A teenage cover-up part two

So what is the problem with teenagers and coats?

Mine is still treating hers with the kind of contempt usually reserved for anyone who still has the audacity to breath over the age of 20.

Every morning the battle lines are drawn at 8.30 a.m. in the hall of our tiny terrace. Me on one side with a not unreasonable request for the coat to be worn ''It is still winter.'' The teenager on the other throwing back "I'll take it but I won't wear it."

'N'er cast a clout till May is out'. My mother's words still ring in my ear from childhood. She sometimes replaced the 'N'er' bit with 'Never'-which made more sense, as my mother has n'er even been to Lancashire. This phrase would shout loudest in my clubbing days. Not for me shivering on a street corner at 4 a.m. waiting for a taxi. I might have had to queue for the cloakroom, but I went home warm.

So what is the problem with teenagers and coats? The Teenager says it's because Chav Towers has a rule that bans coat wearing inside. (Is it just me or is this bollocks? A rule for the sake of it.) So therefore, taking a coat means having to carry it around school all day. Which I guess is a problem as you might want your hands free to draw horns on pictures of teachers or whatever it is that kids do when walking between classes.

But the coat aversion doesn't end in school. It extends to her social life. Every time she goes anywhere she is always saying goodbye while halfway out of the door, so by the time it has registered she is trying to escape coatless and I have taken chase- she is halfway down the street. Wearing short sleeves.

I didn't always observe my own mothers mummerings about the clout. Sometimes I cast a clout in April and feel deliciously rebellious. The phrase may have to be rewritten in the light of global warming. Or just teenagers in general, who seem to want to cast their clouts all over the shop.