YOU know in the queue at the checkout there's always an old lady who traps you with her trolley and tells you that when she was young she could feed a family of ten on fourpence three farthings a week on scrag end and potato peelings?

Well, I'm turning into that woman...

It was an idle remark to Senior Son that started it off. I asked him if he used the car much at university. Not really, he said, weekends a bit and, of course, the Sainsbury's run.

I nodded. Then something sparked in my head. Car? Sainsbury's run? He's a student for goodness' sake.

Apart from the Marks & Spencer heiress and Ali, whose father was an oil sheikh, I knew only a couple of students with cars in my day. And they were the sort of cars you had to get out of and push up steep hills.

And as for Sainsbury's - we shopped in markets and the sort of supermarkets where they never took the goods out of dingy cardboard boxes. And never washed the floor.

Senior Son's room in hall was palatial - central heating, computer points, own en suite shower and loo. Smaller Son spent a weekend in a Cambridge college earlier this month and was quite put out because there was only one shower between four rooms. My dear, the deprivation.

In our freezing house, ten of us - including a Lady and an Hon. - shared one bathroom and one loo. The electricity was a shilling-in-the-meter job and we were so cold that my friend Lizzie would wrap herself in a blanket before writing essays with her frost-bitten fingers. We all used to fight over the cat. Draped across our shoulders, he was a wonderful hot water bottle and draught excluder.

Ah yes, the cat. He was sort of adopted by the lady next door, who enticed him with fresh fish, chicken livers, even occasional salmon. We would look out of the window hungrily before turning back to our baked beans on toast or 101 ways with mince.

We have made our children too comfortable at home and they expect that same standard while they're studying. It took two car loads for a friend to bring her son back last weekend. "Do you remember when we set off with two cases and a back pack?" she asked wonderingly. Now they have TVs, computers, sound systems and enough designer clothes to stock a shop.

Senior Son's rented house has all mod cons, including a garage for his car. Except they have a pool table in it. In my day we'd have probably have sub-let it to a few starving medics.

I know many students have a real struggle to manage and many drop out because they simply can't afford it. But there are still an awful lot like my son and his friends. They eat well, drink far too well and go clubbing in the same places as footballers and Coronation Street stars - despite their ever so slight difference in incomes.

By and large, they will cruise through their student days in warmth and comfort - and about £15,000 in debt.

We graduated pasty-faced from too much cheap stodge, toes and fingers scarred with chilblains and probably the beginnings of the rheumatism that's plagued us since. On the other hand, we were jolly fit from walking everywhere and started our working lives not owing anyone anything.

So who really has life easier?