Saturday begins at a leisurely pace, no-one has to get up and jump about apart from me, as the Sainsbury’s driver can’t find the house so I have to go out onto the main road in my jimjams and wave him in.

I unpack the shopping and start making breakfast, after checking in on Mum. As usual, she’s remarkably chipper for someone who sank 7 pints the night before, hangovers either never bother her or she hides them well.

The smell of bacon lures the boys downstairs and soon we’re sitting around reliving some of last night’s best bits. It’s lovely to be laughing with them, I realise how much I’ve missed them now that they’re away at University with lives of their own and friends I don’t know.

Mum loves the radio and whilst she’s brought her own little transistor with her, I put a plush new internet radio in her room which I’ve tuned to a 1940’s station called Home Front Radio. It’s all Billy Cotton’s Big Band and Vera Lynn, and she’s in heaven. She asks if she can get this at home, and I’m half way through saying she needs to ask Santa for an internet radio, before I realise that she doesn’t have broadband, so the answer is simply no.

I’ve brought Mum a cup of tea and a super juice thing, found at the local garage. We debate what she should have for breakfast.

Following the discovery of the tumour, Mum has a list of things she’s now not allowed to eat, and I have strict instructions to phone 999 if she complains of abdominal pain or excessive bloating. The surgery booked for little over a weeks’ time will remove a large part of her bowel, leaving her with a permanent stoma. She’s as stoic as the Cow & Calf, the iconic rocks on our beloved Ilkley Moor, about it all. But the fact that she is actually referencing the list of things she must avoid tells me that underneath, she’s clearly worried.

My elder brother gave me a list of advisories;  no nuts, seeds or fruit/veg skin, a laxative a day, some porridge or bran flakes and plenty of fluids. We hit target on the last one, that’s for sure.

We decide that she’ll pick at our cooked breakfast leftovers with some toast, so I prepare her a small plate. I have to pop out so promise to get her a copy of the Daily Mail and leave her with A & T. When I return, I make brocolli & stilton soup and we light the fires and get snuggly. Auntie Mo is due to be here around 5.30pm and dinner requires little preparation so we have the whole afternoon to chill.  The boys are keen to play a game, so we opt for Pictionary.

Toby’s pictures have us all in stitches.  He’s not doing well.  Owing to the game’s rule that play remains with your team if you win, he hasn’t had much chance to draw.  We are of course ribbing him about it, when Mum throws some fantastic shade, by innocently commenting “Are you not playing, Toby?”.  Obviously, this delights Alex & I.

The afternoon passes quickly, and as the skies grow dark, I get a call from the taxi driver saying they are 10 minutes away. There is the slightest air of tension, I’m a little uneasy how Auntie Mo’s arrival will be received by Mum. They haven’t spoken for 14 years. Even though she hasn’t had a drink today (part of the reason for taking her yesterday was so that she wouldn’t be half cut today – Mum never does two days in a row), she can still be terse in situations where she isn’t comfortable.

The taxi draws up and Auntie Mo steps out, a little shaken from her journey which involved a very near miss with an Audi A5 and a bit of road rage from her driver.  He says he has it all on dash cam, so I fully expect to see it pop up on my FB feed anytime soon. (Is anyone else’s feed full of dangerous drivers and their near misses?)

Mum’s welcome is a little less enthusiastic than I would have liked, and it’s clear that we should all have a cup of tea and a biscuit. Auntie Mo settles herself in her room and when she reappears, we’ve got the Cluedo ready. Nothing like a board game when you need a bit of a distraction.

None of us can quite remember the rules, Mum opts not to play and Auntie Mo is unsure whether she’s ever played it before in her life. It’s ok, we say, you’ll pick it up as you go along. We have all had at least two suggestions before Auntie Mo finds her way finally into a room, and we ready ourselves for her suggestion. She suggests it is Mrs White, in the Study with a dagger. She turns to Toby. Does he have any of these cards? No, Toby does not. She turns to me. Do I have any of these cards? No, I reply, I do not. She turns to Alex. I already know from the look on his face what is coming. No, he does not have any of those cards.

Auntie Mo is ecstatic. She jumps up and down in her seat, laughs for joy and asks if she has won. I say yes, absolutely, as long as you don’t have any of those cards in your hands, then you’ve won.  Her face falls. The penny drops. Oh, I’ve got all of them, she says, in a 7 year old’s voice which makes me want to change the rules and say Yes, You’ve won!

We are all, of course, in hysterics.  Mum can’t breathe for laughing, she’s making small noises as the air forces it’s way out of her body and I need tissues. It’s a good 5 minutes before the game can commence, but the air is well and truly broken. God Bless Waddingtons.

It’s time for supper, after which Michael McIntyre comes to the rescue. In another of Mum’s Guess What I’m Talking About games earlier,  she announced that her favourite programme was on tonight and she didn’t want to miss it. It’s the one with that chap, and he writes something and they don’t want him to, but he does it anyway, it’s to do with the phone things they carry with them all the time.  And sometimes the responses are so funny, and the people are so embarrassed because they don’t know it was the chap who did it… and so it goes on. So after an easy supper courtesy of COOK frozen foods, I dispatch Mum to the telly box, we clear away and I invite Auntie Mo to join A & T with me at the pub for Rock N Roll bingo (Mum’s already said she doesn’t want to come).

We’d found out about it the night before, when the landlord, keen to entice Mum back every night between now and Christmas (she’s a very good customer), gave us his list of events. Rock N Roll bingo is like ordinary bingo, except that instead of a card full of numbers, you have a card full of song titles. The landlord plays the intro, if you recognise it, you cross it off, etc etc.

I am PHENOMENAL at intros, so this is right up my street. Plus it means I can actually relax and have a drink without worrying about anyone starting WW3. Auntie Mo is tired though, and opts to go to bed, just as Michael McIntyre is finishing (a very wise move), so we leave the pair of them shuffling about exchanging small talk and hot foot it to the pub.

It’s a lot of fun, but despite me being PHENOMENAL, we don’t win anything and so retire back to the Old Manor to watch Hannibal Lecter make that funny noise with his teeth in Silence of the Lambs.

Day Two successfully completed.

Answers to Pictionary:

1. Jury
2. Pie In The Sky. Yes, that’s a pie.