I’ve always rather liked buying cakes. WI stall, jumble sale, and now the PTA Bake Sale. There’s something endearingly retro about it all. A touch of the domestic diva meets Stepford Wife that conjures up home and hearth in a way an off-the-shelf Batternburg will never achieve. Or at least that’s what I used to think before I had to be the one actually organising the selling. I can now categorise mums into three distinct categories. The wouldn’t dream of baking, and dash to Sainsbury’s and bash a fudge cake around to make it look homemade. The too-little-time mum, who already feels guilty (why? Don’t. Promise that every mum feels guilty about something she is or isn’t doing) about not being around enough. She stays up till 3am after a two-day work trip to Frankfurt to make pink-frosted cupcakes adorned with sugar ballerinas. And the rest of us, who knock something together and hope for the best. The children, of course, are none the wiser. They couldn’t care less if we stomp in with three  flat sponges sprinkled with an apologetic amount of icing sugar, or a gargantuan three-tier chocolate cake that took two nights to create. Which is why I want to bash a certain nursery mother on the head. She’s taking the bake sale to a whole new level of competitive sport; just as well the nominations for new Olympic sports have closed. ‘How about a special prize for the cakes that raise the most money’, was her opening shot.  Followed by, ‘How about we let the children vote on their favourite cake’.

Seriously, get that woman back into a paid job before she overdoses on chocolate frosting. Tripping out the, ‘We don’t want to put pressure on non-baking mums and dads’ cut no ice. ‘It’s for charity, Desperate, don’t you want to raise as much money as possible?’

What can I say? Yes, I think raising money for charity is great, particularly when it also means I can stuff myself with cake all weekend. But if I end up buying a certain double-decker-glitter one by accident, methinks I’ll be choking instead.

Desperate PTA Rep is feeling cross. Disgruntled. Darned b*****y mad.  And for once, it’s not the fault of Dear Boys 1 or 2. It’s not even solely the fault of being a PTA Rep. Though it would be nice if Perfect Mum with Trim Tum would stop bounding up to me and asking when the cast list is going to be announced for the Nativity. I’ve come up with the perfect answer, “There are likely to be lots of cute little cows this year”, which inevitably leaves her fuming about the angel and Mary costumes she’s clearly already made, “just in case”.

Anyway, this time it’s the government which has caused me to fume. Or more accurately, Ofsted and the insane diktat about childcare. If you look after someone’s child on a regular basis for two hours or more, you have to become registered with Ofsted as a childminder, or you’re breaking the law – as two policewomen discovered, and had to give up their brilliant reciprical childcare arrangement. Well, it just so happens that I have a longstanding arrangement with a close friend. Every other week, one of us takes Dear Boy 2 and her second child to nursery, picks them up and takes them home for lunch. The other child is with us for roughly the two hours that seems to have got Ofsted’s knickers in a twist. Naturally, we decided to overlook the whole thing, apart from signing the online government petition (and if you’ve never done this, it’s takes seconds to sign a petition, and not much longer to set one up – just visit http://petitions.number10.gov.uk). Unfortunately, the nursery had other ideas and sent a note home in the school bag warning mothers about the new ruling. Nothing to do with wanting mums to take up the afternoon places at nursery, obviously, just a friendly passing on of latest information to help us make an “informed choice”. Hmmm. And, alas, headmistress knows of my informal arrangement, and decided that as I was the PTA Rep, it would be ‘untenable’ for me to continue with it. “Besides, how would I feel if Dear Boy 2 hurt himself at my friend’s house because it wasn’t adequately fitted out with stairgates and under-sink locks?”

Which, of course, made me even crosser. Every mother is paranoid about something happening to her children, so why does the government/headmistress have to plant even the tiniest seed of doubt, and bring the dreaded health & safety into it? They’ll be inspecting grandparent’s houses next, in case they put too much sugar in the cookies. Anyway, just as I was spluttering with rage and about to homeschool my child forever, Ed Balls had a word with Ofsted, who were forced to do a U turn. So bravo Mr Balls – though was it the thought of millions of angry mothers marching on Downing Street that made you think twice? Hope so.

