It’s a beautiful morning, the sun is shining and the North Sea actually looks appealing. I slept well in my lovely bed and venture downstairs to clear up the remains of last night. The boys appear one by one and I am determined to get us all in the sea for a swim. Fortunately it’s not the battle I anticipated as everyone is up for it, and Mum joins us for the short walk across scrubland to the promenade.

We find a spot next to a groyne where Mum can perch while we brace ourselves for cold water therapy. It’s funny, nobody called it cold water swimming when I was a child, jumping the waves on Filey Bay every year on our annual family holiday. It was just swimming. Now it has a new label and is supposedly trendy, but for me, it’s just what you do when you’re next to a body of water. You get in and make the most of it.

The beach is not sandy, a mixture of rocks, pebbles and thousands of broken shells. It’s tough going if you don’t have beach shoes, and the boys adopt a funny limping raised knee kind of walk, to reach the water’s edge. I’m not one to muck about, I’m swimming as soon as it is deep enough. Oli and Toby join me, but Alex remains upright, the sea water now lapping at his shoulders. I say he is doing the right thing, acclimatising slowly. He disagrees and says what he is actually doing is dying. It’s great – I love that my boys have my adventurous streak and will usually do things they don’t necessarily want to. Our family motto on holiday has, for a long time, been “get involved”.

As it turns out, Alex wasn’t dying and soon we’re back on the beach instantly warmer wrapped up in our towels and feeling amazing. Mum has enjoyed watching us from a distance. She’s still a bit subdued following Monday night, although I expect her to pick up a bit when we venture next door to the pub for lunch. We wander back to the house to shower and get ready for lunch.

Mum doesn’t eat much, and either eats or drinks, never both. She also usually needs a day to recover from a trip to the pub, so it was no surprise that all she wanted to drink yesterday was a cup of tea. I’m fully expecting her to be back on form and start giggling when handed the menu at lunch. Giggling is usually her way of suggesting she as set her sights on something other than food. So I’m slightly taken aback when we sit down to lunch outside the Zetland Arms and she proclaims she’d like to eat lunch. No, she confirms, she doesn’t want a drink, but what is there on the menu that she can have? Mum struggles sometimes with swallowing and I secretly wonder if there is another cancer present which we don’t know about, but Mum is vague when pressed about test results. She’d had breast cancer for 5 years before she told me, and definitely wasn’t going to have the recommended mastectomy until she changed her mind at the eleventh hour and agreed to the operation. Then followed bowel cancer – she actually delayed her operation as it clashed with a proposed trip to see me in Suffolk (see The Last Hurrah), travelling back on the Monday and having the operation on the Tuesday.

Who knows what her recent cat scans and MRI’s have revealed that she isn’t about to share with us.

Anyway, I choose pie and chips for her, and the rest of us enjoy a beer with our meal. It’s not a heavy session, we’re all back at the house chilling out in the sunshine by 3pm and I ask Mum is she is going to join us at Wetherspoons in the evening.

No, she says, shaking her head, she doesn’t want to go to the pub. I put this down to the few bites of lunch she had, no doubt still settling in her tummy. As there are now just four of us and no Mum to look after, I think that it might be quite nice not to drive, but have a beer or two instead. I don’t tend to drink when out with Mum as one of us has to be responsible. So I ring a local firm and book a taxi for myself and the boys. As the quiz starts at 7.30pm and the boys want some food first, I book it for 6.50pm.

We’re just about ready to leave when I realise I haven’t got Mum anything to eat. Would she like anything? Should I put the telly on so she can watch something? Will she be ok while we’re out?

Mum shrugs huffily and says she isn’t stopping in on her own.

Wait, what? I say? I’m confused. Apparently, she now feels better than she did earlier – which roughly translates as 91 year old FOMO – and she’ll probably go round the pub on her own. It’s an unmade road, with large potholes and no street lighting. I wouldn’t let Mum walk round there on her own during the day let alone at night (although to be fair, she lives on a very similar road up in Bradford).

If she is now feeling like she could go to the pub then why didn’t she say and she could have come with us to Spoons, I ask. She shrugs again, and says ok, she’ll come in the taxi with us. I explain that it’s not as simple as that, the taxi won’t take 5 passengers, but never mind, I’ll just drive. It’s now too late to cancel the taxi, so the boys go on ahead and have left by the time I get Mum outside heading towards my Mini. It’s at precisely this point that Mum pauses, turns and looks in the direction of the pub next door and says that she thinks she’ll just have one there instead.

