Mother's Day - the annual guilt-trip for neglectful spouses and offhand offspring. Pay up, serve up and head off back into the old bad habits until same time next year. A few drooping carnations and a box of roses and the mammy is catered for grand. You're on the pig's back if you're one of the lucky ones and get to luxuriate in a rasher and sausage in bed on the morning in question.

Why so negative, you wonder? Did she not get her annual elevation to goddess-for-a-day in the mother stakes last year? Is she peeved at not being wined and dined in some restaurant with love and attention oozing out of every pore of her children's being?

Well, it all started with a joke, to be honest. In fact, the whole thing is all a bit of a joke, as far as I'm concerned. Question: Why have they not put any women on the moon? Answer: It doesn't need to be cleaned yet!

Yes, sexism is alive and well and going forth and multiplying daily. This from a 10-year-old who justified it by saying that all his mother ever did was clean up the house and cook, while his daddy went out and did the real work. Only for his daddy, they would never survive.

Possibly, but try going it alone without Ma there behind you, a ghra. Who'd feed you, wash you, nurse you, praise you and think you were gorgeous, talented and popular, when all others were convinced you were a creepy, brain-dead nerd with all the charm of a natterjack toad?

This mood of mine was turned into a raging thunderstorm of outrage after a chat with another little boy of my acquaintance. (I know, I know, but I am not anti-male in general - I just seem to know more than my fair share of precocious, opinionated little jerks.)

He told me his mother had been in bed with the flu. She slept all day, he said, and near evening his daddy told his little brother to go up and wake her. Not with a cup of tea or a cuddle, but by bringing up a glass of cold water and throwing it on her. I kid you not.

They all thought this was hilarious.

So how would I like to celebrate mothers everywhere? What would replace the boxes of Roses and the feeble attempts to convince her that she was "The World's Number One Mum" or whatever other cliched platitude was in at the moment? A worldwide ban on gaudy cards with sickly verses and geraniums plastered all over them. It'd be a step in the right direction. A decision by each family to designate their own day for celebratory purposes, in order to avoid the cattle-mart effect in restaurants on one Sunday every year. That would suit me fine, too.

But my favourite suggestion of all came from an 80-year-old priest who was acting as locum in our parish this time last year. He talked for a while about the importance of letting the mothers of the world know how special they are to us all; his advice to all those in the company of their mothers on that particular Sunday, be they young or old, was that they scrap all the media-induced hype about cards and presents and just pause on the steps of the church after Mass and, in front of everyone, show their appreciation and love by giving their mothers a kiss on the cheek. A lovely, plain but touching idea.

How many took up his idea? Not one solitary son and a handful of daughters. (I can be anti-female too, you see!)

Hence my pessimism again this year approaching Mother's Day. I am waiting, hopefully, to have my mind changed for me.