WELL phew, the school holidays are over at last. I

mean, can you think of a more chilling request than 'Mummy, will you play with me?' You give birth, right, which is no small thing in itself, plays havoc with your hairdo and hurts considerably, then it's doctors, dentists, PTA meetings, toe-clipping, sock-pairing, queuing in Clarks for yet more shoes, nit-picking, swimming lessons, more sockpairing, more toe-clipping, ludicrously amateurish school plays and then — AND THEN! — they expect you to play with them! As a parent, the one thing no one ever warns you about is what stunning opportunists children are. Give them an inch and they'll get you potato-printing. However, all this said, hide-and-seek isn't so bad because they can hide while you accidentally (oops) forget to seek. This, in fact, is an excellent game which, played properly, can go on for four or five days, ending only when a weak, pitiful, significantly dehydrated voice from behind the sofa goes, 'Mummy? I'm very, very hungry.' That's where you are! What a brilliant place! You clever, clever boy! Now, find another one while I count up to 17,000,000,000.

Anyway, it's the eve of my son's return to school. 'Oh dear, school tomorrow.' I say to him, while inside I'm going, 'Hurrah, hurrah. hurrah.' I'm minded to do a small celebratory dance, too, but can see this might be taking it too far. Actually, he is an extremely good boy who would, I'm sure, chortle happily throughout his rehydration in intensive care. Still, on the eve of his return. I tell him we'll go out to eat, and he can choose what and where. 'Pizza,' he says. 'Great, pizza,' I say. 'Lovely, lovely pizza. Such a wondrous thing. You can't beat pizza. What a good choice. Mmmm. pizza.' And then I go and book something else entirely. This is mean, I know, but you have to let children know who's boss, or they'll totally run rings round you. This particularly applies once they've been dispatched to bed, and will try pretty much anything to come down and get on your nerves all over again.

'Mummy, can I come down for a a glass of water?'

`No. Go to sleep.'

'Please. I'm very thirsty.'

`No. Go to sleep. Or I'll come up and shake you until your ears drop off.'

'Mummy?

'Yes.'

'When you come up to shake me until my ears drop off, will you bring me a glass of water?'

However, I do go some way to meeting his demands. as I book an Italian restaurant, Sosta, in Crouch End. Yes, back to Crouch End. Sorry, but lately I have travelled rather. I have done Wales and Norfolk and bacon and Pizza Express, which, I think you will find, is now everywhere, and possibly under your pillow. Take a look. So I feel I'm allowed back to Crouch End, with its quite staggering 58 restaurants. It may even be more than 58. The thing is, when I cannot sleep — I think it's the Pizza Express under my pillow that keeps me awake, particularly on their jazz nights — I count Crouch End restaurants as others count sheep, and I usually drop off at around 58. I don't know why Crouch End is like this. Perhaps it's simply because it's full of entirely useless cooks like me. The joke in our house is that our smoke alarm doubles as an oven-timer. Oh, habloody-ha, I always say, while standing on a chair and waving a tea-towel at the alarm.

As it happens, I've tried to get into Sosta quite a few times, but it always seems to be booked. On Saturday nights I've even noted queues outside. Silvano Sacchi, the man behind it, was the founder (in the 1970s) of the Barracuda in Baker Street (a smart Italian) and San Martino (a little trattoria) in St Martin's Lane, so he does have something of an impressive track record. We go as a party of five. That is me, my partner, our son — due back at school, poor thing, how I shall miss him — plus a friend of mine and her son.

The restaurant is rather intimate, perhaps even claustrophobically so. Only seven or eight tables, rather squished together. Indeed, my friend gets so fed up with having to pull her chair in every time a waiter needs to squeeze past that, in the end, we pick up our own table and shift it. I don't especially mind doing this; it just seems that as this restaurant has been here a while — a couple of years at least — they might have worked out a more satisfactory spatial arrangement. Whatever — to the menu, which does appear to be excellent value: as well as a la carte, there is a special menu degustazione offering three choices for starters, mains and desserts for just £10.95. However, the items on the special menu are also on the a la carte menu, which is disappointing somehow. Why not a different, seasonal menu of the day? The menu is also not that extensive, which, actually, I rather welcome. A decent restaurant knows what it does, restricts itself to it, and does it well. Or so one hopes.

For starters, I order grigliata rnista di legumi con caprino caldo (£4.25. which is the average price for a starter). That is, mixed grilled vegetables served with warm goat's cheese. Certainly, it does what it says on the tin. It is, indeed, mixed grilled vegetables (a tomato, two mushrooms, some slices of courgette, an astoundingly bitter shoot of chicory) served with warm goat's cheese. However, it could have done with something to jazz it up a bit. Some basil, perhaps. My friend orders the bruschetta, which perhaps does rather less than it says on the tin. Truly fine bruschetta is toasted bread, rubbed enthusiastically with oil and garlic, then topped with whatever. In this instance, it's tomatoes, capers, anchovies and basil. However, the oil and garlic stage seems to have been skipped, which makes the experience less like bruschetta, more like tasteless British tomatoes on thy, teeth-hurting toast. However, my partner declares his insalata di rucola e parmigiano (rocket, parmesan and cherry-tomato salad in lemon vinaigrette) tiptop. As my partner is easily pleased, and not used to food that hasn't been incinerated, I'm not sure how seriously we can take his opinions. One boy loves his pasta e fagioli alla Veneta, a hearty Italian soup of pasta and borlotti beans, while the other insists the ragout on his gnocchi tastes of school dinners.

On to the next course, which, for me, is sea bream and clams served in a garlic broth (£9.95, among the more expensive entrées). This, too, is mildly disappointing, the piece of fish being rather on the small side and the broth being somewhat flavourless, with the look of washing-up water. The boys, though, are keen on their choices — herbed lamb for one, griddled beef fillet for the other — while my partner declares his pork with wild mushrooms as being 'perfectly all right, but not exactly a taste explosion'. My friend's Italian sausage baked in Soave wine served with lentils and puréed potatoes was also perfectly all right 'but rather bland somehow'. I order pannacotta for pudding, and this, at least, is totally and absolutely adorable.

Conclusion? 'An interesting menu but you get the impression that they just churn it out rather routinely. A decent enough local restaurant, perhaps, but not one I would queue for,' says my friend. 'Everything was done well and attentively, but not memorably,' says my partner. 'I don't want to go back to school,' my son says. 'I know, darling,' I say sympathetically, while inside I am going 'Yippee!' Actually, I do love him very dearly, when I can be bothered, and when I'm not queuing in Clarks for yet more shoes. You ask them, politely, to stop growing, as it's expensive and a great drain on a family's financial resources, but do they listen? No, they do not. They just carry on regardless, in their own selfish way. Toodle-pip!

Sosta, 14 Middle Lane, London N8; tel.. 020 8340 1303.