IT'S not school that stresses our children - it's their so-called leisure time. A report last week by the teaching unions and the Children's Society said that children are increasingly suffering from panic attacks, sleeplessness and depression. They blame it on the exams and tests they have to do - 75 public exams in a school career for the average 18-year-old leaver.

Well yes, maybe. But... a generation or so ago, children did far more tests. Not public ones, admittedly, but school was an endless treadmill of tests, exams and punishments. There was no let up at all. Far more children, I'm sure, lived in fear of school than do today.

But out of school, we were as free as birds. Once that bell went, all the pressure was off us. We played out, we roamed the countryside, we swam in rivers. We built dens. We read comics and books, played endless games of snakes and ladders and pontoon. Sometimes we just sat and picked the scabs off our knees.

But now for many children their leisure time is as strictly time tabled as school. How many kids are left simply to muck about these holidays? I bet most of them are on courses, activities, having to be ferried, chauffeured, collected by the clock. What's more their leisure time has become another area of competition.

Once upon a time, for instance, children learnt to swim. And that was it. Once they could keep afloat they could go to the sea, river or pool and either race up and down in flashy crawl or do a glorified doggy paddle in the shallow end. And it didn't matter a jot.

But now there are grades and exams and little stars to put on swimming trunks. Instead of a pleasure, swimming has become yet another exam ladder. And it's exactly the same for dance or gymnastics, for judo, riding or sailing, and, especially, of course, for any musical instrument.

Hobbies are not just for relaxation, they're just giving our children more goals to aim for, more hurdles to jump over. More opportunities for failure.

Yes, of course, we have to encourage them.. That's why mine had those music grades, those swimming stars and certificates. But it was when one of them was devastated when he failed a swimming badge when he couldn't do a tumble turn, that I found myself thinking: "Does it matter? Why are we doing this, just to make him miserable?" And I don't think they've gone for another badge or grade since then.

It's great to give our children opportunities. It's great to encourage them to aim a little higher, work a little harder. And of course there's pride and pleasure in achievement.

But sometimes we can take it all too far.

If you think your children are stressed, then before you blame the school or the exams, why not just make sure they have time just to muck about, do nothing very much. Maybe even pick the scabs on their knees.

It could be just what they need.

THE Friarage Hospital has betrayed us all. Now the immediate dust has settled, calls for a full inquiry into the Richard Neale affair cannot be ignored

From the time it was little more than a collection of military huts, the Friarage has always been special - one of those rare hospitals where you're a name not a number, where virtually every member of staff has time for patients, where consultants are chatty, nurses smiley and efficient and even the cleaners take time to tidy up your flowers before they go home.

There was a time when our lot practically had season tickets there and we always felt smug - because those horror stories you heard from other hospitals could never happen at the Friarage.

Then there was Richard Neale...

And suddenly, the hospital that we all loved and praised - and willingly raised huge amounts of money for - has proved to be a rotten apple after all. And precisely because we held such a high opinion of it, the sense of betrayal was even stronger.

It's not just that Richard Neale proved to be little more than a butcher, wreaking misery and pain on his patients. But it went on for ten years. Ten years...

Now during that time, as complaints started coming in, someone must have known, colleagues who sorted out the mess must have known, managers must have known. So why did it take so long for anyone to do anything? And when they did, why was it the easiest way out - including writing glowing references for a man they couldn't wait to get rid of. Which, by any standards, is an act of distinctly dubious morality.

There might, of course, be very good reasons why things happened the way they did. I hope there are. If so, then we surely have a right to know.

William Hague has now called for an inquiry. The Northallerton Health Service Trust cannot ignore that call.

For if they do, how could we - who have sung its praises - ever trust the Friarage again?

SO there we were, reading about the latest gaffes in the life of Victoria and David Beckham - after the thong furore, she's now told the world he's proud to be a gay icon. What's more, she says, he's an animal in bed.

Gosh, how the opposing crowds will love that.

They are, we agreed, a pretty dim pair.

On the other hand, they're the ones who are multi-millionaires and we're still the wage slaves, toiling away for a tiny fraction of their dosh.

So who are really the dim ones