Unequal attitudes to body hair

SO you might be lying in the bath – the last refuge of the single parent – contemplating such imponderables as the existence of atheism, or whether you will ever be a size 12 again, or even a size 14.

The terrific new Terry Eagleton book, Culture and the Death of God, is lying face down on the bath mat, (“It is when religion starts to interfere with your everyday life that it is time to give it up. In this, it has a certain affinity with alcohol”), because you can only read such treasure in bite-sized chunks.

And then there is a knock on the door, and a question from the teenage daughter which every mother dreads. Not ‘do you want to be a grandmother by Christmas?’ or ‘would you mind if I dropped out of school and become a fingernail augmentation technician?’