It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’ve hired a lovely Air BNB down the coast from where I now live in Kent. I could only afford a couple of nights, but the boys have all booked time off work to come down and join me for a couple of days to celebrate. We’re not having a family holiday this year, Toby is venturing to Majorca with “the lads” and Alex and Oli have nothing planned. As it’s been a while since Mum last came down (it was November), I buy her a train ticket to come and stay for 4 nights, we’ll do a night where I live either side of the Air BNB and she’ll get to see three of her grandchildren at the same time.

It’s 5.30pm and Mum arrives at Ramsgate on the train from Bradford. Another epic 5 hour journey, punctuated at Bradford Interchange, Leeds, Kings Cross, St. Pancras and finally Ramsgate by Mum forcing pound coins into the reluctant palms of the lovely Passenger Assistance people. Those that tried to refuse (on the grounds that they were only doing their job), were told to get knotted and take the money. Most of them gave in.

We have not so much as left the station car park, than she is giggling to herself, a sure sign that she is about to mention the going to the pub.

15 minutes later we’re in The New Inn, a nice traditional pub just off the market square in Sandwich. I’ve never been in before, but within minutes most of the pub know that Mum likes hand pulled beer. This is because whenever she asks whether they have any hand pulled beer, enunciates as if she is asking a Spaniard, who may not know what she is talking about. She says the words very slowly and loudly, pausing just a second after each one. HAND. PULLED. BEER.

The fact that she’s in a Free House with several cask pumps on the bar is of no consequence to Mum, better to be safe than sorry, they might all be for show. She asks for HAND. PULLED. BEER the way an Army medic might order the correct blood type from a foreign ally after an enemy car bomb. If the order was mixed up, the outcome could be very similar.

The lovely young chap behind the bar (Zack) suggests she try one of the local brews, and once again, she needs to clearly ascertain,…. Is it HAND. PULLED. though? This time, she actually mimes the action of pulling a pint, just in case Zack had a lobotomy last night and is unaware of what HAND. PULLED. means.

Yes, he assures her, it is. Here, look, she can try a little taste of it if she’d like. Indeed she would like. It’s a hit. And so she tries her first pint of Gadds Brewery 5 – a Kentish offering from just down the road in Ramsgate. We sit down at a nearby table. The first pint slips down almost unnoticed. The second much the same. No, she doesn’t want anything to eat, despite only having eaten 1 packet of Seabrook potato crisps the entire day. (Ready salted, just in case you were wondering).

Out comes the purse, and off comes the rubber band which holds it together. She pays me for her train ticket, eager to offload some of the cash she’s been carrying around with her for the last 217 miles. I stick it in my back pocket and escort her to the loo. There is giggling from her stall. It turns out she has just remembered she didn’t put on any pants (knicks, as she calls them) this morning when she got dressed. Well, it doesn’t matter, does it, she says, nobody is going to know. I very much hope this is true.

I return her to the table and am about to sit down when a chap in a baseball cap from the bar approaches me and motions to whisper in my ear.

“I don’t want to embarrass you, but you’ve got something stuck on your trousers” he says, out of the corner of his mouth, pointing to my rear end whilst looking mildly embarrassed himself.

I check my backside, and realise the £100 shiny new pounds in 5 slippy £20 notes, is hanging out of the bottom of my pocket, next stop the floor. I thank him profusely, explain that I have a hole in that pocket which I’d forgotten about, and scoop up the money.

