TOM Cruise was offered the job but he turned it down. "No chance, old love," he said in his finest New York(shire) accent. "I can just about 'andle Mission Impossible, but I can't be doin' wi' this."

And with that he pulled his flat cap firmly down over his eyes, gave Nicole (his whippet) a sharp tug on her choke chain and strode off manfully back towards Hollywood. Well, he was actually heading towards Helmsley, but I didn't like to say anything.

Anyway, that's how I happened to be sitting in my conservatory (otherwise known as the toy box on account of its crate-like proportions and the sheer number of cars, bricks and books it holds) last Thursday evening with a small tape recorder on my knee.

I pressed the play button and a disembodied voice that sounded like a cross between (York's own) Dame Judi Dench and Luna the Moon from Bear in the Big Blue House said: "Is this on? Good. Listen very carefully Agent Haywood, I will say this only once. We need your help, and we need it now.

"But who are we, I hear you say? Or rather I would if I had a little tape recorder with a message from you on my knee, but I don't. I might bring it up at the next meeting though. We could have a coffee morning or something to raise the money.

"Anyway, who are we, you are probably saying even though I can't hear you. Well, my friend, we are the PTA."

Oh crikey, I thought, not another Parent Torture Association raffle. And I was right; it was not another raffle, it was much, much worse. Friday was to be school photograph day and it was my mission - should I choose to accept it - to keep the Munchkin looking clean, tidy and as little like Stig of the Dump as possible until the happy snapper had done his thing.

No way, I thought, it's just not possible. "Yer daft bat," shouted Tom as he manoeuvred Nic round the Hopgrove roundabout. "Me films weren't called Mission Unlikely were they?" Point taken.

I had no choice but to accept the challenge. Come Friday morning, the Munchkin would be shining like a new penny, his clothes crisp and clean and without their usual whiff of warthog, and his mad Ken Dodd hair smooth and, if need be, stapled to his scalp.

He rose, as is his wont, at about seven on the morning my impossible mission began. His hair was sticking straight up in a matted clump at the back and his sleep-creased face was looking decidedly crusty.

I descended on him with a moist flannel in one hand and an ineffectual hairbrush with a green bunny on it in the other. The Munchkin, however, was having none of it and managed to dodge past me into his sister's room, where he began poking her in the chops with his unmistakably grubby fingers.

My best bet, I decided, was to keep him in his Star Wars pyjamas until the last possible moment, before wrapping him and his uniform in clingfilm, popping him into a giant, hermetically-sealed sandwich box and delivering him directly to his classroom.

At 8.30am, ten minutes before we were due to set off, I realised I couldn't put it off any longer. I peeled off his pyjamas, which were now covered in rock hard porridge and could actually stand up on their own, and helped him into his uniform while muttering my new mantra: "Don't roll on the rug, don't sit on the cats, don't squeeze your sicky sister, don't roll on the rug..."

Against all the odds, we managed to make it to school without any mucky mishaps. We even made it through the gates, down the path and round the corner. I could see his classroom door. Then a little voice, the unmistakable voice of temptation in the guise of one of the Munchkin's newest and bestest chums, shouted hello from the top of a steep and - hurrah - muddy bank.

As I watched my lad scramble up the hill on his knees, I began to whimper quietly to myself, only stopping when the disembodied voice from the tape started playing over and over in my head: "This mum will self-destruct in five seconds..."

Updated: 08:56 Tuesday, October 07, 2003