THE real irritation is that they haven't lost the remote control yet.

We got SKY TV last month. Over my dead body, I'd always sworn, being more of a Radio 4 person myself. And thinking that the boys already watched more than enough television, without throwing even more channels at them. Then - oh, I don't know - things happened, their father and I went soft and weakened, said maybe... and the next thing I knew I was sitting in Currys with my credit card while Smaller Son told me exactly what to sign up for.

(You do realise, don't you, that until then we were the ONLY household in the entire area, possibly all of Britain, the World, Universe, Space, who didn't have Sky? That I was a cruel and repressive mother whose only pleasure in life was making her sons' lives miserable? That I was driving them from home because they had to stay at friends' houses to watch the wrestling because OTHER people's mothers were kinder, more generous, more understanding, etc., etc., etc.? You get the picture. You've been there.)

Anyway, we came back from holidays to find a dish on the roof, a box of delights in the sitting room and the boys unable to move off the sofa. Well, they didn't need to.

As we lost our last remote control about a day after the television arrived, we could always guarantee that the boys get some exercise, if only crossing the room to change channels. But now they have a nice shiny new remote control with a Sky button on it. And Sky - as well as wrestling, football and cricket - has lots of music channels.

Well, they call it music, but you and I would call it a boring repetitive beat accompanied by videos to make your hair curl. There are entire channels devoted to it and it's on ALL THE TIME.

And the boys hate to miss a moment of it.

So, as a family, we could be sitting there peacefully watching Coronation Street or the cricket - and as soon as the adverts come on a boy will switch over to a music channel - for two minutes of the same two boring bars played through 15 times, and then played backwards for another 15.

Over the school holidays, our lives have been lived to this incessant background noise. What's worse, is they have yet to find the OFF button on that nice remote control. So they go out and leave the noise on and wherever I am in the house I have to stop what I'm doing and come and turn the blasted thing off.

I'm working on the principle that all this is so new that it still has novelty value and when the novelty wears off, we can get back to some sort of peace in the house.

On the other hand, one day when they'd gone out and I was trying to switch the thing off - again - I came across an unexpected treat, a channel full of Sixties videos. There was a boyish Mick Jagger, looking almost innocent, Manfred Mann, who ain't see nothing like the Mighty Quinn, and then, bless them, a baby-faced Paul Simon and an angelic Art Garfunkel.

That was my youth that was. I sat entranced.

Next time the boys want music in the advert breaks, they'll have to fight me for that remote control.