WHEN Senior Son was about ten years old, a tall strapping lad, he suddenly became a sex object. Not that he realised that at the time - he was far more interested in football. But a gaggle of giggling little girls would ring him up, call to see if he was coming out, sit on the doorstep waiting for him to appear, happy just for a glimpse of him - which would send them into even more giggles.

He was deeply, deeply embarrassed. "Just tell them to go AWAY!" he would plead, with panic in his eyes.

A few years later, of course, everything had changed. A lot.

But girls still grow up a lot faster than boys. So I was deeply shocked when I once collected my lad from a party. There was this woman there - slinky dress, slinky make-up, a cigarette and a knowing look. It turned out she was only 15, in the same year as my baby and was one of his girlfriends. Help!

Actually, his first proper girlfriend turned out to be a joy. I'd got used over the years to boys ringing up and grunting at me down the phone as a way of saying which of my sons they wanted to talk to. But the girls... they would call and ask clearly and politely and then enquire after my health. Such a refreshing change. It always left me in strange state of shock

It also meant we lost our phone. Boys who have only ever communicated in monosyllables to their parents can spend hours, literally hours, on the phone to girlfriends. Then when they've finished on the phone, they go on the computer and tie up the other phone line by sending them e-mails.

Although there were plenty of nice girls in the village, both boys - being awkward as usual - picked girls who lived some miles away. I spent a lot of time sitting outside houses waiting for them. Did our parents do that for us? Absolutely not.

But although I was allowed to chauffeur, I was not allowed to ask questions and if I was ever chauffeuring a girlfriend home, a boy would always ride shotgun with me, in case I dared cross-examine her and actually - oh, horrors - engage her in conversation.

As if...

Meanwhile, as we lurched bumpily through adolescence and I frequently wanted to bounce the boys off the wall, their granny still doted on them. And, bless them, they were very fond of her.

This could, of course, be partially due to the fact that she never came over without baking their favourite cakes (chocolate for one, lemon for the other) and always slipped them a fiver - or more - when she thought I wasn't looking. In return, they didn't scowl quite so much when she was around, put clean clothes on to visit her, poured her cups of tea and large gins and generally made more of an effort for her than they ever did with us.

And grannies, being grannies, were sublimely indifferent to all the subtle delicacies of a young man's love life. Never mind my careful questioning, deliberately off-hand enquiries, my tippy-toeing round, frightened of rebuff - Granny would go straight for the kill..

"So who is this girl then?" she would ask, "What does she do? What do her parents do? What sort of house do they live in? Is she going to university? Where did you meet her? Where are you taking her?"

And boys - maybe thinking of chocolate cake and fivers - would invariably crumble and blurt out the answers. In fact, given their investigatory skills, you could forget about weapons inspectors - a decent granny could probably find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the time to takes to make a pot of tea. And get him to mind his manners while he was about it.

With or without chocolate cake, grannies are heat-seeking missiles to everything you wanted to know - but the rest of us are much too terrified to ask.

Published: 06/02/2003