With normal people, that would be the end of it, but I’m here with Mum. When I look over at her, her eyes have narrowed and she clearly thinks there is some kind of conspiracy afoot. She’s cottoned on to the fact that something has happened, but couldn’t quite hear what. I have to relay the whole event to her in loud words spoken slowly until an entirely predictable look of sheer horror crosses her face. I sit down, agreeing with her that it was very nice of the man to tell me about it rather than wait for it to fall and then simply pocket it. She wants to reward him for his honesty. So when I’m at the bar purchasing her third pint (with a stern word that this is going to be her last one here in the pub), I tell Zack that Mum wants to buy the man in the cap a pint. This leads to much hilarity of the regulars sitting at the bar, two of which immediately claim to have caps in their cars, and if it means a free pint they are willing to go get them.
Halfway through her pint three, John, as we later found out he was called, came over to thank Mum for her gifted pint. Mum is a social creature, and whilst claiming to be shy, loves nothing more than a chat with a fellow drinker in a pub. Her age, journey, health and beer preference (HAND. PULLED.) all make the conversation and I’m beginning to feel a bit left out.

Mum is now at the Superb stage, although we have already had a few Get Knotteds. I wrote a beer behaviour chart for Mum some years ago, after I witnessed her drink 9 pints on a stay in Pickering. She denies outright drinking 9 pints, and can no longer manage such a feat, after a brief tango with bowel cancer left her emptying all her waste material into a bag attached to her tummy.

The beer behaviour chart needs updating, I thought to myself, if we’ve reached Superb by pint three. It would normally be 7 or 8, meaning that we’re probably nearing capacity.

It’s difficult to know how much Mum drinks on a regular basis as :

A. Her memory is shot to pieces,
B. She probably wouldn’t admit it even if she could remember it, and
C. So many people buy her drinks in Wetherspoons, or Jacob’s Well, or the Shoulder of Mutton that she simply loses count.

She recently went to The Park (local pub, not recreational green space) and only bought herself one drink, yet couldn’t remember getting home. It worries me actually, I know folk are only being kind, but she’s not the type of person to refuse, and will simply carry on accepting pints until she’s no longer safe. The same folk buying her a drink are not going to be there at home time, and certainly won’t be seeing her down the unadopted road leading to the dark side alley and into her tiny cluttered
back-to-back house.

I do accept though that getting out and about is hugely important to Mum – and I take my hat off to her. On the Jubilee weekend, she hadn’t been out at all, and decided on the Friday afternoon to go down into Bradford. At the bus stop she asked some people getting into their car if the bus was coming or if it had been stopped due to the Bank Holiday. They didn’t know, but after a brief chat they offered Mum a lift to a stop down the road on more of a major bus route into Bradford, surely she’d be able to get a bus from there. Once in the car, Mum didn’t miss a trick, and said that if there were going to drop her off at that bus stop, then maybe it would be just as easy for them to drop her off at the Dog and Gun instead, and she wouldn’t go all the way into town.

They happily obliged (thank you, if it was you and you’re reading this), and she had a lovely time being recognised by lots of drinkers who she hadn’t seen in ages. When telling me the whole story she said she was amazed that the girl behind the bar even knew her name. I laughed and said you’re obviously a lot more notorious that you give yourself credit for.

Notorious she is though, and she’s wildly argumentative and cantankerous after a drink. (This used to be around pint 5 or 6 but is now actually midway through 4). So it’s no surprise that a lot of the pubs in Bradford will no longer serve Mum, but when this happens, she simply finds a new watering hole and maintains it was her decision to leave the former favourite.

Anyway, back to the New Inn. I discover that she knows full well that the Arran cardigan she’s wearing is on inside out (there are stains on the right side of it, of unknown origin and so stubborn that neither Dr. Beckman or the dry cleaner down the road could shift them). She’s relishing her resourcefulness about wearing it inside out – she is, I feel, secretly delighted that I’ve noticed – and congratulates herself by downing the remaining third of pint 3. It was a foolish move. Now she doesn’t have a drink, she could have eked that third out for another good 10 minutes. Of course we go through the same old fire drill that we do every single time I’ve bought her a drink and she’s promised me it will be the last.

