.....is said to me hundreds of times a day. They are all into friends at this point, I'm told. Who's friends with who is the constant story from school. Who let who play with who, who has the power to sway others to their will. She practices on me: "I won't be your friend if you make me clear up, I won't be your friend if you don't let me wear that... "

"Fine," I say, "I'm not your friend, I'm your mummy."

This felt a bit strange at first but now I can say it with gusto. Since I will be about eighty when she is a teenager there isn't much chance I'll ever be one of those mothers who says they are more like friends with their daughters. More like grandmas in my case.

It threw her a bit to begin with, me not wanting to be her friend. They all want to have as many friends as possible at school, I suppose- it's just like facebook and linked in. They haven't evolved to the point where one actually considers it a healthy thing to prune the list being entered into a new address book.

Since then she's diverted to new tactics:

"I won't let you come to my party if you won't let me stay in the bath longer."

That one always makes me laugh, and she gets cross and asks me why I'm laughing.

"Who is going to organise your party if I'm not allowed?" Pause while she considers this.

" You won't be my mummy friend if you don't let me stay in the bath longer."

I haven't thought up my reply to this one yet, and life's too short not to have five more minutes in

the bath. And mummy- friend seems quite a nice balance somehow.

You have to be dinosaur friends to take children out together in London.

One of my bestest friends came to stay this weekend with two of her children. We used to work together as a creative team so we know each other really well. This helps when doing really, really challenging and demanding parenting things like a whole day out at a museum in London.

We went to see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. There was a child meltdown on the tube on the way there, a child multi-wail in the picnic area about the horrific prospect of eating sandwiches, a child keening session about the fact we didn’t want to go upstairs, and a child group whimper at the fact my friend and I didn’t want to spend the entire time in the shop. Admittedly the shop boycott was a bit of a mummy double standard, given that my friend and I once spend several hundred dollars apiece in a single hours shop in Soho, NY.

In between these freak-outs my friend’s nine year old mercilessly interrogated a museum man about spiders in the precise and confident manner of Kirsty Wark doing a Newsnight piece on arachnids. I tried not to flinch as the husk of the hairy body of a massive spider was put in my hand and I learned the exact way that the living creature heaved it’s way out. I never knew that spiders (well, this one, anyway) breathed by holes in its skin. Apparently this is good as this is the reason that spiders cannot get as big as they could if they had lungs, but a few hundred years the atmosphere was richer in oxygen and the spiders were therefore much, much bigger. I decided that the digital world may possibly be a small price to pay for the lack of ginormous hairy spiders. It’s a close call…

Meanwhile the four year olds spent the afternoon rigorously investigating the grating on the floor and the museum lighting system.

“Well, at least they’re showing interest in their environment,” said my friend, as we dragged them away. But then she was the one that said that even said it was good when we were being made redundant so I never listen to her when she's being so glass totally ridiculously brimming over when it is clearly not even half full. Then we dragged them all off for a melt-down on the way home on the tube.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS?

IT'S COMPLICATED.

So X isn't friends with K because he didn't say sorry when he hit her and J is her friend - but O is too and J and O sat together for lunch which meant that X isn't friends with either of them any more and C is a new friend but she doesn't go on the trampoline so she isn't a real friend and anyway she hasn't come to our house for tea yet and really X is just upset because J sat with O at lunch but R was ok to sit next to - except he's a boy.

Well, that's the top line on the situation today, but I missed a big chunk while she was having a poo and I was also trying to listen to The Archers - where the plotlines change far slower.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS?

IT'S COMPLICATED.

So X isn't friends with K because he didn't say sorry when he hit her and J is her friend - but O is too and J and O sat together for lunch which meant that X isn't friends with either of them any more and C is a new friend but she doesn't go on the trampoline so she isn't a real friend and anyway she hasn't come to our house for tea yet and really X is just upset because J sat with O at lunch but R was ok to sit next to - except he's a boy.

Well, that's the top line on the situation today, but I missed a big chunk while she was having a poo and I was also trying to listen to The Archers - where the plotlines change far slower.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS?

IT'S COMPLICATED.

So X isn't friends with K because he didn't say sorry when he hit her and J is her friend - but O is too and J and O sat together for lunch which meant that X isn't friends with either of them any more and C is a new friend but she doesn't go on the trampoline so she isn't a real friend and anyway she hasn't come to our house for tea yet and really X is just upset because J sat with O at lunch but R was ok to sit next to - except he's a boy.

Well, that's the top line on the situation today, but I missed a big chunk while she was having a poo and I was also trying to listen to The Archers - where the plotlines change far slower.