It’s another lazy morning at the Old Manor, the smell of bacon, sausage, eggs, tomato, mushrooms and beans having little effect on sleeping bodies. The homely family breakfast I envisaged fades. No matter. Oli arrives with Rex about 10.30 and so we eat together. Rex looks amazing – he’s 13 – 91 by the weird calculation everyone does, so is a couple of years older than Grandma Joyce (Mum).

Ever the Labrador, he shuffles about the kitchen hoovering up the crumbs and slowly people emerge. Auntie Mo takes a cup of tea up to her bedroom and says she will eat when she has showered etc. Alex makes an appearance, and explains that although his girlfriend Liv arrived last night, she packed in a rush and forgotten her makeup, so she can’t come downstairs. I tell him to get mine from Auntie Mo’s room (I don’t have a dressing table in my room) and she can use what she likes, though I doubt that she will be thrilled with my bargain basement Rimmel foundation and The Original Factory Shop lipstick and blusher.

Mum has porridge, Toby finally appears and Liv looks as beautiful as ever, even though I’m pretty sure she didn’t use any of my rubbish offering. We are chatting, mostly filling Oli in on Mum’s Friday night behaviour and the time flies.

It’s past midday before we all decamp, 3 cars in convoy style to Dunwich beach, to walk Rex and blow the cobwebs away. Auntie Mo, Mum and I all have walking sticks and the kids and I run a little sweepstake to see how many shits Rex will have on the duration of the walk.

Rex is a social shitter. You can empty him all you like, but put him on a beach, in a park, in a field or (god forbid) on a street with other dogs and other people and you can bet your bottom poo bag that he’s gonna find one and squeeze it out.

I opt for 4, and am joined by Toby and Oli. Alex opts for 3 (amateur) and Liv goes for 5, which I think is OTT, even for Rex. No sooner are we on the beach than he cracks one out. Oli picks it up, runs back to the poo bin, and hasn’t even got back to us before Rex is onto no. 2. Again, Oli picks it up and runs back (this time a little further away) and so it continues.  After no. 3, we all think he’s done and he’s happy to sit for a photo op.

The walk is lovely. At one point Auntie Mo and Mum are walking side by side, chatting. Too far away from the rest of us for us to earwig their conversation – I wonder whether to catch them up and join in, play the full UN peacekeeping force, but decide to let them be. I don’t know what they talked about, but it was all good. No stomping off, no raised voices, no pointing fingers or windmill arms.

After about half an hour, we turn around and head back to the carpark. Toby has dressed inappropriately for a late November walk alongside the North Sea and has had to borrow my headscarf. He looks like he could be auditioning for The League of Gentlemen.

Alex thinks he’s won the sweepstake, but Rex, somehow sensing that his opportunities are running out, cracks out a 4th. I am jubilant in victory, and so busy rubbing Rex’s fourth shit in Alex’s face (not literally, that would be gross), that I only just notice that everyone else is cheering Rex on for going for a 5th. Liv takes home the trophy, I suspect deep down Rex is seriously proud of himself. Maybe he did it because he knows it’s always polite to let the guest win?

It’s now about 39 hrs since Mum had her last pint. At breakfast, having been told about the impending walk, she asked if the beach was near a pub. I skirted the issue, and she said she’d like to get some money out. Was there a pub nearby which would give her cash back? No, I said, but I can take you to the cashpoint. Well ok then, she said, but is it near a pub? Then came the cheeky laugh, which I know after all these years carries the subtitle,  If You Haven’t Figured It Out Yet, I Fully Intend To Go To The Pub Today.

Everyone else makes their way back to the house, I take Mum to the cashpoint in the garage, not near any pubs at all.  Approaching home, she starts making more pub noises. Can we just go for one? Well why not, on a super day like today, we could go to the place we went to on Friday night (she can’t remember the name), maybe everyone else could join us? What could be better than to get all the family together and all enjoy a drink together. She starts huffing. Dark clouds encircle us. I wonder what is best? Take her for a drink and then hoik her out again just as she’s getting a taste for it, or take her straight home and risk a full on fault-picking mission because she hasn’t got her own way.

I give in. I say I’ll take you to the pub but you have to promise only to have one and by the way no-one else wants to come and join you.

The landlord gives us a warm welcome, but Mum is puzzled at the things he is referring to. She has absolutely no recollection of anything after pint 4 on Friday night. She remembers the food (once again, if only pubs in Yorkshire served food…), but has to be re-introduced to the chef as she can’t remember chatting with him at length on Friday. She has also not acquainted them with her hearing loss. She lets the landlord ramble on merrily for quite a while, nodding and smiling, making complimentary facial expressions but as soon as she catches my eye she mouths I Can’t Tell A Word Of It. Only she doesn’t mouth it, so much as says it loudly, like a deaf person wanting to be heard.

I go to the loo and while my back is turned, she orders pint no. two. I put my foot down and collect my things. No, I say, I am not staying for another, and neither are you. Your grandchildren have all taken time out to travel long distances, as has your sister, to spend time with you and you are not going to spend all day Sunday in the pub. She is chastised and I’m on dodgy ground. To drag Mum back from the pub when she wants another drink is not going to do Auntie Mo any favours, as she’ll pick a fight with anyone and Auntie Mo is an easy target. Plus, she could hit my gin straight away, and we all know what that can lead to (she put the hoover through my father’s bedroom door once and wasn’t allowed gin in the house ever again).

