I'M sorry but I'm coming clean. I know the world and his wife loves them, but I'm thoroughly sick of dinosaurs. You wouldn't believe that a creature last seen several hundred million years ago could dominate our lives on such a massive scale.

You can't escape the beasts. Toys, books, posters, dinosaur-shaped chicken pieces - now even yoghurt pots come plastered with brown leathery hides and shifty reptilian eyes.

Then there's the telly. Almost every time I switch on in the early evening there's a T-Rex or some such animal thundering across the screen. 'Walking With Dinosaurs' - I'm beginning to feel like I'm living with them.

And, of course, there's the reason for all this - the films Jurassic Park and now Dinosaur. Both extremely watchable, I'm sure. But haven't we gone a bit overboard on the spin-offs?

We've had dinosaur movies before - The Land That Time Forgot and One Million Years BC spring to mind. Yet I don't remember (and yes, sadly, I am old enough) a country-wide obsession.

If the craze had hit a few years earlier it wouldn't be so bad. But now, it had to be now, when I've got children.

"Mummy, can you draw me a Brachiosaur? Pleeeze, pleeeeze, draw it mummy", is not the sort of thing you want to hear first thing in the morning.

And children aren't daft. If I make an attempt and sketch something resembling a large slug, my four-year-old will spot the fake a mile off and come down on me like a ton of bricks.

It did not surprise me in the slightest to hear of that little boy who got lost last weekend in the Scottish fells after he wandered off looking for dinosaur footprints. Our summer holiday on the North Yorkshire coast was partially spent prowling along the bottom of the cliffs, while the children scoured the crumbling shale for the fossilised remains of pterodactyls.

In the latest film, the dinosaurs talk, making them even more endearing in the minds of youngsters.

I predict the next step will be reincarnation. Scientists are already cloning endangered species like the bison. And the same group of American boffins also plan to use samples of frozen flesh to bring back a goat that is actually extinct.

Advances in DNA have, apparently, made it possible to bring back the mammoth. So, isn't the next step just bound to be the dinosaurs? When (and not if) they do make a repeat reappearance, I doubt we'd love them as much. Even their greatest fans, the children, would change their minds if one of their 100-ton meat-eating 'friends' called round for tea.

I CAN fully sympathise with expectant mum Jo Bridgeman-Daw who was downcast after running out of wallpaper border when decorating her baby's nursery. She could not get hold of any more as Laura Ashley had discontinued the range. Then, flicking through a copy of 'Hello' magazine, Jo, from Wiltshire, spotted the same border in Leo Blair's nursery. She cheekily wrote to the Blairs asking if they had any spare and to her delight she received half a roll.

I understand how annoying this is because it's happened to me many times. Not with nursery border, but with a host of other products. We painted the hall with a warm orange, only to find halfway through that Homebase no longer stocked it. We bought the closest match, and thankfully the hall is quite dark so few people spot the noticeable change half way along.

My first attempt to buy nice cutlery came a cropper when, after a couple of fairly expensive knives, forks and spoons, Habitat discontinued them.

It's the same with food. I used to enjoy a delicious tinned chicken dish from Sainsbury's - that's gone.

Manufacturers will never stop changing lines - the only solution is, if you like something enough, buy it in bulk.