DID you know you can't buy food in Manchester? Even stranger is you can't buy it in Leeds either.

What's more, friends tell me that seemingly there are no food shops in York or Newcastle, no chemists' shops in Hull and, most surprising of all, no Marks & Spencer in London.

You wouldn't believe it, would you? You would if you had student children...

They all come home for Christmas, dump their washing, scrounge Christmas cards for people they haven't sent them to and then disappear on the razz.

Senior Son appeared briefly, did some errands for us, came out to lunch, put in an appearance on Christmas Day and, for most of the rest of the time, might just as well have been on a different planet and in a different time zone. The only trace of his presence was the faint thump of music on a car radio at four in the morning, remains of the makings of cheese and ham toasties in the kitchen and a creature from the Black Lagoon staggering downstairs when we'd just washed the lunch dishes to inquire, groggily, about the possibility of some breakfast.

Then it's time for him to go back again.

Because I'm soft, and it was Christmas, I did all Senior Son's washing for him. Then the day before his return, when he was trawling his room for clothes for the wash, he asked: "Is there any food for me to take back?"

I thought the little chap meant delicious home-cooked food, a link with home and his mummy wot loves him. A Desperate Dan-sized corned beef pie, a tub of nourishing soup, some lemon cake perhaps.

No. He meant bog-standard grocery provisions, as in the things you can get from Tesco's.

"But I thought you had a Sainsbury's near you?"

"Yes, but if I could take something back it would be easier..."

He meant, of course, that I would pay for it. They nearly all pull this trick, as if their university cities had no shops. Hence the friend whose daughter is in Hull but who has to stock up on toothpaste, deodorant, soap and shampoo at Boots in Richmond. Or the one who has a daughter in London where she buys the most amazing clothes in out of the way shops, but still somehow has to get her underwear, tights and basics at Marks & Spencer in Darlington - on her mother's account.

He made a list which included Pot Noodles, crisps, fizzy pop and tinned potatoes. I substituted rice, pasta, orange juice and proper spuds. He was resigned but grateful.

Then we fell to discussing cleaning products. He asked me to get some. Cleaning products? For the lad who could keep the National Health Service supplied with penicillin from the mouldy cups stuck to his bedroom window sill? Whose room, after only two weeks, is knee-deep in discarded clothes, Coke tins and chocolate wrappers? Who has never, as far as I know, voluntarily cleaned anything in his entire life?

"Yeah, that Oxy Gel's the best," he said. "And those liquid tablets are best for the washing machine. They really get stains out. And I'd better have some bleach for the lav, proper stuff, not the cheap brand because that's doesn't work so well."

I have had many an amazing conversation with my first-born over the years, but never one so unexpected as the comparative merits of bleach and cleaning spray. Maybe he is learning something at university after all, if only how to clean the loo.

His shopping cost me £25. For that conversation alone, it was worth every penny.

Published: 11/01/02