So, considering all options, I decide that a carry out is the best way forward. The landlord has a plastic firkin supplied by one of the breweries which holds 4 pints. Excellent. Armed with 4 pints of Gospel Oak, and carrying the pint she’s just ordered, I usher her out of the pub and into my tiny car and get her home.

I had meant to cook dinner for everyone, but of course I haven’t been able to. Fortunately Auntie Mo and Oli have been hard at work in the kitchen and have prepared  everything. We sit down to eat almost straight away. Mum was going to shuffle off into the other room but I tell her no way José, I don’t care if you don’t want to eat, you’re sitting at the table with the rest of us. So while the 6 of us tuck into a lovely Sunday roast of local duck, roast potatoes and celeriac, Mum sits with her pint, steadfastly refusing to even have a plate in front of her.

After lunch Alex and Liv have to head back to Northampton, and Toby manages to disappear entirely, leaving Auntie Mo, Oli, Mum and I in the living room with a lovely fire and something on the telly box.

It’s dodgy ground. We’re definitely on pint 4 or 5, it’s hard to tell as the firkin isn’t seethrough and she’s pouring her own. I’m sitting opposite Oli texting him, while Mum is quizzing Auntie Mo about various things. We devise a plan that if it gets edgy, he will summon Auntie Mo out of the room and I will guide Mum onto more favourable territory. Like how good the food was in the pub on Friday night.

Auntie Mo clearly senses danger too, but I think she may be wearing a false sense of security, namely a couple of large vodka’s she had after lunch. She doesn’t seem daunted by Mum’s tone, which is turning slightly interrogational. Instead, she seems overly brave, like she’s decided to tackle Niagara Falls in a dustbin. I am worried.

Fortunately on the telly box there are, according to Mum, the couple she met at that show I worked on, when she came down to the studio that day, and her, she was lovely, even though she’s supposed to have that thing where you forget everything you wouldn’t have known it and him, well he was lovely too and he chatted to her (Mum) and told her he came from Bradford, would you believe?

We watch Timothy West and Prunella Scales revisit her old school in the Lake District and marvel at what a lovely couple they are. Then, on a roll, Mum mentions all the other things she’s done which I’ve engineered. That time she came down and was on that show which that woman used to host, what was her name, she used to sing and reunite people from all round the world and she (Mum) got a bottle of champagne (Surprise Surprise 1996). And then there was that time she was in the audience for that show, you know the one with the one from the Nolans on it, it’s on at lunchtime, and I brought the Nolan lady, what do they call her now, over to meet Mum afterwards. (Loose Women, 2014)

 

And so we gently paddle our way out of the rapids onto calm waters of days gone by, where she’s been treated to lovely things, met wonderful people and generally been indulged by me.

Mum is sailing into the sunset and her heart is full. If we ever need anyone to look after Rex, all we need to do is ask. The fact that she lives 212 miles away seems irrelevant to her. Oli and I thank her for her offer, and hope she doesn’t press us too much on why we never take her up on it.

Then suddenly we hit turbulence. She asks Auntie Mo where she flew from. Newquay, answers Auntie Mo, but there is also an airport at Exeter.  Mum’s face cannot hide her disbelief.  She needs clarification. Yes, we all say, there is an airport at Exeter.  With Auntie Mo on firm ground, and Mum digging her heels in because she’s never heard of it, we could be in for trouble.

But soon she switches, inexplicably, to Prince Charles, and the time he stopped our planning application up in Scotland (we have no proof that he did this). It was a full page in her Daily Mail at the time (we had no idea, we were on holiday when it was printed), with our photos etc. She calls Prince Charles a Bloody Idiot. Frankly, we’re all a bit relieved that it’s Prince Charles getting the flack tonight, and not one of us.

Then everything is su-perb again. We all relaxed a bit. I’ve not even finished exhaling my sigh of relief when a tiny alarm bell rings. Mum’s glass is empty. The beer has run out. She looks expectantly at Oli. He looks at me. I look at my phone. She wants gin. Oli is going to refill our glasses and she wants a gin. I text frantically.

So my lovely clever first-born, pours a tiny amount of gin into an egg cup. He dips his finger in it and runs it around the edge of a glass, then fills the glass up with ice and tonic. He is a genius. It smells like gin and tonic. It tastes like gin and tonic, but it’s like 99.9% tonic and the gin is merely your imagination. I secretly wonder if he’s been doing this to me for years…

And so it’s time for bed. We’ve done it. Auntie Mo and I hug each other and laugh quietly with relief that we’ve got through the evening – the severely alcohol fuelled evening (Mum has been drinking now for 9 hours, although she’s only had 6 pints and several non-gins) with no majors. We’ve passed. We toss our L plates up into the air and practically chest bump each other.

I’m aware that this is the most dangerous territory of all, of course. The bit where you think you’re home and dry. Like all those 80’s movies which loved to get you with the second ending, the corpse rising up one more time, this could be us at our most vulnerable.

But as it turns out, this isn’t one of those movies. I put Mum’s hot water bottle in her bed, help her upstairs, remind her where her bathroom is, turn off her radio as it’s on way too loud, open her window, pour her some water and turn in for the night, exhausted.

Day three, we’ve done it.

 

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.

Mother has always been a force of nature. As a child I can never remember her having a day in bed, or even a lie-in, with 4 children and a large house to look after, not to mention a frosty mother-in-law at the other end of an intercom system.

Having stayed at home while we were all at school, Mum returned to work in her 50’s and spent 10 years working full time until her life virtually collapsed with the firm she worked for going into liquidation, and her 25 year marriage ending with my father having an affair.

