TODAY, it’s my birthday. The Middle One also celebrates his birthday in June, and with the anniversaries of both his arrival and his survival from newborn meningitis, I reflected upon the preciousness of life and the child happily ensconced in it.

And then I carted a right handful of bounding boys to the bowling alley to take aim at high volume while the background noise pounded down like a mallet over the head: the quiet warmth of treasured fondness dissipated faster than a speeding cannonball.

The youngsters had a great time but, as the accompanying adult, I suffered a long stream of indignities.

First my funky footwear with daring heel was exchanged for multi-coloured clown shoes that advertised loudly the length of my feet on the back.

Shod like a pantomime camel, I hefted a series of thumping cannon balls into the side gulley to the jeers of the party, making Lord of the Flies seem like a tale of love and empathy. Then, having made it through the humiliation of inadequate parental bowling, I suffered a second nasty footwear moment: the return of hideous clod-hoppers instead of much-loved favourites.

The background racket was so great, I was tempted to just take them and run, then re-engineer my image to accommodate these monstrosities in the quiet of my own home.

It was blatantly obvious that not only would I never have teamed them with my jeans, bag or personality, I’d have also had to copy Cinderella’s Ugly Sister and lop off several toes to fit my feet in.

However, it took considerable time to persuade the teenage shoe-returner of this. He, apparently, had never before made a mistake, reminding me of a timely Father’s Day quote: ‘When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.’ It’s clear to me that Mark Twain had left home by 21, at last giving his father some peace in which to think straight. And my! What a birthday treat that would be.