MOTHERING Sunday has sneaked up on us this year, with Easter falling at the end of the month. About the only thing to be said for keeping Easter as a movable feast is that the occasional early festival spreads out the wodge of spring bank holidays a little.

Mid-Lent, or Mothering, Sunday is this weekend, Tesco tell me that: "As men have long suspected, the vast majority of those endless telephone chats between mums and daughters are about - nothing." It seems two-thirds of more than 1,000 mothers and daughters interviewed talked about "nothing in particular" and almost half of them said that they'd love to spend all evening on the phone so they could watch television together!

The survey was done by Tesco Home Phone as part of its sponsorship of GMTV's search to find Britain's Best Mum. Guess who isn't even at the starting gate? Not only do we have enough phones for Sir to join in too, but we also talk about all sorts in particular. Ah well, in the minority as usual.

This month, not necessarily this weekend, highlights another mother-daughter situation with the launch of a two-year, £3m campaign to tell teenage girls that milk, cheese and yoghurt are good for them.

I don't suppose the message will be as blunt as that, teenagers of either sex being notoriously resistant to being done good to, and mothers are to be included in the barrage of cinema, TV, radio and magazine advertising.

Last year, an MDC survey showed that almost three-quarters of girls aged ten to 20 weren't eating enough dairy produce to provide the calcium their bone structure needed for protection against osteoporosis in later life.

I doubt they care. "Later life" is off in the invisible distance along with pensions and retirement when life centres on school, college, fashion and pop. But mothers seemed little better informed, not knowing any more than their daughters about the optimum daily intake and thinking dairy produce meant high levels of fat.

So daughters are to be targeted with messages on the beauty benefits of dairy products while mothers will be told about bone health.

Somewhere along the way, I hope "award winning", and trendily un-capitalled, marketing agency iris will manage to pop in the information that it all tastes good, too.

I suppose I thought mothers just knew milk was necessary for strong bones and healthy teeth - and didn't I get that phrase from an earlier campaign? Breakfast cereals, custard, milk puds, bedtime drinks, cheese on toast, cream soups would all see to their daughters' calcium intake. Except that life isn't like that in these grazing and snack, microwave meals-for-one and just-add-hot-water, days.

Sometimes it hits me just how old-fashioned a household I run, but minorities I can live with