Throughout all this, she never succumbed to spending days under the duvet and so it is not surprising that now, in her late 80’s she actually relishes whole days in pyjamas with no sense of guilt whatsoever.

There are few things which get Mum up and dressed today, one of them is hand-pulled ale, and the other is hospital appointments. Mum, like many octogenarians, has constipation. The 6cm malignant tumour discovered on a recent MRI scan would appear to be the culprit, and she has accepted the fact that surgery to remove a large part of her bowel is imminent.  Fortunately, we had already planned for her to come down to Suffolk, so I’ve rallied the troops and she will be joined by all 3 of my boys along with her sister, Auntie Mo.  Whilst the boys arrival will be a surprise, I’ve checked in advance as to whether or not Mum would like to see Auntie Mo, as their relationship has not been an easy one. All memories of terrible wine-fuelled explosions seem to have been forgotten and Mum says that yes, she would very much like to see Auntie Mo.

Auntie Mo books a flight up from Newquay, the boys book their respective rail tickets from Canterbury and Northampton, Oli books the day off work, I schedule my time off and the trip is on. We’re due to stay in the Big House (the property I house manage) as there is no-one booked in. I’m happy that the Big House is big enough for us all to co-exist for a weekend without any tension.

I’m less happy, on the Wednesday before the Friday arrival, when I get bumped off the Big House with a late booking from bona-fide full fee-paying guests. After a panicky ring round, I find a lovely property called The Old Manor in a neighbouring village with 5 bedrooms, meaning that a few invited guests have to be swiftly uninvited, but they all understand.

Friday is frantic, I’m working, I have to pack. I have to tidy my flat, I have to unpack my car from all the things it has accumulated in order to be able to pack my stuff in it. I have to go buy essentials as the Sainsbury’s shop isn’t coming until 9am Saturday, I have to get into the property at 4pm and then pick up Mum from the train station at 4.45pm.

Everything is going according to plan until I’m at the property at 4.10pm following the instructions to open the key safe, but clearly they are wrong. I can’t get it to open. I phone the agents and they say they are going to send the maintenance guy over.

I have to unpack the car and leave everything on the doorstep, as I won’t have room for Mum’s enormous case (Mum simply can’t travel light) with all my stuff in it. I drive away hoping it doesn’t rain, the laundry I grabbed from the dryer before I left work wouldn’t fit in my case and it’s dumped on top, open to the elements.

I’m at the station when Mum arrives and help her off the train with said enormous case, and soon we’re in the local with a pint of “whatever you’ve got which is nearest to Hobgoblin”. Fortunately, it’s only about 50 yards from The Old Manor, which is handy as I have to pop back to get the key when the maintenance guy arrives at about 7pm.

Mum’s journey this morning started at 10.30am with a taxi to Bradford train station, and in view of the delicate balance she’s trying to achieve with laxatives and toilet facilities, she hasn’t eaten all day. I order a steak and ale pie with mash for us to share.  It’s agreed that she will eat the mash and some gravy and I’ll have a go at the meat and pastry.

Whilst the order is in the kitchen, I pop back to the property to get the key. I find the maintenance man coming out with dozens of empty wine bottles spilling out of a cardboard box, and two pairs of dirty shoes and socks at the bottom of the stairs. Not a great start, but I’m so relieved to actually be in the property that I take the key, lock up and return to the pub. I’ve not been sat down long when I start to worry that I didn’t check the bedrooms, and what if we get in at 10.30pm only to find the beds haven’t been made etc. So I delay the pie again by dashing back to check the bedrooms. Happily they have all been made up, but the property definitely hasn’t been spruced in the last couple of days and there are dead flies and insects all over the place.

Finally I get back to the pub and the food arrives. Mum has switched beers to Gospel Oak, and is by now enjoying it VERY MUCH. As it’s a small bar and the locals who were in for happy hour have now left, there are just a few of us and Mum’s voice ensures everyone is in on the conversation. Readers may remembers that after our trip on the Uke Express last year, I designed a handy guide for publicans to follow when serving Mum. I have shared it with Tom, our landlord, and advise him when we are approaching pint no. 4.

Fortunately for Tom, Mum likes the food and so her opinion is favourable in the extreme.  She is also of the opinion that pubs in Yorkshire don’t serve food, so is to be heard remarking repeatedly “If only pubs near me did food”. I explain that there are certainly pubs in Bradford which do food, Wetherspoons for example. This results in a half hour tirade about Wetherspoons, which she used to frequent (3 years ago I bought her a Wetherspoons gift card for Mother’s Day) because they just bought a pub in Otley, and are now competing against all the independent landlords, which she doesn’t think is fair.

She is therefore boycotting all Wetherspoons (note to readers, cash in your shares now before shares plummet) and this backs up her argument that there is nowhere she can go in Bradford to get some food with her real ale.

I give up, and agree with her that it would be lovely if some pubs in Yorkshire took up this new idea, seemingly created by our landlord, to serve meals with beer.

We move on to another subject.  Lots of conversations with Mum involve a game of word charades.  She’ll start a conversation with “I was watching the television the other day, one of my favourite programmes, it’s that one with the chap in that we met in that place you took me to the last time I came up”.  It’s better than sudoku for keeping your brain active. I have to piece together all the clues, and come up with Dickinsons Real Deal. This conversation begins with “And I’ll tell you something else which you can’t find anywhere these days, and it used to be everywhere, and it’s so good at keeping you warm, and they don’t even do it in Marks and Spencer’s..” (Reader, how are you doing?) I’m flummoxed.

