Talking sex.

The 12-year-old looked up from his book and asked 'what's a dyke?' 'It's a barrier to stop the sea flooding the land', I said. He looked puzzled. Ah. 'It's also slang for a lesbian,' I went on. 'Oh, that makes more sense,' he said, and went back to his book.

Now that's a conversation I would never have had with my parents aged 12 or even 22, come to think of it. It seems not only have books changed since my day but so have our relationships with our kids. My parents never did the birds and bees talk, I found out all I needed to know from behind the bike shed at school, from friends, the problem page of Jackie magazine and sneaky reads, under the bed covers at night with a torch, of my dad's Dennis Wheatley books.

Sex just wasn't discussed. My mum would go bright red and start stammering if even the  most oblique reference came up and Dad was in a world of his own and, presumably, felt that having daughters rather than sons made 'all that business' Mum's domaine.

Once puberty kicked in Mum went on high alert. One lunchtime when I was at Sixth Form college, she came home early to find me and my best friend and a male friend eating sandwiches. 'What on earth is going on here?,' she shrieked. 'Er, we're having lunch,' I said. Clearly she suspected we were planning a threesome after we'd finished our cheese and pickle and Cokes.

After I'd left home we went on holiday and my younger sister was allowed to bring her boyfriend. Mum hauled me to one side and hissed 'keep an eye on them, they can't be left on their own for one minute in case they, well you know.' I did know.

Such was the atmosphere of embarrassment about sex in our house that I can still clearly remember going hot and cold while watching Ryan's Daughter with my dad. As Sarah Miles got down to it with Robert Mitchum, I leapt out of my chair, announced loudly 'think I'll make a cup of tea, anyone want one?' and disappeared into the kitchen at warp speed. I was probably about 17 at the time.

Contrast that to just a few nights ago when my 18-year-old son wandered in to the sitting room as a girlfriend and I were watching Hope Springs. He happened to appear just at the moment when Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones were trying to get down and dirty but realising nothing was going on downstairs for poor Tommy. 'Oh blimey, he can't get it up', says the son and we all laughed.

I'm relieved and kind of chuffed that somehow, I'm not sure how, I'm just not embarrassed to talk about sex and answer any questions my kids have. They know gay men and women and don't think twice about it. I'm proud they're enlightened and non-judgemental.

How times have changed. Well, kind of. The husband of a friend of mine was delegated to have the facts of life talk with his son. He kept putting it off until my friend ordered him to get it over and done with. The poor man waited until it was dark, took his son out to the car on the drive, sat him in the back, then climbed in the front seat and kept staring straight ahead while he did the deed. He'd have got on well with my mum.

A vision of loveliness....er.....

Is there anyone who looks good in glasses? Apart from the dentist, flying and smear tests, there is little I like less than choosing new specs.

I have worn contact lenses since a beady eyed secondary school teacher spotted that not only could I not read the words on the white board, I was having trouble locating the white board at all. My parents endeavoured to persuade me that NHS frames (ie: the cheap ones) made me look absolutely gorgeous, a vision in, usually, bilious pink plastic. I may have been young but I was on to them and I put my foot down and refused point blank to wear glasses.

In those days wearing contact lenses was like putting a piece of Tupperware in your eyes, they were so thick, but I persevered, there was no way on earth I was wearing the Joe 90 specs.

My dislike of specs remains to this day but my eyesight is now so bad that I've had to succumb to reading glasses and a second pair for my shortsightedness, so I can find my way from the bed to my contact lenses each morning. Without specs or contact lenses my world is like an Impressionist painting.

Every year or so I'm summoned by my optician for a check up. There's no getting out of it, they're a canny bunch, cancel and they sweetly but adamantly point out they won't be sending my monthly batch of contact lenses until I turn up.

I have no problem with the optician's check up, I quite like being made to jump by that little puff of air as they check my eye pressure, there's no horrible drilling and you get to keep your clothes on.

The bit I really can't abide is choosing new frames. Why is it that in a shop surrounded by several hundred frames, there is not one that doesn't make me look like Dame Edna Everage or my grandma?

I love the way the specs industry has tried to jazz things up and have us believe that glasses are fashionable, hip and cool. Dotted around are posters of fetching women and hot men gazing into the mid distance looking alluring in a pair of specs. Gok Wan has even got in on the act and his range sits alongside the likes of Missoni, Red or Dead, Hilfiger, Karen Millen and RayBan. It makes no difference,  £25 or £175, they all make me look like Hank Marvin on a bad day. There is nothing remotely sexy or come hither about me in specs.

Last time I got so fed up and huffy that when finally I found a pair that I could just about bear, I bought identical frames for both my distance and reading glasses and then spent the next two years muddling them up and wondering why my world was constantly fuzzy.

Every year I have that little glimmer of optimism that, maybe just maybe, when I collect my new specs I'll put them on and think 'wow, I look good in these', but in 10 days or so's time I know the reality will be, I'll pick them up, hand over a small fortune, put them on and think 'yep, Su Pollard.'