DON'T talk to me about Mother's Day. I'm thinking of disowning Senior Son. He forgot all about it.

Forget? How could anyone FORGET? For months the shops have been full of cards, chocolates, jumpers, jewellery, vouchers for make-overs and adventure holidays, all saying I Love You, Mum. So much so, that I actually said to the boys, "Don't go mad. All I'd like is a card and maybe a bunch of daffs".

You would have had to be a total recluse or living on another planet not to know it was Mother's Day and that dutiful sons were expected to do something about it.

I did my bit. On Saturday I went to my mother's clutching an enormous bunch of flowers and a video of Upstairs Downstairs. She'd already had a card from Smaller Son which had made her day. But nothing from his brother.

"Nor I," I said. Still, we consoled ourselves, you know what the post is like these days. Ha!

On Mother's Day itself I was in London. Smaller Son had been out partying on Saturday night and crept in with a friend only an hour or so before I got up in the dark for the early train. But there on the mantelpiece was a vase of flowers and a card. He'd probably bought the flowers in the all night garage on the way home from his party, but it didn't matter. He remembered. I went off to London feeling loved.

Waterloo Station was packed with smart young Londoners clutching big bunches of flowers and boxes of chocs and catching trains to the suburbs to see their mums. Never before have I seen so many men carrying so many tulips in one small space.

I rang my mum, of course. From the middle of the bridge at Hampton Court, actually as the damp winds swirled around. I left the mobile switched on for when Senior Son would ring me. Only he didn't.

What's more there wasn't a card on Monday morning either.

"I'll kill the little rat!" I said to his father. "Is a card too much to ask?"

Full of fury, I rang the lad and berated him soundly. "I forgot," he said, "and by the time I remembered, I'd missed the collection. It's not my fault Mother's Day is on a Sunday."

If I could have got my hands down the phone to strangle him...

I tried to reason with myself. Mother's Day is only a commercial exercise really, hyped up by the card manufacturers. And, bless him, he does think of his mum quite often - and not just when he wants something. He never, for instance, forgets my passion for really tacky snowscenes. Even on a recent clubbing weekend to London with his mates, he'd bothered to buy me a snowcene of a London taxi struggling through glittery multi-coloured flakes.

I could forgive him a lot. Maybe.

The card finally turned up on Tuesday morning. Not so much that he'd missed the collection, I fear, more that he'd done nothing about it until his father had got on the phone to him first thing Monday and booted him into action. Better late than never, I suppose, but a Mother's Card two days late doesn't have quite the same impact.

Anyway, he's coming home today for Easter. I might just "forget" to let him in, or make up his bed, or make his favourite food or give him a lift. But, unlike neglectful sons, mothers aren't made like that, are they?