Turns out, she’s referring to wool. Wool. Not top of my protected species list, sheep. The last time I looked, wool jerseys could be found in virtually every department store and you’d be hard pushed to turn around in a charity shop (where Mum does the majority of her shopping) without brushing up against a shetland V neck. But Mum is convinced that no-one is bothering about wool anymore and cites the time in M & S that she made the lady read out the label for a cashmillion ™ jersey and it turned out to be 100% manmade fibres. Which is a bit like saying you can’t get steak anymore, then picking up a cod fillet and pronouncing it evidence.

It’s a shame you can’t find wool anymore says Mum, as she likes to sleep in a 100% wool cardigan. I’m aghast, until she clarifies that she means over the top of her pyjamas. She is rustling about her waistband, until her fingers land on what she’s seeking, and she pulls out the elastic top of her pyjama bottoms, the layer beneath her old lady elasticated waist trousers. Yes, ever the inventive, Mum has decided that there is little point in taking off your pyjamas when you’re only going to put them back on again, and has cut out about 5 minutes from her 2 hour getting ready routine by keeping them on.  I laugh so loudly the other people in the pub stop eating and look at me.

I’ve only just composed myself and dried my eyes and we’re on to pint number 5. I could probably have forced her out of the pub and into the comfort of the rental, but I knew I was picking up A & T from the station at 10pm, so I sort of had to keep her in the pub until then.

The landlord is 6ft 8 and seems confident that he can handle cantankerous with no problem, even though I have my doubts.  It’s touch and go for a while, but whenever it gets a bit iffy I remind her of how good the food was, and as soon as I do she is telling anyone and everyone how her life would be transformed if only pubs in Yorkshire did food.

It’s now approaching 9pm and we’re onto pint no. 6, which as I point out to the landlord, can be Obstreperous. We’ve had a fair few “Get Knotted”s but fortunately there has really been no-one in the pub for her to take issue with.  I make my excuses around 9.45pm, and go to the station to collect A & T.  I’m gone no longer than 25 minutes, but she has seized the opportunity to finish no. 6 and is at the bar ordering no. 7 when I return.

It takes her a few moments to actually realise that the two tall handsome young 20 yr olds that I’ve walked in with are actually her grandchildren, and it takes me a few moments later to realise that she’s actually forgotten their names.

They laugh and joke with her, the gorgeous boys that they are. She is blown away that they have appeared and is on a mission to remember their names without us reminding her. A few minutes later, in the outside loo, she continues to try and remember. This is great, except that I’m absolutely freezing and just want to get back in the pub. I can’t leave her to come inside on her own, she’s a tad unstable and the flagstones outside look decidedly unforgiving. Finally, just as I’m about to lose the feeling my toes, she remembers one name, then another, then all 3 and we’re back in the pub finishing our drinks.

Now all that remains is to get Mum into the car, and into the rental down the hill and then up the stairs and into bed. It sounds easy enough, but experience tells me it won’t be.

With the landlord finally taking Mum’s unfinished 7th pint off her, we make our way down the road. The boys walk, as my tiny little car won’t fit us all in (with luggage) and soon we’re in the lovely kitchen with Mum suggesting that she’ll be happy just to sleep here on the floor. We all look at the floor. It’s lovely, we agree, but perhaps a little cold and uncomfortable? Plus, I add,  I seem to recall actually having booked a property with enough bedrooms (5) for everyone, so I suggest that she’d be more comfortable upstairs.

Even in the bedroom upstairs, she keeps insisting that she doesn’t need a bed, pointing to the floor alongside the big double bed and saying “I’ll just sleep here”.  The boys are chuckling quietly, and T suggests to Grandma Joyce that she’ll be lovely and snug if she gets in to her cosy jimjams and gets into bed. Of course Mum can’t resist showing him that she’s already got her jimjams on. I fear she may be approaching The Lady In The Van territory.

Finally we coax her into bed. I show her where her ensuite bathroom is and pray that she remembers it in the middle of the night. She’s had 7 pints and only been to the loo twice. Her bladder must have been built in the Glasgow shipyards. The boys tuck her in and she’s soon asleep. We find our rooms and are not long behind her.

 

 

 

 

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It’s a week since our trip on the Uke Express up in Pickering. Mother phoned me on Monday to see that I was ok after my long journey home, clearly still buzzing from her adventures. The week passed by in a bit of a blur, and before I knew it, it was Sunday and I was watching the service from the cenotaph on the telly.

It’s a bit of a tradition for Mum and I, a cry at the telly on Remembrance Sunday. I’ve always insisted that my boys respect the one minute silence if they’re in the house.  Last year I was in Aldi, having completely forgotten the time, and the announcement came over the tannoy that the store would be suspending checkout and respecting the one minute silence. I ended up crying among the kale.

So, once the Royal wreaths had all been placed (no Queenie this year) I called Mum to see how she was.  It went to answerphone, so I assumed she was still weeping, or just engrossed in the programme. I made a mental note to call her later.

We’d had many conversations the week before, about Mum’s overall health. Although appearing robust, a run-in with breast cancer a few years earlier had proved her fallibility. Not that she shared much about it, silently keeping the news to herself for a few years, cautiously inspecting the lump every now and again to check on its growth.  I only found out about it when we attended a friends fathers funeral together in 2015. I bumped into an old school friend who Mum knew, and we began chatting in the street outside the church.  The friend told Mum and I that she had been diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, and had to go in for her second mastectomy, but she was optimistic that would be the end of it.

