Where are all these rich kids?

For weeks now I’ve been bombarded with information on gift ideas for Mother’s Day.

These are just some examples – and I’ve included the prices: a short-sleeved jacket (£40), a turquoise bag (£55), a VIP ticket to Gardeners’ World Live at Birmingham NEC (£65 – I assume mum has to pay for the train down there), a jar of ‘Perfectioning’ beauty serum (£9.99), a bottle of wine (£6.49), and a stripy lounge trouser and knitted top (a whopping £85).

I confess, there are other gifts costing less – most around the £4 mark – but many are out of my own price range, never mind my daughters’.

Even if they did have that sort of cash I wouldn’t expect them to spend it on me and certainly not on a pair of lounge trousers. A kitchen cardigan maybe, but nothing more sophisticated.

In comparison my mother was deprived. I would make her breakfast in bed, then traipse off to church and bring back a single daffodil wrapped in a bit of tin foil. No lounge trousers were handed out by the vicar, nor beauty serum or VIP tickets. Had that been the case, I dare say the place would have been packed out rather than a quarter full.

To me, my brother and sister, Mother’s Day wasn’t about spending a year’s worth of pocket money, but more about giving her a break, helping with a few chores and generally behaving ourselves. Although we were never trusted to cook Sunday dinner, so she still ended up doing that.

Nowadays commercialism has seeped into every special date on the calendar. We used to make cards but shops clear their shelves to accommodate the hundreds created especially for Mother’s Day.

Surprisingly, this is nothing new – Anna Jarvis, the woman who in 1912 lobbied for and established Mother’s Day in America, fought against the celebration after it became too commercialised.

Americans spend an average of £70 per person on gifts – we are edging that way. As my daughters argue over who is buttering my toast on Sunday, there will be mothers across the country opening bottles of Chanel No.5, or finding tickets for West End shows at the end of the bed.

While I genuinely don’t want my children to spend anything on me, I do intend to exploit Mother’s Day for all its worth in other ways.

It presents an ideal opportunity to ask them to tidy their rooms, wash the dishes and do a spot of ironing - although it takes my youngest 30 minutes to press a flannel. The windows need cleaning, the shower needs grouting and there are a couple of loose tiles on the roof.