This is Mum at her most exasperating. My blood pressure is rising, but I manage to keep cool and tell her to get in the car. No, I say, I can’t leave her and join the boys in the taxi because they have already left. I now have to drive whether she comes with me or not. We have a totally unneccesary discussion about the colour of the taxi (dark blue) and that fact that she never saw it for a minute and had no idea the boys had already left, but finally she relents and gets in the car with a sigh.

On arriving at Wetherspoons, Ramsgate, it is humungous. It’s housed in the Victoria Pavillion right on the beach, and the original signage still adorns the front of the building. Mum is sceptical. Is this the right place? On venturing inside, I say yes, this is undoubtedly a Wetherspoons. I spot both a sign and a menu which confirm it. Mum remains unconvinced. She approaches a waiter, carrying several plates. Stopping him in his tracks, she asks him if this is WETHERSPOONS. Yes, he says, it is.

And again, for most people this would be sufficient. But Mum has more to say on the subject. Why doesn’t it say Wetherspoons outside? Why does it say (she turns to me and asks me what it said) Royal Victoria something or other? The waiter very politely and patiently explains that it the name of the building, it’s grade II listed and there is indeed a Wetherspoons sign on the other side. The poor man is about to lose his grip on the numerous empty plates (and I imagine his sanity) so I thank him and shuffle Mum along.

We find the boys and settle down. Mum would like a drink, and has fortunately remembered the reason why we first suggested Wetherspoons – the £10 gift card sent to her on her birthday. She goes to the bar with Toby and purchases her first pint with plastic. Of course, she is only going to have the one, she tells us when she returns. Nobody believes her for a minute, but we all nod approvingly. We record a little video to Trace, my lovely friend who sent her the gift card, thanking her and cheers’ing the pint and slowly, Mum regains her drinking pants.

After a bit of food it’s time for the quiz. We all love a quiz, apart from Mum, it transpires. She feels left out, and (I think) much preferred the beginning of the evening when all four of us were chatting to her. Our attention is elsewhere, concentrating on each question, pondering the answers. We’re only a couple of questions in and she begins to complain loudly that she can’t hear. This continues all the way through the quiz, all 6 rounds of it, her complaining loudly after each and every question.

Frankly it’s tedious and we all want her to shut up. By that I mean the whole of Wetherspoons, not just us. Alex, who is wonderfully patient, moves his chair to sit closely next to her so he can relay each question to her as it is read out. I understand that she wants to feel a part of things but can’t help feeling that this is just attention seeking toddler-like behaviour. Even with the questions relayed slowly to her, she maintains a look of exhausted bewilderment. She keeps her brain active with the puzzle page from “her paper” (The Mail on Saturday), and were this sudoku, she’d smash it. As it is, she can’t think which King of England was reputed to have burnt the cakes.

Unsurprisingly, we lose the quiz but we are ok with that. We all drink up and prepare to leave. All apart from Mum, who disappears to the bar (under the guise of needing the loo) and returns with a new pint, her fifth. She is triumphant whilst simultaneously trying to appear nonchalant. She is fooling nobody.

Finally, we get her to drink up and steer her outside, into the mini and I drive us back home. It’s time for Love Island on catch up, which I enjoy watching with the boys. We can’t hear the telly, because Mum is wandering around, muttering that she wants another drink. We go through the usual circus, and I tell her that she’s had plenty. I worry about the hard tiled floor, the fact that the downstairs loo outside her downstairs bedroom isn’t ensuite and in fact doesn’t have a loo seat (the previous guests broke it and a replacement has had to be ordered from Germany). I picture her wedged in the toilet bowl, unable to pull herself out after a 3am wee and say no, she most certainly is not having another drink.

There follows a very unpleasant exchange and I end up telling her to go to bed the way you would dismiss a wasp bothering you at a hot August BBQ.

We start to rewatch Love Island and I fall promptly asleep.

Day 3 over

Well we made it through day 1. I’m up at 0730 to take the dogs out, and I leave Mum to sleep until gone 9am. The Air BNB I have booked is not available until 3pm, but I’m expecting the boys to arrive around lunchtime so that we can have a nice lunch in the pub next door to where we’re going to be staying.

Needless to say, Mum is a little jaded today and has no energy. She has made it from bedroom to sitting room so I put the telly on. It’s only pictures to her, she can’t make out what the devil anyone is saying. I put the words on (subtitles), but she isn’t interested. I make her some breakfast and remind her that she would feel much worse if I’d given in to her ranting and let her have another drink. Not wishing to enter in to a discussion of her bad behaviour, she finds something of interest on the carpet and picks it up.

A little while later, she toddles off and reappears with some things she has brought with her.