Mum had a lot of questions. Would she have any chemo? Would she have any radiotherapy? How long before she would be able to drive again? Would she drive herself to the hospital ? What was recovery like ? Finally I turned to Mum and commented that she seemed very interested in the whole thing, was there something I should know? (Jokingly, obviously). Mum dismissively replied that this was what her doctor said she needed, but she wasn’t convinced whether there was any point, at her age. The friend and I stared at Mum, agog as the realisation sunk in that Mum was telling us she had cancer. She told us how she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer 5 years earlier but hadn’t done anything about it, believing that the cure might be worse than the illness.

In the end, a few weeks later, after much umming, ahhing and numerous changes of her mind, Mum underwent the mastectomy that the doctor had been trying to persuade her to have for years.   The operation was a success. It was a Tuesday. She was back in the pub on the Saturday. Mum 1, cancer 0.

Apart from an operation to remove three gallstones the size of Maltesers in the late 70’s, I can’t remember Mum ever being ill. Even the breast cancer wasn’t bothering her, one of the major reasons she didn’t do anything about it for so long. Although her father died in the early 1960’s from lung cancer, her mother lived to be 94, and lived independently for all but the last few years.

One thing Nan did have (from about the age of 80) which Mum doesn’t, was a personal alarm. We talked about this on our trip, how come she was keen for Nan to have one, but doesn’t think she would now benefit her, even though she lives in the exact same house Nan did, with the exact same very steep staircase.

Given that Mum sank 9 pints on our trip the previous week, I couldn’t quite shake the danger of her drinking and then having to climb/descend a very steep staircase. Mum’s bed is downstairs but the bathroom isn’t. Surely it was only a matter of time before she lost her footing and found herself in a pile at the bottom wishing she had a red button around her neck to press. It was a conversation we had yet to finish, but was weighing heavily on my mind.

About 3pm I called Mum again, and again got an answerphone message. She’s probably gone to my older brother Jeremy’s for Sunday Lunch, I thought. I’ll try again later. When she still didn’t pick up at 7pm I thought it was odd, if she’d been out to Jez’s for lunch he’d surely have had her back home by Antiques Roadshow.

I don’t work Monday’s, so finding myself in a cafe around 11am, I called Mum again. After getting the answerphone again, I decided she must be upstairs having a wash. I called again at 3pm, and at 5pm, both with no answer. By now, I was getting uncomfortable. I called my brother Jez, to see when he had last seen her.  Saturday, he said was the last time he spoke to her. She hadn’t gone to his for Sunday lunch after all. So how come she hadn’t picked up?

Jez brushed it off. Mum had a habit of going awol, he said. Perhaps if I lived closer, I’d know more about this. Ignoring his jab, I suggested he went round to check. It’s a 25 minute car journey. It was 6.30pm on a Monday night but he’d had a beer and couldn’t drive. He promised to go check on her first thing in the morning. I pretended to be placated, but actually I was frantic. What good would going round in the morning be if Mum was already at the bottom of the stairs with her legs wrapped round her head?

I messaged another friend who lives close to Mum. No response. I only had one option left. I called the police.

The call handler was lovely and understood my worries completely. Yes, they would add it to a patrol and someone would go along and check on Mum. In the meantime, had I checked everywhere else she could be?  I hadn’t checked in with my two other brothers, so I rang Jez again for their contact numbers but Jez had already checked and she wasn’t with them.  I mumbled that the police were going to check on her. Before he could quiz me on this, I had another incoming call. It was the police. I hung up on Jez and took the call.

The police officer explained that they had “gained entry” to Mum’s house but she was nowhere to be seen.  Relieved that the mental picture I’d built up hadn’t been proved correct, but confused as to where she could be, I finally admitted that the only other place she could be was the pub.  The officers very kindly said they would go and check, they could clearly hear the distress in my voice.

Jez called back. What had the police said? I was explaining the conversation, when they called back again. They were back at Mum’s, having found her at the Upper George and escorted her home. The Officer explained that she was back safe and sound, but, he added, she’d obviously had a drink “or two”.  I asked to speak to her. He passed her the phone.  Whether she had a full grasp of what was happening I’m not sure, as she was very chilled about her home being invaded by the men in blue.  She’s not a massive fan of the police, although I never really knew why.

The first thing I did was apologise for calling the police, but – I blurted – I was really really worried and I had a vision of her having had some kind of terrible accident and she hadn’t returned my calls, and I didn’t know what to do, and I wouldn’t have slept, and.. and..

Mum, sounding very much like someone who has consumed numerous pints attempting to convince the judge they were sober, assured me it was no problem whatsoever, and everything was Suuuu-perrrrrb. I apologised again, said I would talk to her in the morning and asked for her to pass the phone back to the policeman.

I heard the phone leave her face, and as she passed the phone over heard her say (somewhat incredulously) “Are you a policeman??”

I heard him confirm that to be the case, and as he took the phone from her. “Wait, you are in uniform, right?” I asked him.

“Yes” he said.

“How does she not know you’re a policeman?” I asked him.

“I’ve no idea” he said. “I’m wearing a full high-vis policeman’s uniform, and I brought her here in my liveried high-vis police patrol car” he continued. He had a good sense of humour and we enjoyed the absurdity of it for a moment  when the earlier phrase “gained entry” swam back into view.  I asked whether the door was secure. Yes, said the officer, it’s already been sorted. The contractor was just finishing up.  I didn’t ask for details, but instead offered to pay for it. No need, said the Officer, he said it was clearly a case of fear of loss of life or serious injury, so the Police would cover this one. I was hugely relieved. We said our farewells and I went to bed.

