How many of us can get away with looking like Elle MacPherson on the daily school run…? would you dare to do the ripped-jeans look and be confident of carrying it off as you walk into the playground? surprisingly some women would think so and you only have to see the way some women are decked out just for the purpose of collecting the kids from school in the afternoons to know this.

I collect the boys every afternoon and one thing I notice is that some women are definitely vying for the Most-Fashionable-Mum trophy and even this bitterly cold weather does not seem to dampen their efforts to out-do each other. One very determined Mum never, ever turns up at the school in anything other than a) a mini skirt, stockings and black stilletto boots…or b) hot pants, stockings and black stilletto boots. I get frostbite just looking at her! what is she trying to prove…?

Then there is another Mum who must have the clothes budget of Coleen Rooney because to date she has never worn the same outfit twice – and has a different handbag for each day of the week and toddles in on heels so ridiculously high that I would get vertigo if they were on my feet – I wondered how on earth she worked all day in them until one afternoon I saw her parked around the corner of the school and saw her slipping off her ‘sensible’ shoes and slipping on the killer heels before parading into the playground in them (I do supervisory duties in the playground at lunchtimes and notice her child is not as fashionably turned out as she is -  the poor kid never has a warm jumper to wear…)

But my partner saw a sight the other week when it was his turn to do the afternoon-run that must take the medal so far – a Mum in black, shiny rubber trousers (yes, rubber) and glittery disco top in minus temperatures. That does it, tomorrow I get out my Tina-Turner leopard prints and off I go!