The thoughts of Jo Haywood a thirty something mum.

UNTIL about 20 minutes ago I thought Cate Blanchett was the greatest Aussie export since... well...erm... the boomerang I suppose. I even had her pencilled in to star in my first Oscar-winning screenplay, which should go into production shortly after I finish my Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and just weeks before I join the cast of Chicago on Broadway.

Now, however, if Cate happened to pop round for a cuppa and a flip through my Avon catalogue, I'd say: "You may be an Oscar-winning star with a screen presence matched only by York's own Dame Judy Dench, but if you think you can come round here filling your face with my chocolate Hobnobs and ordering tubs of handcream you have no intention of paying for, you are looking for a slap right up the didgeridoo young lady. Oy Blanchett, no!"

And so on and so forth in my usual witty, highbrow way. Not unlike Oscar Wilde after a bad night at the bingo.

But what is it, you may well ask, that has got me so riled with the Australian actress? Is it because she has more talent in her left eyebrow than I could ever have, even if you covered me in glue and rolled me in a barrel of Redgraves?

Or is it because, with a name like Cate, she obviously comes from a nation without a "kicking k" in its alphabet but which takes some perverse pleasure in playing host to numerous kangaroos and koalas?

Unfortunately, it's nothing as sensible and well thought out as that I'm afraid. No, I'm hacked off with Ms Blanchett because she was seen heaving heavy bags of shopping through the Christmas crowds in North London three days after giving birth to her first child.

Boo! Hiss! It's behind you - sorry got a bit too pantoed-up for a minute there, but you can hardly blame me. I mean, come on, she's let the side down a bit hasn't she? Unless she had a body double doing the pushing for her while she polished her Oscar in a nearby Winnebago, she should have been doing nothing more strenuous than lifting a cup of tea and playing pass the baby with her nearest and dearest.

Having a baby is blummin' hard work. If men had to do it they would insist on six weeks complete bed rest afterwards with only the company of Sky Sport 1 and intravenous lager to get them through the long days. Women, on the other hand, push until their eyes pop out one day and are manoeuvring a wonky trolley round Tesco the next.

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe we should turn the clock back and treat new mums like convalescing patients, cocooning them in a warm ward for a week while baby is fed and watered elsewhere, but I do believe a little pampering is in order.

We have gone too far down the road of macho posturing - if women can be macho - when it comes to birth. I know when the Munchkin hatched I was ridiculously proud when I managed to make a magazine deadline just ten days later, ignoring the fact that I was tired, tearful, out of my depth and teetering on depression at the time.

It is not a race and there are no prizes for getting "back to normal" in the quickest time. New mums like Cate should take it easy for a while and should savour those first few days when the baby is still shell-shocked enough to want to sleep rather than cry.

Put your feet up for a while girls - it might be the last chance you get for the next 18 years.

Despite a report raising concerns about single-faith education in the aftermath of the race riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley, the Government still seems very keen on religious schools.

As was one rather jolly chappie of a C of E persuasion who I heard extolling the virtues of mono-cultural education on Radio 4's Today programme. How he chuckled, almost to the point of guffawing, when John Humphrys suggested that many so-called devout pupils actually lied about their faith to get a place.

"No, no, no," he said, brushing the idea aside like silly pink confetti: "That is nothing but a myth."

Well, that would make me Myth Haywood then because I shamelessly fibbed my way into a Church of England school, with my parents as willing accomplices, to avoid going to my local high school which, at the time, was affectionately known as Parklands: Cell Block H.

The interviewee would probably simply dismiss me as an isolated (nut) case, which would be all well and good if it wasn't for my fellow fibbing schoolfriends Maria, Jo, Sarah, Zoe, Amanda...