Is there anyone else out there as crap as me at reading important information? I see buzz words like 'Badman', 'unauthorised overdraft', 'court summons' etc and I do try but after about 3 words in.......zzzzzzzzz I have to have everything explained to me in words of one syllable - with glove puppets. I have screens of e-mails I daren't delete because they have intelligent-looking data that I might just read all the way through tomorrow. Is there a ism-y word for people like me (assuming there are other such) - something I can wear like a Christmas jumper - a license to excuse backwards behaviour?

I do kind of want to be grown-up but can't concentrate on it long enough to actually manage it.

Worse than simply being simple I have now leapt on the fast train to Turning-into-my-Mother well before it was time to leave Truculent Youth, entirely skipping Confident Adulthood. Thank god I have a couple of nearly-as-tall-as-me sproglets to remind me now and then that I'm supposed to be somewhere in an hour and can we have lunch - and shouldn't we get diesel now even though it's not completely past the dial 'cos remember what happened last time - and did I remember the baby etc...

I like to think that it's all part of their education. I certainly don't spoon-feed them anything that may be construed as being intellectual. Life skills - that's what it is.

Hoping to erase a familiar expression off my daughter's face I tried to explain that this is the worst bit for me - when I know that I am hopeless, irrational, forgetful blah blah and how she should treasure this time because the bit when I wee in my shoes and hi-jack prams and deny all knowledge of my family is going to be even more tiresome for her - bliss for me however.

I think I just weed in my shoes.