By the time T was on solids, of course I'd let go of my major inhibitions - such as "don't be naked" - while breastfeeding. So giving up my tight-arsed, rule-bound attitude to hygiene was surprisingly easy. Before, my overall guidelines were that if I was seeing friends, I would wear only clothes that were stain- and blemish-free. And if I was seeing colleagues or acquaintances, it would be the same, only the clothes also had to smell clean.

I never consciously gave this up, but I remember very clearly a joke from that disappointing Tina Fey vehicle (30 Rock), in which a hot young female says to Tina, "It's different for you, having kids and everything," and Fey goes, "I don't have kids, why do you think I have kids?" And the youngling says, "You often have food on your clothes."

It stayed in my mind (it's lucky I'm a psychoanalyst), because part of my subconscious concluded that people with kids are allowed to have food on their clothes. And after that, my rules became: food is acceptable, but all the stains have to have occurred during the same meal. "Why would you make such an abstruse rule?" you're thinking, probably. You'd be surprised how different a four-hour-old stain looks to a half-hour-old stain, in crustiness as well as colour. Coming fresh from one baby meal covered in food, it could all be a horrible mistake, but coming stale from two meals, you are like some kind of derelict. Next stop, weeing in your own pants.

S says wear more prints, don't wear black (I'm back on food. Neither of us is incontinent.) Maybe that works if you have a small, neutral spillage of aubergine or toast, but not if someone's laid tiny handprints of mayonnaise on each of your shoulders (Mummy! Saatchi called! He wants a new portrait of Myra Hindley, like the last one, only wouldn't it break even more boundaries if you could eat it?)

That's how dirty I am. T, naturally, is as dirt-encrusted as I allow him to be, and the degree of lassitude increased a lot when I heard a thing on the radio about how children who are exposed to mess and dirt don't get leukaemia. Plus, he hates having his face cleaned. And I am a pushover.

So if you meet him and he isn't covered in food, it will be because all he's eaten that day is something entirely colour- and juice- free, such as celery.

Before long, I could not help noticing that everyone who walked through the door tried to wash T's face for him. A man delivering two chairs tried to give him a wipe with his sleeve. I had a day trip with my mother and she tried to wipe not just T, but also all his clothes and his car seat, on the basis that at some point we would have to stop and eat, and he'd put the other diners off
their food. "These squares are so uptight," I thought. I was interviewing someone to look after him; I cleaned the highchair while we were talking, and she surreptitiously cleaned it again once I'd finished. Which you have to admit shows cahones, in the middle of a job interview, even if it is just for one day a week.

So of course she was perfect, but I get more and more imperfect. I am not as lax as I was pre-T, but now that there is a food-faced child at stake the improvement in my cleanliness is not enough to stop friends and strangers trying to intervene. I thought of maybe handing out J-Cloths at the front door, so that at least they would know I wasn't offended. What would it take to trigger my inner scrubber? Chortle! No, I mean, surely there is hygiene in there somewhere? All the other maternal stuff just sprang out, like ... like springs.

It turns out the trigger existed. T is in the habit of dropping food on the dog, who is half-ridgeback which, for the dog breed novice, means he has a ridge down his back. It is so the dog's fault: if he weren't always hovering underneath the high chair, he would be as beautiful a shiny beast as the day he was born, and not this sticky and chubby creature who often has yoghurt on his back or a lentil in his ear. But the other day, an hour after dinner time, I saw T fish a piece of nectarine out of Spot's ridge that he'd dropped there earlier, hold it to the light, ruminatively, like a baby jeweller, then eat it. That did it. That is not a prophylactic against leukaemia. That is just disgusting.