COLUMN: I WAS prepared for changes in my small son when he started school. It's now normal for him to come home with his school bag bulging with books on dinosaurs and endless worksheets covered in his embryonic writing.

Over the course of his first year, he has learnt to obey rules (hands and feet to yourself, no running in school) and can share and take his turn with the rest of them.

What I was totally unprepared for however, was his transformation into a Womble and not just that, a religious Womble.

It all started a few weeks ago when we were walking home from the park. He suddenly shrieked and fell on a weather-beaten crisp packet that was trying to make its escape.

"Mummy, look, some litter! We must wun home and put it in the bin like Jesus!"

Always willing to accommodate their ideas, I speechlessly picked it up by the smallest corner possible and carried it homewards.

"Darling," I ventured later, "Why do you think Jesus picked up litter?"

" 'Cos he was weally good and helped his mummy and gave her a drink if she was firsty and picked up wubbish to be kind," came his instant response. Out of the mouths of babes, etc. (it later transpired that Jesus' mummy didn't have a washing machine either).

What truly inspiring class discussions they have these days, much more colourful than when I was little.

Now when we go out, my son is constantly on the look out for litter and once you start looking, it is everywhere.

It's a Catch-22 situation really, because while I don't want him to pick all manner of grunge up off the ground, it's such a positive thing that he wants to do and who can argue with Jesus?

The other day, on the short journey back to our house, he managed to rescue a whole newspaper that had blown all over the pavement, six lolly wrappers, one very squashed drinks can and numerous shreds of packets that had long ago made their bolt for freedom.

It's opened a whole new metaphoric can of worms for me too, because when you think about it, we are surrounded by rubbish and how many of us just avert our eyes and scurry past?

I have to be honest and admit that I do, because I just hate rubbish. If I'm driving and a bag is flying round the road, I carefully swerve past so that my nice clean car wheels don't have to touch it.

Making me carry a filthy crisp packet home was the worst kind of torture possible. All the way home I kept thinking 'What if the person eating these crisps had an incurable disease and happened to cover the bag in sneeze spores?'.

By the time I got home, I was a wreck and cleaned my hands with soap so many times they resembled lizard skin. Yet I had a sort of quiet glow going on that I had a socially aware, religious Womble for a son, and how many people can say that?