1. A silk scarf for me (it’s actually quite nice)
2. 3 shoe bags, 1 each for the boys. The kind that posh shoes come in, inside the box. She thinks the boys might find them useful. I’m not even sure their humoungous size 11 trainers will even both fit in a bag, but I thank her anyway. I remind her that we are leaving today to go to the Air BNB so let’s not get everything out of the case, as it will all have to go back in.
3. Some extra strong mints, and do I want one?
4. A selection of the birthday cards which she was sent this year. I suggest we go through them at the BNB when we have more time, but she insists on showing me a few anyway. She loves her cards, and when re-reading, always gives the impression that it’s actually the first time she’s read that card. I guess that’s the dodgy memory again.

I send her back into the bedroom to go repack, but when I look in on her 20 minutes later I find she has totally unpacked everything and it’s carnage but she’s happy.

We potter around until 11am and I tell her I’m all ready, probably best she goes and gets dressed now so we can be off to meet the boys at 12pm. This leaves her with no choice but to tell me that she has had a “malfunction”. No doubt something to do with 4 pints the night before, although once again, she refuses to accept responsibility. She blames the manufacturer of the stoma bag, clearly this is a dodgy batch. I won’t go into the details, but it’s a clean up operation which I wouldn’t want to do again in a hurry and I’m frankly relieved when the boys check in with me and tell me they’re running late and only just leaving Colchester.

2 hours , 2 showers and 2 loads of laundry later, we’re ready for the off, Mum still feeling less than 100%. It’s my birthday, the sun is shining and I put the top down on Mimi the mini to drive the short distance to the Air BNB. I currently live just outside the Isle of Thanet, and the whole of this section of the Kent coast is fantastic, from Whitstable in the North, round through Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate, Sandwich Bay, Deal, Walmer, Kingsdown (where we are staying), St. Margarets until you reach the landscape changes with the town and port of Dover. Our angels are smiling on us and when we rock up to the Air BNB slightly early, the cleaners have left so we are able to get in and unpack before the boys arrive.

We’re sitting having a cup of tea when I offer to brush Mum’s hair, drying now after her impromptu shower. She says yes please, but be careful of her bump. I know nothing about a bump, but on parting her hair discover a nasty gash about 2 inches long which is healing nicely.

Mum’s account of receiving the injury is that she was assaulted in Bradford about 2 weeks ago, that she was on a pedestrian bit and somebody threw something at her which hit her on the head. Subsequent questions just leave more unanswered. She’s sure someone threw a missile, yet there was no one around, nor was there anything on the ground when she looked to see what had hit her. She didn’t report it to the police, and claimed to have been “shopping”. She didn’t go to a & e, because we all know how long that takes and she could have caught covid, so she just went home and went to bed. Only in the morning when her head was stuck to the pillow did she realise that it had been bleeding and was probably more significant than she first thought.

Her account grows more and more sketchy with questioning, so I file it under “Arthur C Clarke” and tell her I hope it doesn’t happen again. Later, when she shows the boys they are equally shocked, and more questions flow, leaving us all feeling very uneasy, but thankful that it wasn’t any worse. Frankly, my gut tells me that it was much more likely that she took a tumble, but she either doesn’t want to admit this, or doesn’t actually remember and has filled in the gaps herself, badly, like an apprentice plasterer on his first day at work.

Anyway, the boys arrive, she tries to remember all their names and assign the correct name to the correct grandchild, and as usual gets Alex & Toby mixed up.

As soon as they’ve arrived, she wants to show them her birthday cards, and of course bestow on them the gift of a shoe bag each. In one of her birthday cards, one of my lovely friends (thank you Trace Padgett) has included a £10 gift card to Wetherspoons – one of Mum’s favourite haunts in Bradford. We had discovered in the pub the night before that ‘Spoons in Ramsgate is the largest in Europe – if not the world – and I remember that quiz night is on Wednesday night. That’s tomorrow night sorted then – it’s only 25 minutes away, we all bloody love a pub quiz and Mum gets to spend her voucher. We read her cards with her and I’m beginning to wonder whose birthday it actually is, but I’m happy to share it with her. Massive thanks again to everyone who has sent her a card/cards over the last couple of years – it really has made her happy.

It’s a beautifully sunny day and we all enjoy a relaxing couple of hours before Oli – now a very talented chef – starts cooking dinner. Jackie, my friend (present at the scan which revealed two embryo’s instead of one 22 years ago) pops over for supper and we all have a lovely time. Mum is not drinking, and her hangover seems to spoil her day. I try not to let it spoil mine, actually thankful that I don’t have to have a row with her about another drink on my birthday. I open my presents, eat some lovely food, laugh with my gorgeous boys and sleep in a lovely bed someone else has made. It’s all rather special.

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.