Hell is an invasion of hormonal teen girls!

What was I thinking, I really don’t know. truth be told, I can’t have been thinking at all. Because otherwise why would I have agreed to let my daughter have a 13th birthday party sleepover?

It seemed a harmless enough idea. I remember my 13th birthday. I was allowed to borrow my dad’s record player, which gave him an excuse to barge in every ten minutes to check we hadn’t broken the stylus.

We played Olivia Newton- John’s latest single, Xanadu, over and over while performing a series of ungainly movements which we imagined made us look grown-up and sophisticated. Otherwise, it was a subdued affair.

For some reason I assumed my daughter’s would follow a similar pattern. Fair enough, Rihanna might have to stand in for Olivia — but how bad could it be?

Bad. hell, actually. I know 13-yearold girls have a tendency to be a little hormonal, but this lot were like an explosion in an oestrogen factory.

One actually turned up in tears and did not, as far as I could ascertain, stop crying throughout. If only I can get her to stand next to the roses, I thought, she could double up as an excellent sprinkler system.

Crying with girls this age is, I discover, contagious. One goes off, they all go off. It was like a giant game of teenage whack-a-mole.

No sooner had I got one to pipe down than another would start up howling. I ran out of tissues, then kitchen roll, then loo paper.

SHORTLY after we’d cut the cake, the entire party disappeared upstairs to do more howling. My husband, naturally, was nowhere to be found, having mysteriously remembered an extremely important appointment a very long way away.

I set about restoring order. Someone appeared to have redecorated the roof of next door’s greenhouse with slices of pizza.

a slab of icing sugar was ground into the decking, and there was a broken plate on the trampoline.

I thought back to my own teenage celebrations. We would never have dared make such a mess.

Was this devastation a reflection of my terrible parenting skills and general lack of authority? Or simply the way kids are these days?

I had just finished sweeping up when they trooped outside again. Someone put on some music. But it wasn’t Olivia Newton- John — or anything remotely like it. It was rap music and ear-splittingly loud. and rather obscene — at least the bits I could decipher.

Not, however, as obscene as some of the dance moves I was now witnessing. I longed for Xanadu.

at last, those who were not staying the night departed. Upstairs, I found the curtains in my son’s room had been pulled clean down.

all the towels in the bathroom were wet. I poured myself a massive glass of rose and got stuck in.

about midnight and 73 dishwasher loads later, I finally went to bed.

My daughter and her three best friends were tucked up, talking.

Great, I thought, at least we can all get some peace now.

Fool. I was woken at 5.30am by the sound of the dog being violently ill on my bed. Cursing, I went downstairs to get some wipes.

I was greeted by a scene of devastation. at some point in the night someone had ordered more pizza and the dogs helped themselves to the leftovers.

there were pizza boxes and bits of pepperoni everywhere. the remains of the birthday cake were on the sofa. With paw marks in it.

My mistake, in hindsight, was to think the teenager of 2016 is in any way like those of the Eighties.

these are the children of the super-information highway. their default setting is fast-forward.

as for me, well: it seems I’m just going to have to accept that I’m an analogue mother in a digital world.