The following morning, I left it until about 11am to call Mum, assuming she might not want to face the day too early. She answered on the first ring. Crikey, I said, are you sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring?  Yes, she said, I thought you were the locksmith.

“Why do you need a locksmith?” I asked, vaguely uneasy.

“Because I’m locked in” she said. “I can’t get the door open”.

Mum lives in a back to back house and so only has one door. It’s not like she can just use the other one if her door doesn’t open.  I knew that she’d only just had a new lock fitted to her door, as the old one was a bit dodgy and kept sticking. I knew it had cost £180, which had sounded a bit steep until she explained her door was aUPVC one where the lock seemingly travels up the entire door. So I didn’t immediately connect this problem to the events of the previous evening, but laid the blame firmly with the locksmith.

I asked for the locksmith’s number and called him. Yes, he remembered my Mum, and was as concerned as I was that she was having problems with the door as the new lock had worked perfectly when he fitted it.  Yes, he would go round as soon as he had finished the job he was currently doing.  I phoned Mum back and asked her to let me know what happened.

Jez’s plan to visit first thing in the morning had obviously been shelved when she was discovered in the Upper George, but he had just phoned and she’d told him of her current incarceration. He was going to visit in his lunch hour. Mum seemed to think that it needed pushing from outside to release it. Maybe Jez could do it and we wouldn’t need the locksmith after all. I wasn’t convinced, and didn’t stand the locksmith down.

The next phone call was from Mum.  Was the locksmith still coming? Yes, I said, he should be there soon. Good, she said, as she went on to explain what had just happened. Turned out that when Jez arrived, he could indeed get the door open from the outside, and they were briefly free. Until he shut the door again, at which point they were both locked in the house. And that’s where they were. Jez and Mum, both locked in her house, Mum wanted to see the funny side, Jez less so.

Fortunately the locksmith arrived fairly sharpish and freed them.  Jez left. The next phone call was from the locksmith, perplexed.  He was convinced that the lock had jammed because of what thad been done to the door the night before. Of course he’d say that, I thought, shoddy workmanship. At this point, I didn’t even know what had happened to the door the night before, other than the police had managed to get the door open, then secure it again.

The locksmith was adamant the lock had been compromised and that it wasn’t his fault. Had I seen the door? No, I replied. So he took a photo and sent me it.

 

I could barely breathe. I don’t know what I’d expected, but I really didn’t see that one coming. Feeling a bit stupid, I apologised, told him to send me the bill for fixing it and as long as he could guarantee it was all working fine, his work here was done.

He was a true gentleman, and said there was no charge – he was more concerned that something serious had obviously occurred and Mum was okay.  We didn’t elaborate on the previous night’s events and he left.

Which just left me with the problem of Mum needing a new door. Rapid Secure had also left an invoice the previous night which Mum was concerned about, but I assured her that the police were taking care of it. It turned out that younger brother Mark played golf  with someone who had a UPVC door business, so very soon Mum had a new door and we all learnt a lesson.

Mum learnt to play her answerphone and return messages as soon as she heard them.

Jez learnt that if you ever release someone trapped on one side of a door, you’re only one bad move away from being trapped yourself.

I learnt that it doesn’t matter how much you worry about someone, you can’t stop them living their life the way they want to. And if you try to, it will end up costing you £220 for a new door panel.

---

 

Update

The little update to this, is that about 6 weeks after these events, Mum got a final demand from Rapid Secure. She called me concerned. Mum seemingly hates owing money to people, whereas I’m quite good at it. Not wanting her to worry, I said I would deal with it and double check with the police. I called West Yorkshire Police and after going round the houses a bit, finally managed to get through to someone who confirmed that yes, the police were covering the bill, and in fact it had already been paid. The admin clerk confirmed that she would get hold of Rapid Secure and let them know. It must be an error, she said. My cynical mind had another word for it. Nice little earner that, invoicing twice.

 

 

It’s gone midnight when I waken to find Mum asleep in the armchair with the big light on.  I gently waken her to suggest she’d be more comfortable in bed, and she starts shuffling and pottering, so I go back to bed.  At 2am, I waken again to discover she’s made it into bed but left the bedside lamp on.  I imagine her pension is spent mostly on beer and electricity.

Despite the 9-pinter the night before, Mum is remarkably chipper at 9am, and heading for the bathroom. She checks with me first to see if I want to use “the facilities” before her, but I say no, you go first, as it takes her a lot longer to get ready and the sooner she starts the better.

The bathroom door clicks closed, and I realise I’m actually bursting to go to the loo.  There is nothing for it, I pull on a jersey over my pj’s, shove my feet into slippers and nip downstairs to the public hotel loo.

The first thing I see inside the cubicle is the nappy pin from last night. When I return to the room, I take it with me, and when Mum appears from the bathroom I show her it and ask if it’s hers.  Yes, she says, matter of factly, as if I should regard finding nappy pins in public loos an everyday occurrence.  She tells me she uses them to keep her trousers up because the elastic has gone. She has another one at the other size, and shows me a kilt pin which I think actually came from the pageboy outfits that my two older brothers wore at my Aunt’s wedding in around 1973.

I am thankful that her trousers have a bit of staying power of their own or her return to the bar last night while the nappy pin was still spiked into the loo roll could have been interesting.

Down at breakfast Mum is not as fazed by the breakfast buffet today, opting for a bowl of cornflakes without any debate. I note with a certain degree of admiration how she manages to get the soup plate of milk and cereal back to the table without spilling it. I think I’d struggle, even without a hangover.