Mum : (giggling) well my glass appears to be empty
Me : Yes indeed. Get your coat then and we’ll be off
Mum : (Feigns horror) What?? You mean we’re not having another one?
Me : Exactly that, come along please, let’s be off
Mum : (Smiling sweetly) Well I’d like another one here please, that last one was so nice
Me : I’m very glad you enjoyed it, but we did agree that we would leave after three, so let’s be off
Mum : (Indignant) I never agreed to any such thing. I’d like another drink please
Me : You’ve had three pints, that is plenty. Let’s get home and you can have one more there
Mum : (Incredulous) Really? You mean to tell me that we really have to leave now? Why can’t we have that one here then, now?
Me : Because I’d rather get you home now, I don’t want you falling and ending up in hospital at the start of your trip
Mum : (Angry) I’m not going to fall I can walk perfectly well, I’m 91 and I got myself here all by myself didn’t I?
Me : Yes, you did, you’re amazing, you’re incredible, but I’d still like to get you home now and anyway I’m tired
Mum : (Whiney) Well just one more and then we can go straight home and you can go to bed
Me : Thanks, but no, Let’s just go now like we agreed and then we don’t have to fall out.
Mum : (Defeated) So we’re going then?
Me : Yes
Mum : (announces to pub) She says I can’t have another drink and I’ve got to go home so I’ll say goodnight. It’s a shame, it was such lovely beer and I was having a lovely time. You’ve got a really lovely pub here, I wish we had pubs like this in Yorkshire.
Me : Shut up and get in the car.

We arrive home and I steer Mum inside, sit her on the sofa and unload the car. It’s nearly 8 o’clock and she still hasn’t eaten anything. When I ask her if she’d like a sandwich or anything, she giggles and says no, she doesn’t want anything to EAT. Of course I know where this is leading, so I go get her a bottle of Hobgoblin which she accepts graciously. I am the best daughter anyone could have. I am amazing, I am just simply amazing. I am superrrrrrrrb.

By 8.30pm she has finished the bottle and is shouting at the television, disagreeing with whatever is happening on the screen. She is fussing with the dogs I look after but shouts at one of them, which makes me shout at her, don’t start shouting at dogs which have nothing to do with you. She claims they are not trained and instantly becomes Barbara Woodhouse, telling them in a slow slurred speech that they must SIT. As they are both sitting anyway, they look at her and then at me with complete confusion. I want to tell them I know exactly how they feel.

I decide it’s time for bed before things deteriorate any further. We then have to go through a similar, but rather less polite version of the “Another drink charade”. I hide all the remaining bottles of Hobgoblin, and hope that she doesn’t mistake the clear liquid in the bottle on the windowsill for gin, because it’s actually Zoflora. I chuckle to myself, thinking that if she did indeed drink it, it probably wouldn’t have any effect on her other than making her bag smell like a rose bed the next morning. No bad thing there.

I make sure she has a bottle of water to drink, and put a hot water bottle in her bed. She is getting undressed and is standing with her legs apart, her tracksuit bottoms now around her ankles on the floor. She has discovered a skirt underneath them – heaven knows how long it has been around her waist. Imagine getting undressed and finding garments you didn’t know you were wearing.
It’s all looking a bit complicated. Despite me telling her that’s she’s only in this house for the one sleep, so no need to unpack, the contents of her suitcase are now strewn around – she has brought 3 scarves, two hats and a pair of gloves but can’t find her nightie.

I leave her to it and when I return, I discover she found her nightie, and has pulled it on over her clothes. I put the ensuite light on so that she can find it in the night for a wee, and kiss her goodnight.

I sleep fitfully, as I always do when Mum comes to stay. I imagine her stumbling about in the middle of the night, I worry about the hard polished tile on the bathroom floor and how her bedsocks might slip on it. I worry that she will fall out of bed and somehow become wedged between the bed and the wardrobe. I worry that she’ll decide to go in search of another drink and trip down the step that I have stuck a big MIND THE STEP sign on.

Frankly it’s always a relief in the morning, to find her in one piece.