IT'S Friday night but, uncharacteristically, I'm not looking forward to the weekend.

Usually it's my favourite part of the week. After the hard slog of work there's nothing I look forward to more than kicking back and relaxing. The getting drunk and staying in bed until well after dinner time is, of course, an added bonus.

Not this week.

Sure, there'll be drinks to be had and no doubt one will be getting quite tipsy. It's just the company I will keep disturbs me. My Folks.

Moving some 50 miles from them this summer was an inspired move.

"Popping round because we were passing" suddenly became a redundant exercise - especially Mother Dearest - who would call at the most inconvenient times when I lived in Sunny Rochdale.

Of all the various addresses I have lived at she has "popped round because she was passing" at all of them without any kind of prior warning.

When you're in your early 20s it's something you can very well do without - and very embarrassing.

My first abode was a scruffy flat, round the corner from my parent's house with wonky furniture (although the shower in the bedroom was a touch of class).

With hindsight I should have expected Mother Dearest to pop round unannounced as she genuinely did pass my home on way to her house.

But I presumed - wrongly as it turned out - that she would leave me alone (like my mates' mothers did to their sons) to live in squalor and in peace.

To have her turning up on a Saturday afternoon when the flat is full of drunken lads watching football is a criminal act which I still haven't lived down. Especially when she was armed with cleaning products.

I moved from there to a house I shared with a then work colleague where the pattern continued. It was still in Sunny Rochdale but some miles from the Folks - not that that stopped Mother Dearest.

My then housemate used to think it was funny to scupper my cunning plan of hiding behind the sofa, pretending not to be in, by brazenly extending his welcomes and inviting her in.

After some weeks, however, he was more than happy to cower behind the settee with me, desperately trying not to be spied by her hawk-like eyes, peering through the window.

Then it was the One Bedroomed Flat I shared with the Long Suffering Marjorie - and Mother Dearest.

The fact I was co-habitating made it more acceptable for her to pop round, she reasoned, because after all I was part of a couple now. Just like my Big Sis, who liked nothing more than to have my Folks round for dinner, oh once or twice, maybe even five times a week. And go on holiday with them every year (the freak.) Even worse was when I was at Preston University and the pair of them stopped off, they claimed, on the way back from Blackpool. Bearing in mind it was the start of December and I could see no Kiss Me Quick hats, I took that as merely a ruse.

And still it goes on. Granted the visits are rarer and no longer unannounced, giving me time to tidy the house, but that comes with a price. The Folks are planning to stay over.

They have invited themselves up on Saturday, with the intention of having a few drinks and staying over.

It's not that we don't get on or if I sound in anyway ungrateful, I certainly don't mean to, but I'm just not ready for the Folks-become-friends stage in my life.

I want to spend my nights out with my mates, or at least the LSM. I can't get drunk with my parents and talk about the things I do with my pals.

Instead it will be all "are you eating well?," "how's your car running," etc. My dad will extend some wisdom about how I should think of getting a mortgage, while Mother Dearest will 'bond' with the LSM by telling her of the cracking buy-one-get-one free bargains at Morrisons. Neither of which really interest the pair of us.

Going out for meals is the first step on a slippery slope. Already I am under pressure to spend New Year's Eve with them - something which I can barely contemplate - and from there it's no way back.

There's only one thing for it. Anyone know any jobs going in Australia?