SO what activities are you planning for your children over the summer holidays - football, swimming, tennis coaching? Or perhaps a sailing week, a coaching camp or a week in school catching up on their reading?

Well, why not try a new idea from Singapore.

There, the authorities have launched a whole new course of lessons for their school children - teaching them how to clean the house, wash their underwear, polish floors and make their own beds.

The Singaporeans are apparently worried that today's pampered children are growing up too spoilt and lacking the entrepreneurial spirit of their parents and grandparents. Hence the classes.

The children start with floor sweeping, move on to bedmaking and - when they're really competent - graduate to cooking noodles and ironing.

Sounds good to me. Any child capable of getting to Level Nine on any computer game is equally capable of working the washing machine. A boy who's old enough to care about the creases in his shirt is old enough to iron it. And any child big enough to reach the bread bin who can't master the art of sandwich-making deserves to spend the entire holiday living on stale bread and meat paste.

The sooner we get them trained up to look after themselves, the better life will be for us all.

Meanwhile, an Italian psychiatrist has written a best-selling book claiming we are hot-housing our children. We are all getting too competitive - ferrying our children from gym to tennis to extra maths to piano, violin and recorder lessons until the poor scraps are burnt out by the time they're ten.

The holidays for such children are just another assault course of lessons and of being tested and graded. The result, says Paolo Crepet, is a generation who are brilliantly trained yet emotionally blown and incapable of thinking for themselves.

The answer is to give the kids time to themselves, to hang about, thinking, talking, growing up, learning how to cope with boredom and doing nothing more demanding than picking the scabs on their knees.

Once they've done the ironing, of course.

YOU can be too clean for your own good. Another report has linked the rise in children with asthma and eczema with our increased concern for cleanliness and a germ-free environment. Children need more dirt, say the experts.

Well, neither of mine has had asthma or eczema. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the state of my house.

WHO on earth invented the egg and spoon race anyway? It was probably an inspired primary teacher in the days long before governments dictated what should go on schools, a teacher who realised that sport could be all-inclusive, that even the hopelessly unathletic could be encouraged to join in and enjoy themselves if it was all made fun.

Skinny athletic kids were tied to little plump lumps for the three-legged or the wheelbarrow race and when everyone rolled over the finishing line in a giggling heap, the point had been made.

Not any more.

Now Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has unveiled a "Sports Day Tool Kit" of problem solving exercises. Fun and challenging and all that, but still not likely to get the little fat kids running around. Competition is deemed to be discouraging.

Have they told the parents that?

Sports day when I was a moderately athletic child was quite fun. But as a parent it's been hell.

You don't know what competition is until you've entered the Mothers' Race on sports day. All those county champions from 20 years ago doing warm up exercises and stretches in clingy Lycra , while the rest of us nick the children's sweets and loll round on the grass in wildly unsuitable footwear.

And as for the men.... IT consultants, plumbers, house husbands and out-of- work lorry drivers who a few minutes ago were having a convivial enough conversation about football or England's chances in the cricket, suddenly transmogrify into Alpha Males, all flaring nostrils and pumping adrenaline. Not a pretty sight.

You won't stop children being competitive - and nor should you - so it seems a good idea to harness it into Sports Day rather than let it run riot over the comparative cost of trainers, designer jeans or collections of Pokemon cards.

And keep those all inclusive problem solving exercises for the dads.

A NEWLY-discovered cook book, dating back to 1500, recently found at Longleat, features recipes fit for a king, including swans, curlews, larks and peacocks.

Earlier, the feast for the coronation of Henry V kicked off with 31 swans and was followed with venison, antelope and decorative gold eagles, and a fish course that included porpoise, lampreys and conger eels.

All that, and not a donkey sausage to be seen.

ACCORDING to the Office for National Statistics - in playful mood - 64 per cent of Italian men cheat on their wives during their lunch break.

Which could explain why their football team was so feeble in the World Cup.

On the other hand, statistics are wonderful things. My favourite always was that one in three people in the world is Chinese. Remember this next time you watch the Beverley Sisters.