Thou shalt Scotchgard, says CAMILLA TOMINEY

Do not then try to remove said hair dye with a shop-bought bottle of unpronounceable chemicals unless you want to look like Ed Sheeran, circa 2018.

All book club meetings will inevitably end in a discussion about secondary schools.

Let him buy the convertible – and then insist on driving it more yourself on the basis that it’s “a bit of a girl’s car”. Take wolf-whistling as a compliment.

Insist on annual pay rises. Accept all offers of help. Be exceptionally nice to whoever is looking after your children. Accept that grandparents are solely responsible for Britain’s sugar crisis and let it go.

Try not to be a martyr (see above).

Never poach another woman’s babysitter. Make time for sex, rather than excuses. Do not go to church simply to get your children into a faith school. You’ll only end up in Hell, or worse still: flower arranging.

Cereal can be eaten for dinner in emergencies. Never offer to mow the lawn. Or put out the bins. Don’t get Botox; the wrinkles will only migrate to another part of your face. Try not to wear tights in summer.

Braces after 40 are a waste of time and money unless you look like Ken Dodd. Iron as little as you can, if at all.

A Dyson V8 has the potential to change your life. And so does a Karcher window vac. Don’t rush into friendships at the school gates or you’ll end up with the serial stalker who starts dressing like you by half-term.

Go to the school internet safety night. Give schoolteachers the benefit of the doubt. Only sign your child up to a swimming club if you’re willing to get up at 6am on a Saturday.

Exercise, if only for the thinking space. Women over 40 need a minimum seven hours’ sleep a night. If Kate Moss can’t get away with a short playsuit, what on earth makes you think you can? All unairbrushed non-Millennial women have cellulite.

Lower your expectations and continue to be pleasantly surprised. Wine is overrated. No recipe on earth ever turns out like it looks in the picture. This especially applies to children’s birthday cakes. Never visit anyone unnannounced, especially when you have three children under 10 in tow. Take no one who takes themselves seriously, seriously.

Don’t spend money on expensive creams when Nivea Soft will do the same job (although there may be something to be said for serums).

Don’t pretend working motherhood is easy, especially not to your children, or else they’ll grow up with no concept of how hard life can be. You don’t have to be the best, just good enough.

Make sure you always pay for the extra Scotchgarding. Surround yourself with as many people as possible who make you laugh.

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For all his faults, Boris Johnson does have a habit of saying what the rest of us are thinking.

His revelation that Philip Hammond’s Treasury is “the heart of Remain” or that Donald Trump would arguably have done a better job of negotiating Brexit can hardly be a surprise to the Government – others have been saying the same behind closed doors for months. The difference is that when Boris says anything it makes the front pages.

There is no doubt that Downing Street is in complete and utter turmoil over Brexit. The Prime Minister has an impossible task on her hands in trying to deliver the most important decision in a generation, with a strong majority yet with self-interested parties on all sides vying to undermine her.

While it would be foolhardy to imitate Boris’s bull in a china shop routine, the EU has been so unreasonable that Mrs May is now within her rights to start behaving like the “very difficult woman” she has always claimed to be.

There’s just the small matter of getting the EU Withdrawal Bill through first.

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I really wanted to hate Amal’s gushing tribute to her husband George Clooney but I must admit I actually found it rather touching.

The human rights lawyer took to the stage at LA’s Dolby Theater on Thursday to honour her husband after he won the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award.

Speaking for the first time publicly about their relationship, the 40-year-old mother of twins said: “My love, what I have found with you is the great love I always hoped existed.”

I always worry when Hollywood couples declare their undying love for each other – it usually means that divorce is around the corner – but this impossibly photogenic pair do seem genuinely happy together. Good luck to them.

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It took three police officers and an official warning to tell a woman she couldn’t feed a cat.

Pensioner Shirley Kay says she was made to feel like a “common criminal” when police officers turned up at her house to accuse her of “cat theft”.

Shirley, 79, from Westgateon-Sea in Kent, had been occasionally feeding a skinny black cat that she was convinced was a stray.

She even paid a £200 vet bill for the lethargic moggy after it turned up in her greenhouse. But she was visited not once but twice by police who warned that she must not “allow any other person’s pet into her property, including outbuildings”.

Even as the owner of a podgy puss (I’m against people thinking they can feed random felines), was it really necessary for the police to be involved? We’ve got comedians having watches stolen from their wrists in front of their children, smash-and-grab raids in broad daylight and stabbings at an all-time high, and officers are running around after Mr Tiddles? What a cat-astrophic waste of resources!

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Greg Rusedski is right, grunting tennis players do put off viewers.

The former British number one was accused of sexism after saying he needed earplugs to watch the women’s game, due to all the “grunting”. Rusedski, 44, was watching Maria Sharapova play Spain’s Garbine Muguruza in Wednesday’s French Open quarter-final when he said the players were “louder than a 747” which “turned off viewers”.

His 30,000 angry Twitter followers accused him of double standards, saying that male players also grunted. A Women’s Equality Party spokesman suggested fans should “mute or unfollow the tennis star after his comments”. Good grief. Equality, but only for people who agree with me.

Men grunt but not in the nauseatingly high-pitched way of women. I’ve watched Sharapova play and her screaming is a turn-off.

If women want equality they should play five sets instead of three in Grand Slams. They get paid the same as men – how is that equality?