Should girls get Barbie dolls for Christmas? Katherine thinks I am taking it too seriously, and she may be right. There is an understandable reason for our daughter to want a Barbie - her best friend has one. She is obeying a natural impulse to socialise. What good would it do to deprive her of a small toy that will give her and her friend pleasure before they grow out of it? Barbie doing press-ups In any case, tastes are innate, clearly, and whether or not you play with dolls makes precious little difference. Our other daughter (eight) enjoys westerns - from the John Wayne golden age rather than the slow-motion, blood-spurting Sam Peckinpah type. I walked into her room recently, where she was playing with her Playmobil people. About 30 cowboys, the barman, ranch-hands and various others were neatly laid out flat on the floor. "What's happened," I asked. She looked at me pityingly, as if I was a bit dim, and said: "There's been a massacre." And what's that man doing tied to that post? "That's the sheriff," she replied. He's being tortured. Is this what too many viewings of Rio Bravo have done? Maybe we should be giving Barbie to this daughter. Childish things Is there ever a stage when you are really "grown-up"? I doubt it. Even the most mature and wise people can behave in childish and even bizarre ways. In his moving memoir, Experience, Martin Amis talks about his father Kingsley's habit late in life of cramming confectionery into his mouth till his face was the "size of a basketball." And Kingsley was a literary knight. I constantly find myself doing things that mature and sensible people do not, such as trying to take on different tasks at once. I notice that "grown-up" colleagues carry out one task steadily until they've completed it to their satisfaction; they do not leave a job half-finished and dart on to something else, so they are overstretched and make mistakes. I have bad habits that have haunted me since childhood - such as chewing my fingers. Gordon Brown bit his nails and you thought less of him for doing it. And what about those adults you see squirting a tsunami of tomato ketchup over their breakfasts - that's hardly grown-up, is it? I used to think that when I was fully grown I wouldn't eat ketchup at all. But that hasn't come to pass. Worst, I do not have a huge wodge of cash in my back pocket, held in a money clip or maybe a bulging wallet, from which I peel off crisp twenties (or fifties). That seems to me an essential component of true grown-up status, because cash equals power and freedom. You probably never reach a point at which you're free of silly weaknesses and know exactly what you're doing, without doubting yourself. That's why, when I hear my "solemn" voice telling off the children, I have to resist the temptation to snigger.