I should probably try harder at school...

When you're from Middlesbrough, and have learned everything you know about the middle and upper classes from the collection of paperback Agatha Christies in the spare bedroom, your first real exposure to our modern class structure comes as something of a surprise. Indeed, the whole of the outside world has been coming as something of a surprise to me since I left home, as it no doubt still does to people who spend their teenage years reading PG Wodehouse and eating peanut m&ms in their bedroom.

It's a hoary old cliche now to drone on about the Yummies in their Chelsea tractors, so I won't bother, except to say that on the day you turn up in the playground of a new school with your poor nervous kids in tow, it usually takes about five seconds to work out where you'll have most luck fitting in. Mums are gathered in groups, according to species, and there is little overlap, apart from in one crucial area, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The Triathletes.

The further south you go, the more of these you see. They are instantly recognisable, clad as they are from head to toe in North Face breathables to reduce chafing, have mud all over their calves, and a three-wheel baby housing that looks like a sidecar but isn't, attached to the back of their mountain bikes so training doesn't have to suffer just because they've popped another one out during the summer holidays. Unless you're also in running gear, don't even try to approach this group. They are alpha females, full to bursting with green vegetables and would never, ever, understand a fat northerner trying to make jokes about Jossy's Giants. Actually, they can't even see you. Their eyes have been so damaged by years of squinting against driving rain on their daily pounding of the bypass, that they now only recognise fellow athletes, or, at a push, the dim silhouette of a Land Rover 'Disco'. (As long as it's green.)

The Lovelies.

Wherever you live, these girls are blonde. They are the proud possessors of magnificent heads of hair, comprised of warm honey and caramel shades, a bit like a lion's mane, but tidier. They are also very young, and the few that aren't young, look young, so don't get cocky and think you can tell the difference. And oh, they're just so lovely! They speak in tiny, tinkly voices like the silver bells on fairies' shoes, voices they've been using to great effect since they were six.

They went straight from My Little Pony to Cath Kidston, with a brief gap to have three beautiful children, and their husbands either sell Volvos, or are high-end plumbers who fit hot tubs. They are very slim and pretty, and wear floral print blouses with skinny jeans, and Ugg boots or ballet pumps, depending on the weather. They hate you. They don't understand how you could have let yourself go like that, and they don't appreciate sarcastic remarks, thank you very much. Their world is lovely and filled with sunshine, their children are gorgeous, their 'hubbies' tall and manly, their downstairs loo smells of peaches and it's grim up north which they've only seen on Coronation Street and it makes them feel sick to even think about it. So go away.

The Workers

This is a small group, only glimpsed intermittently and so not a real group at all. Naturally, if you're dressed in a power suit and six-inch stilletoes as worn by Melanie Griffiths circa 1988 you're bound to feel more comfortable standing with someone similarly attired. So I don't blame these women for sticking together. I'm just saying that they do look down on the rest of us a bit, and not just because they're wearing six-inch heels.

The workers are naturally in direct opposition to all other groups, because, although they're not the only ones with jobs, they are the only ones whose office jobs are important enough to require them to look like Stepford fembots with a John Galliano fetish. Appearances though can be deceptive and it turns out they are not in fact Karl Lagerfeld's PA, but work on the council switchboard, as you discover when you ring up about your wheelie bin and recognise their voice. 

However, these women do at least try to live in the real world, and this group, more than any other in the playground, will accept advances from a scruffy, overweight newcomer, because they are at heart project managers, and think that all you lack is some administrative focus. Which is true.

The Bakers

A terrifying group this, and one which in terms of physical appearance alone, I ought to slot easily into. Because this is where the fatties hang out, the menopausal, older mums who left it too late to start and now are knackered, spotty, and have to shave twice a day to avoid looking like Fatima Whitbread. But boy can they bake! These stern, ample-breasted women arrive at school in the afternoon red-faced and covered in flour. They definitely know the business end of a madeleine and the most committed of them still use Tupperware.

Unfortunately they are also the most fanatical of all the groups. No smiling Ma Larkins these - they take the job of providing carbohydrates for the family very seriously. They have absolutely no time for any modern nonsense whatsoever, have never watched the X-Factor because they're always kneading pastry, and consequently their unfortunate kids are set to be the school misfits, the ones who look like they've slipped through a wormhole from the 1950s, wearing grey pinafores and baggy tights.

They regard all other groups with equal disdain, and any poor soul hoping to be accepted within their innner circle must bring a plate of home-wrought patisserie to be sampled and judged before the bell goes. Good luck with that. Every one of them thinks their own chocolate brownies are the best, and when comes that call to arms from the PTA, all bloody hell breaks loose...


A Fete accomplit?

..... which brings me to that great leveller and brief bringer of accord - the school fete. Organised by the might of the PTA, the school fete unites all groups for one transitory but glorious moment, or at least it would, if it weren't for the fact that the same ten women run the show every year, as did their mothers before them. At our school, any recently arrived mum has more chance of becoming the new face of L'Oreal, than of securing a seat on the organising committee of the Christmas 'Fayre'.

The committee to end all committees, this makes the Yalta Conference of 1945 look like a group-hug. Did Sir Winston Churchill have to arrange flapjack on a trestle table according to the perishability of its component ingredients? He did not. And even if he had, the table would not have had one leg shorter than the other seven. On that you may count.

However, in a surprisingly democratic way, the PTA does allow members from all groups to participate. This can lead to some refreshing, almost invigorating clashes of ideology which are a joy to behold. For example, the Bakers might hold all the aces skills-wise but the Triathletes have very firm views on carbohydrates, and fail to see why the cake stall should not seize the opportunity to showcase Miranda Smethwyck-Pratt's  fat-free muffins and forty-seven-seed raisin-buns with prune icing.

This is all very well, say the Lovelies, but must the organic wares be displayed on those hideously ugly hemp plates with hairs sticking out of them? What about some Kirsty Allsop cupcake cases on a faux-Victoriana tiered stand? If this group had their way of course, the entire school would be permanently decorated in the style of a Beatrix Potter tribute band's dressing room.

But all is not lost because the Workers eventually save the day and make sense of the chaos by organising a staffing rota dividing the fete's three hours into manageable shifts. This allows plenty of time for the Bakers to give advice on the correct use of icing nozzles, exercise breaks for the Triathletes, and the Lovelies get to colour it in...