ON holiday recently on the Yorkshire coast, my daughter and I made regular use of the public toilets next to the beach. To my mind, the facilities were handy, clean and well equipped. Yet my four-year-old grumbled and groaned on every visit. Why? Because she didn't like the toilet paper.

It wasn't the soft, cushioned stuff we have at home. In her opinion, it was like "what grandma puts in her baking tins."

Her view echoes that of the pupils of Wycliffe Church of England Middle School in Shipley. Some of the youngsters would bring their own lavatory paper rather than use the harsh brand provided. The school toilet paper was, in fact, the children's biggest bugbear and after listening to their moans for years, deputy head teacher, Martin Caulfield dipped into tuck-shop profits and spent £100 on luxury tissue.

It was a treat for pupils - and staff too, who also hate the regular paper - in the final days before the school closed under the city's education shake-up.

In life, it seems, there's a lot of importance placed on things like lavatory paper. I remember being sent through the post a couple of "new-improved" sheets from a well-known brand, complete with a black silk-effect blindfold. In order to truly appreciate the softness, the idea was to cover your eyes and feel the sheet.

And I was appalled to read an article about how scientists had worked for years using geographical patterns in a toilet roll's perforations to make it softer than soft.

Have we become so pampered that we find it hard to cope with a bit of rough loo roll? What on earth do people who lived through the war years think? We want food that's been pre-washed, cars with air-conditioning and homes with everything from dishwashers to electric toothbrushes.

We wear rubber gloves to clean the bath and litter the house with those little pump dispensers full of skin-softening lotion, in case we accidentally pick up a dish cloth before putting on our Marigolds.

We live in houses with sealed plastic windows, as if in need of protection from the very air that keeps us alive. And we drink water from bottles rather than trust the city's network of pipes.

We don't want to risk suffering of any kind, whether it's to get our hands wet scrubbing soil off potatoes or flinching a touch when we use hard toilet paper on our baby-soft bottoms.

We don't know the meaning of the word suffering. In most people's eyes, that would be losing the TV remote and having to leave the sofa to change channels.

Even when people go on holiday - for most, that's the nearest they are likely to get to going without - they take half the house with them, afraid they won't be able to survive without one particular brand of tea bags or bottle of shampoo.

However much I agreed with my daughter - no one can deny the "tracing paper" variety of loo roll is horrific compared with the luxury stuff - I was reluctant to take a pack of soft tissues on our toilet trips. I don't want my children growing up cosseted and, excuse the expression, unable to handle a bit of rough.

While it wouldn't be my ideal choice for a foreign break, it would do us all good to spend a couple of weeks in a Turkish jail. We'd all come back craving the comfort of the old-fashioned "greaseproof" toilet paper.