me to question the whys and wherefores of sentencing and the parole system. But if a jail sentence clearly isn't going to be for life - or anything like it - why do we say it is?

Let us at least be clear.

SO not for a year or more yet and only on special occasions, but Jackanory might be coming back.

Like all the best ideas, it was brilliantly simple - well known person reading a story. With pictures.

It gave us George Melly reading Tales from Beatrix Potter, Prince Charles reading his own story, The Old Man of Lochnagar and - just to prove that it wasn't at all twee or nice - the classic Rik Mayall reading of Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine, which apparently led to a massive number of complaints from angry parents.

The story, in case you don't know it, is of a boy who kills his horrid grandmother, who had - as my sons used to gleefully recall "a mouth like a dog's bottom". Great stuff. Read it and you'll soon understand why children loved it.

The need for stories goes back to man's very beginnings. We all need stories - whether as books or soap operas. Children need them most of all.

So while the BBC's new controller of children's programmes, Alison Sharman, is sorting out the new recordings of Jackanory, she could fill the time by replaying some of the old ones.

She could start with George's Marvellous Medicine. But don't tell Granny.

DIVORCE can be good for you. Well, maybe. If you're a woman. Well, some women.

Research by the Yorkshire Building Society shows that after divorce, women are more likely to feel relieved, liberated and happy, while men are more likely to feel sad, devastated and betrayed - which is presumably why they are more likely to marry again within two years.

But women initiate more divorces than do men. And are less likely to rush into marriage again.

Divorce is never easy, never painless. But as we've often thought that middle aged women are the victims, it's good to know that - for some at least - it can indeed be a whole new beginning.

WALKING through town in the sunshine, a horrible thought occurred to me. Great numbers of people tend to find a style they like while in their 20s and then stick with it, with only a few minor modifications for the rest of their lives. Grand old ladies wear the smart suits of their early womanhood; many 60 somethings are in the dresses and cardigans of the 1950s; ageing hippies still cling to cheesecloth and denim. A familiar style is a sort of comfort dressing.

But does this mean that in 50 years time, we are going to be surrounded by pensioners flashing their ringed and wrinkled belly buttons at us, while their back view offers a seductive glimpse of thong or a cheeky little tattoo stretched out of all recognition?

SO men are better than women at coping with pain, says new research. In that case, why do they make twice as much fuss?

Published: 06/07/2005