Living with young children can be like driving through a safari park with the windows open, any parent will you that, but one morning when my four little angels were small will always stick in my mind.

In the space of just 15 minutes they managed to turn their reasonably sane, competent and usually calm full-time working mother into a twitching gibbering wreck.

The reason for this metamorphis? Shoes - you know, those bits of leather and laces which cost the earth and usually last about as long as the average TV serial.

It is 8.15am, 15 minutes before we all have to leave the house. (Hubby, lucky so and so, departed an hour ago when his offsrping were still sleepy-eyedand angelic looking).

Son number one, aged 12, asks me if I will clean is shoes. I politely (well nearly) decline, suggesting an appointment with the doctor if his arms are broken. Pleas that I do it better than he does fall on deaf ears and he proceeds to do the job on the dining room table without the aid of newspaper or anything else to catch the vast amounts of polish that never reach the shoe leather.

Wobbler number one is thrown.

I then suggest it is too hot for son number two, aged nine, to be wearing Doc Martin boots.

"Where are your school shoes?" I ask.

"Err... I swopped them for a pair of trainers from Christopher". (Christopher is this week's best frriend).

The fact that his shoes cost more than our weekly food bill, are almost new and he already has trainers hadn't occured to him.

Reminding myself that there are laws against slow strangulation of innocent young children, i grit my teeth and ask a few relevant questions.

His own trainers are at school, his second-best school shoes are at grandma's and, no, he can't possible wear the swopped trainers in case Christopher's mother spots them at the school gate. She, apparently, is even more firece than I am.

Wobbler number two is thrown and second son puts on his heavy boots and is left in no doubt that he is unlikely to see his 10th birthday if his own shoes don't come home with him that evening.

Meanwhile, son number three, aged seven, has been frantically hunting for something all over the house. Yes, you've guessed it, he's lost a shoe!

I stare at him in disbelief. I swear under my breath. I despatch offspring to search every room, but there is no sign. His second-best pair have developed a hole overnight, his trainers are at school and he claims not to have seen his PE trainers for months. (They turned up a week later in a bucket in the garden shed).

Number three son solves the problem by announcing he will go to school in his trendy new red wellies.
 
"It may start a new fashion, mum," suggests eldest son, hopefully. He is now sporting a blob of black shoe polish on the front of his pristine white shirt. I am not amused.

It is now 8.30am and I can't stand any more. I begin pushing them all towards the door, please that they seem suitably subdued after a lecture on the Cost of Living and "care of one's belongings".
 
But the peace is shortlived. Five-year-old daughter's smug little voice rings out.

"Well, MY shoes are all right. i don't lose MINE!"

The neighbours talked for weeks about the pitched battle on our doorstep as I tried to save her from being murdered by her usually-loving brothers.

Ah, kids. Who's have em?