I wrote a bit a few weeks ago about my friends A and P spliting up. They have one daughter, a lovely girl who is nearly 12. She is very concerned about her mum. She asked her 'You 're not going to do anything stupid are you?' A was horrified that her daughter felt the need to ask such a question and said to her 'Darling, what on earth do you mean?' Her daughter replied 'Like start smoking.'

I regret to report that A has in fact returned to the evil weed after a gap of many years to help her through this crisis. It strikes me that when parents smoke these days it is often a mirror image of when kids did in the past - hiding down the garden or hanging out the window to smoke the thing, and then loads of polo mints to try and get rid of the smell afterwards.Certainly that is what A has resorted to.

On a sadder note A was telling her that her dad would always love her as he will always be her dad and that will never change where ever he lives. Her daughter said to her, 'But that's the point isn't it? He's not my dad.' She was born as a result of artifical insemination. Biologically P is not her father. A and P in accordance with current thinking told her this several years ago. I know we are all supposed to have 'the right' to know about our origins, but I do wonder if it is always so very great having that knowledge. Like the person in their 60's - parents long since dead- who is told he can't have a new birth certificate to replace the one he has lost as he is adopted, when it is the first he ever heard of it*. I also heard last week that as the new law says that anyone born through IVF has the right to know who their biological father is there has affected the supply of donors so drastically that there is currently just the one sperm donor in Scotland, and none at all in Northern Ireland.. Who exactly is going to be helped by this legislation?

* Individuals experience this every week of the year.