PARENTS IN Newton Mearns are being offered classes on how to cope with their difficult teenage children. Those of you who do not live in the catchment area of East Renfrewshire Council, which is thoughtfully providing this counselling, can still benefit from the Buffer's Guide to Coping with the Terrible Teens.

First of all, don't panic. (Feel free to panic if your daughter cannot concentrate on her Standard Grade exams because of her part-time job as a crack whore or if your son is never home because he is gainfully employed riding shotgun with the local drug dealer. The Buffer's Guide will sadly be to no avail in these cases.) But do not panic just because your teenager is moody, unco-operative, uncommunicative and rebellious. This is entirely normal. You may recall similar symptoms when you were that age.

The best course of action, and this is confirmed by Ms Nicola Hanvey who runs the East Renfrewshire course, is to talk. Talking is good; listening is even better.

The challenge is to get the teenager to talk to you. Some hints: Wait until the teenperson is taking a screen break from the computer or PlayStation. This may take some time.

A propitious time to try to have a conversation is when you are handing over pocket money or conducting other fiscal transactions. The sight of a fistful of notes can often increase their attention span.

If the teenpersons remain non-verbal, try texting. If this fails, you could assume a secret identity and become your child's friend on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo.

If they remain incommunicado, threaten to reveal that two of their friends on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo are, in fact, their mum and dad.

Threaten, further, to upload some baby pictures.

It might be useful to learn the Teenspeak language. This is solely for listening purposes and must not, under any circumstances, be spoken.

The kids don't want the rents to appear wicked. (This, I'm told, means parents should not aspire to be cool.) It is advisable not to try too hard to communicate. You may have noticed (and you may remember) that teenpersons are largely oblivious to parents and other adults.

You will not be on their radar. Except when you interfere with what is most important in life, which is mainly trying to survive in their peer group.

They will have other concerns such as trying to maintain a semblance of cool, learning how to kiss properly, and trying to understand trigonometry. You might be able to help them with the trigonometry.

The main thing is to remain old fashioned and give them something to rebel against. Do not, under any circumstances, offer to share a joint or a bottle of Diamond White.

The Buffer's final piece of advice to any chap who wants to make a success of bringing up a teenager is: rely upon the wife to set the strategy. Mothers are so much better at it.

I AM a sucker for culinary cultural diversity. Give me a knife and fork and I will work tirelessly to bring nations together. Which is why I have taken kindly to The Pakistani Café, an eating establishment located south of the border down Pollokshaws Road way.

I may be an internationalist but the south side of Glasgow is another country from which I emigrated some 40 years ago. When I lived there, the cafés were Italian.

They served cappuccino. The Pakistani Café (henceforth referred to as the PC) does chai-puccino ,which is tea Lahore style (with spices) with a frothy milk top.

The Tally (a word used fondly and not at all pejoratively) café offered the hot pea special of choice marrowfat with vinegar and pepper. The Pakistani Café does thalis with a wide range of vegetables and pulses. You can get a takeaway in a pizza box from the Pakistani Café. But it is a variation on the pizza. It is a filled wholemeal chapatti toastie.

The fillings are diverse, from mince bhuna to chicken tikka, or brie and mango chutney to salami.

Being a proper caff, the PC does a big breakfast. It is called the Halal Fry-Up with five items for £2.90. All the prices at the PC are ridiculously cheap; a blessing in these credit-crunch days.

I had the halal chicken sausage, fried egg, chick pea barsat, tattie scone (or aloo scone as we must now call it), and halva (which is a wee daud of solid semolina to soak up the spicy chick pea sauce).

It may sound a bit like a sub-continental version of the Scottish death on a plate breakfast, but PC owner Jimshaed Sharif says all his cooking is low salt, low fat and very healthy.

You will not, for instance, find on his premises, a doner kebab, the "meat" in which is more than 80% fat and should carry a health warning.

If the fry-up is not to your taste, there is the option of the Karachi omelette which contains sundry veg and comes with a grilled cheddar cheese topping.

Or you can go for the really healthy option of porridge with coconut and sultanas.

The usual range of Indian/Pakistani food is available as well as some lesser known delicacies such as mince in a bitter gourd, the way your granny never made it.

You can have a fish supper but it is slightly different from the Italian variety. The fish is slightly spicy and there is a naan bread alternative to the chips.

There is treacle pudding for dessert. This must be the Scottish influence.

The PC has a slightly bohemian ambience, a place where you can linger over a cup of tea and a samosa for £1.60. It's at 607 Pollokshaws Road, since you ask.

THERE is a terrible sadness and an infuriating sense of impotence as we observe the plight of the people of Burma in the wake of cyclone Nargis.

I would send them a huge takeaway from the Pakistani Café but their accursed government of generals would impound it.

This callous regime is supremely indifferent to the suffering of its people. Experts from the United Nations and aid organisations stand ready to bring food to the hungry but the junta will not let them into the country.

Even if the Burmese government were inclined to permit entry, their embassy in Thailand, which would grant the visas, is closed for a long weekend.

In a stunning exhibition of heartlessness, the generals turned away 60 doctors from Bangladesh (a country with bitter experience of storms and floods) who offered to tend the sick and dying.

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, wants the UN to compel the Burmese military government to accept intervention. He knows about aid, being a founder member of Medecins Sans Frontieres.

I am not an advocate of invading other countries but I will make an exception in the case of General Than Shwe and his cronies.

We're not talking about a Bush-Blair kind of invasion where you carpet-bomb the country, blow the population to smithereens, then steal the oil and other natural resources to give to Halliburton and other military contractors.

We're talking about an operation with the specific aim of feeding the hungry and tending to the sick, whether the generals like it or not.

If, as a by-product of this humanitarian initiative, the Burma junta should be deposed, we will not grieve.

It would be an opportunity to put into effect the results of an election way back in 1990 when the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won 80% of the parliamentary seats.

The military, whose National Unity Party won only 2%, annulled the results.