ANYONE who is the mother of a teenage girl these days has my unalloyed admiration.

How does a mother cope with the sort of tensions which have surfaced for time immemorial - the need for every teenage girl to assert their difference from their mum by all sorts of means like arguments, pink hair, piercings and bad relationship choices - without all the added current pressures of celebrity culture and social media?

And no one deserved that admiration more than Cwmbran woman Kim Buckley.

Everyone who ever met her thought her fun, strong and bubbly, a woman who was determined to do the best for her children and keep her family together.

When her teenager daughter met future killer Carl Mills on Facebook, she instinctively knew that something was very wrong.

Yet she also knew that condemning any boyfriend out of hand would merely push her further into his arms.

She tried all she could to welcome him into ther home, and Mills repaid her with threats and criminal damage.

The care professionals Kim Buckley dealt with after her granddaughter was born could not praise her enough as a caring, capable and loving mother figure who would have been the main carer for baby Kimberley, and a fantastic support to 17-year-old Kayleigh.

What happened on that horrific night in Tillsland, after Kim Buckley finally said she could no longer have Mills in her home, must send a shudder through the mother of every teenage girl.

There but for the grace of God. One bad choice by a teenager. One decision to accept a friend request.

The murderous, vile, callous cuckoo who infested their nest is now behind bars beginning his life sentence.

The Buckley family say their own life sentences started when Mills torched that house and murdered three generations including his own baby daughter.

For their sake, the domestic homicide review into what happened and the contact the authorities had with the family before Mills carried out his horrific attack needs to be thorough and hard-hitting.

It needs to take seriously just where the system failed this family.

And fail them it must have, or they would be here right now, watching baby Kimberley grow bigger every day.

The Buckley family deserves answers. And the memories of Kayleigh and Kimberley deserve it.

And, most of all, so does the memory of Kim Buckley, a woman trying so hard to do the best for her family.

LAST week was, apparently, national dragonfly and damselfly week.

Alas, I did not find out until Friday, or I would have arranged some suitable celebrations in the Williams house.

Instead, I shall have to wait until national cranefly week, whenever that is, to celebrate the creepy crawlies who seem to love my home, flapping about all night in there if I'd let them.

Still it did bring to mind a vivid memory of a walk I once had with a friend in the north of England.

Standing next to a river bank, I was awe-struck by a cloud of blue-tailed dragonflies or damselflies (forgive my lack of wildlife knowledge) which rose from reeds, glinting in the light.

"Wow, that's beautiful," I said.

My friend didn't hear me. When I turned around I discovered that the 6ft tall man, who shall, of course, remain nameless, was running away and squealing: "Insects!"

TODAY is generally thought to be the start of the newspapers' traditional 'silly season'.

So why not play along with my favourite game for the hot weather, the Silly Season Ice Cream Game?

For every big cat sighting, award yourself a Magnum. For every 'face of Jesus' spotting, award yourself a Cornetto. For every 'I was abducted by an alien', it's a mini tub of Haagen Das.

* In the same vein as the written 'advice' on alcoholic drinks: Please enjoy your ice cream in a responsible fashion.