Mum doesn’t really get hangovers, although once in London (when she had been drinking wine the night) before she did ask me to turn the car around so she could go back to the house to use the bathroom, claiming she’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with her.

Mum is merely a little tired today, and is looking forward to going home. I remind her that we have to drive 40 minutes in the opposite direction first, in order to go visit Mary. Mary who? she asks. Mary, your cousin, I reply. Of course she denies all knowledge of having phoned Mary from the bar the night before on a mission to do some family visiting while we’re in the area. Do I think Mary will be upset with us if we don’t go? Yes, I say, we are going, like a parent instructing a child to go to church at Easter.

Back up in the room we pack up our things and before long we’ve checked out of the hotel and are on our way to Hunmanby, where Auntie Mary lives.

Hunmanby is a sleepy little village in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and we call in the Co-op so that Mum can pick up some flowers for Mary.  They don’t have any flowers, so she comes out armed with 3 packets of melon slices and a tub of Roses chocolates. I can understand the chocolates, I’m having a harder time with the melon. Mum thinks it makes perfect sense, everyone likes melon and this has three types. Three.

While we’re visiting, Mary admits that she had a hard time understanding Mum on the phone last night, while I mouth NINE PINTS to Mary behind Mum’s back. Mum once again says she doesn’t believe a word of it, and I determine to write about it, so that I don’t doubt my own memory when retelling the story in years to come.

(“So we’re on this Ukulele/Steam train weekend in Pickering and Mum ended up drinking like 9 pints, ….wait no, that can’t be right, she can’t possibly have drunk that much at 87, I must have that wrong….wow I wish I’d written about it at the time then I would remember”)

We chat about the family tree which Mum drew for me with her stories in the car, listen to Mary tell us about the trip she’s taking to the Bedgebury Arboretum the following day for an Armistice Day service, make our excuses and leave.  Mary is overwhelmed with the melon and insists Mum takes some home, Mum refuses, pleased that her choice of chopped fruit is being held in high regard.

So now we make one final detour over to Hunmanby Gap, where we used to holiday every year in a tiny chalet.   It’s difficult to describe how small, especially when you consider that routinely 7 of us used to stay in it, sometimes 9 of us.  There would be myself and my Nan who shared a room with bunk beds, big metal things which would creak as my Nan climbed up to the top bunk in her long cotton nightie. My three brothers who slept in three beds which acted as sofas around a square dining table, my Mum and Dad who had a room where the double bed touched three walls and a tiny kitchen. Sometimes we would be joined by my Auntie Mo and her husband Mike, who would occupy a small summerhouse down in the garden.

There was no bathroom, just an outside loo which you got to by going outside and down a set of steep concrete steps.   In the kitchen was a tiny water heater on the wall, the kind that was like a kettle with a very long thin pipe from which scalding hot water would splutter when you turned it on.

There was no gas, electricity which ran off a meter, no television, I don’t remember a fridge but it was yards from the beach where we spent at least 10 hours every single day. We played cards every night, watched ships with binoculars and slept soundly, our skin tingling from not enough sunscreen and too much sand.

It has since been rebuilt, the original we stayed in having been found to have been constructed of a building material not really very good for your health. Yes, for 16 yrs on the trot we had holidayed in an asbestos portacabin, and it was bloody bliss.

 

It’s November, but we still have to pay to park in the clifftop car park, and so hand over our £1.  We walk down the steep road to the last three remaining dwellings on the beach side of the gap. When we holidayed there in the 70’s, there were over half a dozen properties used as holiday homes, they have either fallen into the sea or been abandoned and pulled down.

The original red brick cafe where I would run and spend my holiday pocket money every day on shell animals, funny postcards and perhaps a pretty little purse has long since fallen into the sea. Coastal erosion on the east coast of England averages around 1.5mtrs a year, meaning that in 10 years time the current portacabin replacement cafe could easily be gone too.

Mum needs the loo, so I purchase a coffee from the cafe and obtain the key to the portacabin loo.  Mum wonders if it will be alright, as she hasn’t actually purchased anything and it says clearly it is for customers only.  I assure her it will be ok. I’m then astounded when she returns without the key, saying she had simply given it to someone else who wanted to use the facilities. Sudden concern seemingly out of the loo window.

We spend a few minutes at the chalet,  looking up at the windows from the garden down below, feeling slightly like trespassers. Then we return to the car and begin the journey homeward.

Two hours later, I’m in a chip shop queue wondering why I’m 52 and have never had a mushy pea fritter.

We have forgotten Mum’s leftover fish and chips at the White Swan.  No matter, I am starving, and as I have another 4 hour journey ahead of me, we have decided to stop and get more fish and chips at Salty’s in Wibsey.  I love them for being open on a Sunday evening at 4.30pm.

There is no better place in the world to buy fish and chips than West Yorkshire.  We take the skin off both sides of the fish, the normal fish is haddock, and it literally is, as cheap as chips.

I buy two haddock and one chips, a cake, a scallop, 2 bread cakes and some mushy peas and the total is £12.36. For those not in the know, a scallop is a slice of potato cut lengthwise down the potato, battered and fried. A scallop is a poor man’s cake. A cake is a thin sliver of fish, sandwiched in between 2 slices of potato, battered and fried.  A cake is a poor man’s fish.

Despite good intentions, I only manage half the fish, half the cake and a scallop butty. I leave Mum with enough food for the following week and depart for home.

