Sunday afternoon, and we're at a friend's house. Lunch has been thoroughly demolished and the dishwasher is humming reassuringly in the background. Three husbands are dozing on the sofas, one eye on the papers, the other on the television. The curtains are half-drawn, small children are dotted everywhere. They are watching Home Alone II, a truly terrible film that for some reason sends the boys into paroxysms of laughter (the two girls, to their credit, are playing outside). We mothers are sitting around the kitchen table, half worried as to why the kids seem to find the bit where the baddie gets a large crate of bricks dropped on his head so hilariously amusing, half wondering what we're going to do with them all when the movie's over. Meanwhile, for the time being, all is bliss.

It's V who mentions it first. Me, I don't like to talk about such things in public, especially not in front of the men. “Have you seen the new Lakeland catalogue?” she asks with a half-serious, half-ironic lift in her voice. There is a momentary silence, then: “Oh my God, YES,” says S. “It's fantastic.” I chime in. It's my idea of heaven - an early night: 9.30pm, a cup of tea, bed, the Lakeland catalogue. A blissful ten minutes before sleep, marvelling at the ingenuity of the hands-free wine-glass holders “for people who prefer to drink their wine or champagne, instead of watering the grass with it!” (note the aspirational “champagne” there), the absolute theoretical necessity of owning a Kitchen Thermometer Fork (“everyone wants to avoid the health risks of underdone meat”) and the inherent kitschness of the “I've Bean Cooking” apron, featuring a cartoon drawing of a naff green bean character tending to a barbecue.

“My favourite thing is the kitchen foil,” says S. “Much better than Tesco's.” We all concur. In anticipation of summer, I have just placed an order for three polka-dot “food umbrellas”, a pack of four grape tablecloth weights and an acrylic napkin holder with a weighted hinge to ensure that the wind doesn't take off with my napkins. I passed, reluctantly, on the bright pink Illuminated Party Cocktail Fountain (“this spectacular centrepiece delivers cascades of punch in a waterfall effect”) and the Football Bottle Opener that plays snippets of commentary every time you open a bottle of beer.

It's a curious paradox, this obsession with Lakeland, purveyor of kitchenware and home accessories. It seems to extend to almost every woman I know, old or young, rich or poor, single or married - but most especially to those with jobs and children. I mean, it's not as if the three of us sitting around this kitchen table on a lazy Sunday afternoon are unreconstructed Stepford wives, decked out in pinnies and kitten heels, obsessed with doilies and dusting. One is a publisher of a major imprint; the other is a renowned designer; even I, admittedly the runt of the litter, occasionally get around to doing a decent day's work. We all earn money, we all have careers. We were all forged in the fires of Seventies feminism, schooled by our mothers to believe that the workplace was our salvation, the home a necessity more than a calling.

What is so extraordinary appealing about this very ordinary catalogue? What's it got that all the others haven't? Shouldn't we all be curling up in bed with the White Company, or some chi-chi postmodern underwear selection, or even a Fair Trade gift catalogue or an eco-solutions brochure? And yet no, the fantasy retail catalogue of choice for working mothers of my generation appears to be Lakeland: firmly practical, frill-free - and resolutely homely.

Is it perhaps the retro appeal, the curiosity of the time tourist? Hardly: Lakeland is anything but old-fashioned. It prides itself on incorporating the latest technology into its gadgets and devices. Its solutions are nothing if not innovative: the umbrella that's been tested in a wind tunnel, the three-minute wine cooler. Is it that the wares within its pages are genuinely vital? Not really; apart from perhaps the manifestly superior kitchen foil and its excellent potato peeler, these are all things that you could perfectly well live without. Is it that we are all, at our core, frustrated stay-at-home wives and mums? Really, really not. Honestly. Granted, it's not ideal; but emancipation is a one-way street.

And yet I find myself, even as I write, gazing longingly at the Insulated Butter Dish (“keeps butter cool, yet at an even, spreadable temperature”). There is safety in these things, reassurance, order. The Lakeland woman is a woman in control of her domestic environment. There are no flies on her picnic, the wind lifts neither her napkins nor her tablecloth, and her meat is always cooked to perfection. Ah, perfection: that is the key word.

The life of the working mother is, to put it mildly, chaotic. If you factor in children, work and partner, there are any number of variables that can lay siege to your carefully laid plans. You only have to miss the bus for the entire, tenuously constructed edifice to come tumbling down around your ears. Miss the bus and you're late for work; late for work and you don't get your project finished; stay behind to meet your deadline and your childcare's screwed; your childcare's screwed and your partner has to change his plans; he misses an important work dinner and you have a row. And on it goes. It's the butterfly effect of modern motherhood: one laddered pair of tights in the morning; an earthquake by teatime.

The Lakeland catalogue, hypothetically at least, offers us a salve to all these problems, a fantasy of perfection. We may not be able to assert any real control over our lives or environment, but in Lakeland-land we can at least have butter that is chilled to precisely the right temperature. It doesn't make us better women, wives or mothers; but it does feel good to get a handle on something - even if it is only a small pat of animal fat.

A hellish moment at Sunday school
Talking of working mothers, a classic nightmare. At Sunday school the other week, the lesson was about helping others. The teacher went around the class asking each child in turn who helped them: who helped them to get dressed in the morning, who made their sandwiches and so on. She got to my daughter, who is almost 5. “Who takes you to school?” she asked, wreathed in smiles. B thought for a second or two. “Gemma,” she said, smiling back. “Who is Gemma?” inquired the teacher, perhaps steeling herself for some frightfully modern parenting conundrum, such as “Mummy's special friend” or “Daddy's new girlfriend”. But no, it was much worse than that. Much. “She's my nanny,” said B, cheerily. Faces turned. Reproachful eyes found me. My cheeks reddened. I was officially wearing the Worst Mum Hat of Shame.

Not Scarry, but scary
My children are fascinated by Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?, a book I myself loved when I was little. It's a trifle old-fashioned now, and sublimely un-PC, but still brilliant at introducing little minds to what goes on beyond their front door. Now an American plastic surgeon, Michael Salzhauer, has written his own version of Scarry's classic, only with a very 21st-century theme: cosmetic surgery. My Beautiful Mommy ought to be a parody, but it appears to be a genuine publication (albeit not a mainstream one), a picture book aimed at explaining an increasingly common occurrence to small children. He may be providing a useful service; after all, it's not immediately obvious why “Mommy” would willingly pay a man to put her in hospital for several days. But once you have understood that it's all so that she can conform to the stereotype of ideal femininity, it makes sense. In Scarry's day it was tonsillectomies; now it's rhinoplasty. Oh, how the human race moves on ...

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