Yesterday was the commercialised day known as 'Mothers Day.' Justanother selling experience for shops, like St Valentine's Day (expensive evening meals, bouquets of flowers, chocolates, diamond rings, whatever trifles take your fancy), Easter or Father's Day, (more of the same).

Bank Holidays,Halloween, harvest suppers, Christmas, Hogmanay, New Year. If the date is right you can eat it or wrap it in gift paper, whatever it is.

I'm not against spending;I rather like buying fripperies and Peter long ago learnt not to ask 'Do we need it?' whenI unpack my booty.

To spend is to affirm a grip on life, a confirmation ofone's optimism, however sorely it may have been tested up to this point.There is something life enhancing about spending. It changes the energy of everything but I am coming to dislike Mothering Sunday.

My mother loves going out: she even studied a Valentine's supper menu witha view to booking a meal for thetwo of us(!) We did go out yesterday, hada lovely meal andwere given a pot of flowers each as a present. (Yes, I know, the price of the meal covered the flowers, but we liked the idea.) Then wehad tea with my daughters and granchildren andit was a lovely day.

What I don't like about Mothering Sunday is the hurt it causes to many people.Not just new mothers whose husbands haven't got a card or flowers but widows whose families send presents but live too far away to visit.

In an agricultural community, Mothering Sunday was the day whe farm maids were allowed to visit thier mothers and take flowers from thehedgerows as a gift. I'm not wanting to turn the clock back and there are those tough enough to not give a fig about whether their children remember them or not, but this is one occasion we could do without.