There are lots of things you’re told about motherhood. The lack of sleep, the alteration of home to soft play area filled with bits of plastic, and the horror birth stories (and why do some mothers love the car crash retelling of the delivery room?). There’s also lots you don’t hear about. Or more likely, choose not to hear. Footloose, fancy free and in your early twenties, how could you imagine fishing inside a full loo for a vital piece of Lego? Or going out of the house with a pipecleaner as a hair band because the children have used your hair slides as battle pieces. Some truths are too awful to contemplate. So having got my head (the one adorned with pipecleaners) around the request to become a PTA Rep, I’d almost talked myself into believing it would be fun. A chance to really get to know the other mothers. An excuse to call a gossip post drop-off a ‘meeting about this year’s charity’. And then I found out about the nit check. Is it me, or am I naive not to realise that checking children’s heads for wee, not-so-timorous blood-sucking beasties was part of a PTA remit?

Forget networker, I’m now a nitworker. One of my new weekly roles is to rifle through Dear Son 2’s classmate’s heads to see if anything is lurking. I got the class list, started parting partings and looking behind ears, and decided it wasn’t so bad. The process was almost soothing, apart from the odd scream from a particularly princess girl who thought her neat plaits were being mussed up. But in the second week, a child’s hair started moving. Not just a few eggs, but an infestation of crawlies. ‘Yeuch eeek’ I screeched inadvisably, bringing the attention of the entire class on to the scalp of child-we-will-call-Nigel. The nursery’s policy is for the nit-head to be sent home, with discreet (sorry about the screech…) note to each parent to keep on the lookout. I was dispatched to deliver happy tidings to ‘Nigel’s’ mother. ‘Impossible’ she declared, ‘I checked this morning, and we are very rigorous about this kind of thing’. Stalemate was quickly reached as she said no one would be at home to look after Nigel, so even if he did have nits – which she doubted – he couldn’t come home anway. So what next? I decided to pass on advice of Smartest Friend (her second home is a castle, don’t you know). Her attitude is that nits are a healthy part of an upbringing of benign neglect, and being allowed to roll around with ponies/dogs/hundreds of acres. Not getting nits, she reckons, is therefore suburban and antiseptic. Amazingly, ‘Nigel’s’ mother fell for the ‘nits prefer upper-class heads’ spiel, and decided she could come and pick up her little prince after all. And the next day I overheard her telling a mum that, ‘Apparently, those little Beckhams couldn’t get nits because their hair is too short’.

Future career as a diplomat, that’s me. Once I can stop itching my head, that is.

Sounds familiar? Introducing our new Thursday column, Diary of a Desperate PTA Rep. Follow her as she treads a path flanked by bake sales, syllabus evenings, and the fun and games of trying to keep Dear Boys 1 and 2 on the straight and narrow, and out of the expulsion list.

In my defence, it wasn’t a role I ever sought. I laughed my head off at Organised Friend who was a clear shoe-in, and in an unprecedented move was given the nod before her first child had even started nursery (something to do with arranging a show round the Roald Dahl exhibition before it had opened to the public). But me? I was asked to stay back after morning school pick-up. I assumed that Dear Boy Two had got busy with the glue pot again. ‘We’ve something to ask you’, head asked shiftily. I fixed a bright Little Miss Sunshine smile, inwardly working out the right answer to the statement: ‘perhaps Dear Boy Two would be happier in a nursery more suited to his talents’ (been there before – a similar line had been used many times years ago on one of my siblings). Head gazed out of the window, sighed, shook herself almost imperceptibly, then rallied and stared with the full force of eyes used to taking on 30 four-year-olds fighting for the last biscuit. ‘Would I take on the role of PTA rep?’ she asked in a voice that sounded almost as surprised as my face must have looked. My handbag thudded to the floor, as much in shock as I was. ‘You know I’m not massively organised’, I stuttered. Head sighed again and admitted, ‘Well (bouncing) Belinda has to return to Australia. And you’re the only one left who has been in the nursery longer than a term, and doesn’t have a job’. (Hmmmmm, since when did working nearly three days a week not count as ‘a job’?) She then used the killer line: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Dear Boy Two to know that Mum is so closely involved in his early education’. Subtext: ‘Help us out and we’ll consider not throwing him out’. So I stepped over to the dark side.

I shuddered home, and vowed not to tell anyone who didn’t need to know. Not my mother, certainly not my sister, and definitely not Organised Friend. She’d be over with a lever arch file before I could ask how to spell ‘syllabus’. But I did vow to be more understanding with PTA gals in the future. And please, I beg, do the same. Perhaps they too had power thrust upon them, and don’t want to be the ones in the playground with the clipboard gaily corralling mothers to help out with the bake sale. She might be nice. She might be fun. She. Might. Be. Me.

Read every Thursday as Diary of a Desperate PTA Rep plunges ever deeper into the murky corners of a nursery in one of London’s leafier boroughs. And if you discover who she is, could you let us know?