WHAT'S the hurry, I thought, there are six whole weeks before the four year old starts school. That's acres of time to sort out his uniform.

I'll think about it after our holiday in Northumberland. No, on second thoughts I'll leave it until a couple of weeks before the start of term. If I buy the stuff now it will only give the beansprout time to grow out of everything by the end of the summer. Best leave it until later.

And so I pontificated for six weeks until, precisely 12 hours before the Munchkin was due to skip merrily through the school gates, I found myself furiously ironing name tapes into the back of gym shorts.

I am not quite as terminally disorganised as I may appear, but I do put things off until the last possible moment. Give me a deadline and I will stick to it - but only just.

In this way I started the school holiday with a laid-back attitude not unlike the Cadbury's Caramel bunny. Hey, I kept saying to other chums preparing their little ones for their big day at big school, what's the rush? Let's all chill out for a while and enjoy the sunshine.

Six weeks later I was more like the Duracell bunny, frantically careering round town, mowing down unwary old women with my buggy, desperately searching for emerald green polo shirts.

How was I to know they were rarer than hen's teeth? No one told me I had more chance of finding Osama bin Laden in York city centre than an emerald green polo shirt, so you can't really blame me for leaving it until the day before the beginning of term to start my odyssey.

After a couple of hours of fruitless searching I can honestly say I began to go a little mad. At one point I found myself chasing a small boy up Piccadilly because I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a green polo shirt under his anorak. I was considering offering his dad a tenner for it (the shirt, not the boy) until I noticed the collar had blue tramlines on it. Oh darn it to heck, I thought, or words to that effect.

By now the animals were getting restless. My own little monkey boy was beginning to drag his feet dramatically and muse sadly under his breath about whether he would ever see his dinosaurs again, while the meerkat in the buggy kept sticking her head out into the daylight, furtively searching the horizon for her next bottle.

And then the clouds parted, a shaft of bright sunlight illuminated our way and the voice of an angel rang out across the city saying "fear not child, the answer you seek is within". How very Zen, I thought, until the voice - which, now that I come to think of it, sounded uncannily like my son's best friend's mum - continued "yeah, within walking distance".

And it was, even with the added burden of a moaning monkey and a manic meerkat. When we finally arrived at Boyes in Goodramgate, I felt like puckering up in a Pope-like fashion and planting a smacker on the carpet, but I soon discovered this was a difficult, if not impossible dream.

The place was packed. There were mums queuing six-deep at the tills, their baskets piled high with polo shirts of every colour; mums ripping shirts from their cellophane wrappers and measuring them against the backs of wriggling children; mums cramming bumper packs of knickers on top of bumper packs of socks and bumper packs of vests; and mums wrestling with other mums over the last pair of navy blue gym shorts to be found in the city, perhaps even in the world.

It was complete and utter chaos. Women who had had six weeks to calmly prepare for their child's big day were bouncing off the walls, gibbering about pump bags and art shirts. Aaah, I thought with a serene smile of recognition, home sweet home.

Updated: 10:06 Tuesday, September 09, 2003