JUST don't push your luck this week sunshine, okay? I've had it up to here with the lot of you. And just in case you are one of those old-fashioned stick-in-the-muds who doesn't have a new-fangled video newspaper, let me enlighten you precisely where "here" is.

It is right in the middle of my eight-month pregnant tum, round about where my delicate, sticky-in navel would be if it hadn't turned into some kind of planetary crater that wouldn't look out of place on The Clangers.

This week, as the more astute among you may have already guessed, I have been mostly losing my rag. It happened when I was due to have the Munchkin too. A few weeks before popping, my tolerance levels shrank in direct proportion to my increasing girth.

The only difference this time is that I have an outlet for my stroppiness. Last time I had to make do with muttering to myself like a hormone-crazed loon, but now I can share my irritations with you - you lucky, lucky people.

So what is it precisely that is making me blow my top on an almost hourly basis? Well, nothing as unimportant as a war, that's for sure. No, my fevered brain is dealing with issues of much greater weight than human beings killing other human beings for no good reason. Issues such as...

- Luncheon meat. Or rather, those completely unassailable tins of pink porky stuff that are supposedly now "easy open" but ultimately leave me sobbing in a corner of the kitchen, battering the tin against the edge of the cooker in a cave woman-like way while trying to staunch the blood that is pulsing from the numerous tin can cuts on my hands.

- Teenage boys in beaten up Ford Fiestas. There are always four of the spotty creatures, the car is always vibrating to the beat of some mind-numbing dance music, and they are always parked in the parent and child section of Tesco's car park. Move it boys, or risk losing your perpetually honking horn to a mad woman armed only with a partially opened tin of Spam.

- Imogen Stubbs. Not normally an actress I would like to hit over the head with a sock full of snooker balls, but after reading her recent piece about motherhood in the Daily Telegraph, I feel it would now be the wisest option.

Thanks to my plummeting tolerance levels, I am not in the mood for simpering parents who feel they have to express their joy and awe at the privilege bestowed on them to anyone who will listen. So you can probably imagine my reaction when I read Ms Stubbs' melodramatic take on this whole motherhood malarkey (let's just say it had an uncanny resemblance to projectile morning sickness).

I haven't the space - or the inclination - to share all her words of wisdom with you, but here is a taste to point you in the right direction (of the nearest loo): "And then I had a child of my own, and then another, and my astonished heart woke up one morning to find two little fledglings nesting in it, and the birdsong came back into my life. Of course, another bird still calls me from my sleep after all these years, and plunges me over the precipice of yearning, but now I can climb into bed with my children and whisper 'hey Death, you heartless b*****d, we carry on in spite of you, we carry on'."

- Other parents. Finally, let me turn my attention to other mums and dads; people I would usually describe as normal (i.e. not actresses). Love 'em most of the time, but if just one more looks at my barrage balloon belly with doe eyes or, even worse, pats it like I have a puppy shoved up my jumper, I might be forced to give them a Miss Piggy-style karate chop to the windpipe.

Yes, I know how lucky I am. Yes, I know it won't be long now. And no, I don't know whether it is a boy or a girl. So just keep away from me, okay?

All right? I am loaded with hormones and I am not afraid to use them.

Updated: 08:52 Tuesday, March 25, 2003