It’s been a wonderful few days, we’ve laughed more than we ever have done, and fallen out less than we ever have done. I can’t remember a trip with Mum that I would happily repeat, but this is a first.   I’m either getting more tolerant (unlikely) or just more like her (very likely) but either way, it was a successful trip and I’m already planning our next one.

Thank you to everyone we met along the way, you made our day!

 

 

 

 

”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s an early start for us at the White Swan in Pickering.

Today my 87 yr old Mother and I are going on the Uke Express, a service on the North Yorks Moors Railway commandeered by a bunch of ukulele players. We have our song sheets,  (Mother asked for hers two nights ago so she could practise the words – I told her it wasn’t a test) our ukuleles, (I have taken one for Mum even though she doesn’t play, just she she won’t feel left out), and we’re meeting on the platform at 9am.

Mum is already up and shuffling about when my alarm goes off at 7. We’ve both slept well and she’s keen to hear all about the previous evening.  As we dress – debating every item – I describe my evening. I remember that we were told that Channel 5 will be filming on the train today, they are making a documentary about the railway. I tell her to prepare to be interviewed, and she giggles, and says “Oh lord, here we go again..” – she knows me too well.

We manage to get out of the room and down for breakfast on schedule (8am) and venture into the hotel dining room. It’s a low ceiling room which looked lovely the previous evening with candles twinkling and fire lit but could do with a bit more natural light at breakfast.  We choose a table and swap sides twice, as the spotlight is shining in Mum’s eyes from both sides.

I ignore the continental buffet. I don’t eat a three course breakfast at home so why do it when away? Mum however, has other ideas.  She’s going to get her money’s worth here, and there is plenty to choose from.  Dried fruit, fresh fruit, yoghurt, muesli, granola, cereal, juice, ham, cheese. I can read Mum’s mind. If only she’d brought her handbag down to breakfast with her. She wouldn’t need to buy food for a week.

I order some tea for Mum and hot water for me (I’ve brought my own redbush teabags) and chat to the lady from the Uke night who is also staying at the hotel. They have travelled over from Hoylake on the Wirral, they’ve been to these things before but never been on the Uke Express.

I look over at Mum to see how she’s getting on, but she is standing still, lost in ponder, just looking at the array of food, unable to make a decision. I watch, as she appears to have decided, and goes to towards the bowls. Then she hesitates, and reverts to her previous position. This makes me giggle. She hears me and joins in. We don’t need to explain to each other why we’re chuckling uncontrollably, we both know its because Mum can’t make a decision when faced with so much choice.

We are rendered idiots within seconds, unable to speak, tears running down our faces.

When I catch a breath and regain control, I remind her that we have to be on the platform in 45 minutes, so best get a move on.

She remarks that the bowls are the wrong shape.  She wants a cereal bowl, but what the hotel use for breakfast is an oversized soup plate. We giggle some more and I say she is just going to have to suck it up, so she goes for it.

She arrives back at the table with some forlorn looking melon and a box of All Bran. I watch her eating it, unconvinced, and we giggle again at the fact that she’s regretting her choice.

We order cooked food (me, dippy eggs and soldiers, Mum, egg, bacon, tomato) and attempt small talk in hushed tones. Mum’s hearing is going though, so hushed tones have to be repeated, louder and louder until I’m basically addressing the whole room who are pretending not to hear. The All Bran never makes it out of the packet, but she smuggles it out of the dining room anyway.

Thankfully the station is just a short walk away, Mum pausing briefly outside the ironmongers store at the bottom of the hill to admire out loud his display of brooms and bird feeders.

We’re on the platform ahead of schedule and I leave Mum at a table and chairs while I go off to find the Channel 5 crew.  I’m wearing a rather fetching hat, and it is received well by other traingoers, most of whom have dressed in wet weather gear, despite the sunny forecast.  There is a lot of Goretex©

I find the cameraman (he’s on his own, a one man film crew – that’s progress for you) and explained about Mum being the oldest person on board at 92 years of age. He says he’ll come and find us when we’re on the train. I believe him.

When I find Mum she’s made some more friends, they admire my hat, marvel at Mum’s new age and we board the Uke Express.

We find a nice cosy two seats across the aisle from a 4 in the middle of a long carriage split by a little station in the middle where the guard makes coffees and teas.  Everything is as it was in 1930 when the train was first commissioned.

Coats are folded neatly in the appropriate rack, we all get comfy and prepare to strum.  I look out of the window at the big clock on the platform, and notice that the clockmakers name is JOYCE. As this is my Mum’s name, and it’s the kind of thing old people remark on, I mention it.  She can’t see it,  it’s too far away.  She doesn’t believe me anyway – who would put Joyce on a clock?  I take a photo of it, then zoom in on the photo and show her it. I knew full well it would blow her mind. It does.  She looks straight at me across the table, accusatorially and asks me if I’ve done it. No Mum, I say, even my powers don’t extend to getting North Yorks Moors Railway to put my Mum’s name on their 100 year old station clock just for the craic.

I google it and discover that it was made in Whitchurch in Shropshire by JB Joyce. The company claim to be the oldest clock manufacturer in the world, originally established in 1690,  and made clocks for various public buildings, including the Eastgate clock in Chester.

Mum doesn’t understand Google. I don’t feel qualified to explain to her how I can tap something into my phone and come out with such amazing knowledge, so instead, I take most of the glory.  Whenever we want to know anything for the rest of the weekend, she suggests I get it out of my phone. “You’ve everything on that phone” she says.

I purchase a guide book for Mum and soon we’re underway, enjoying the lovely scenery of the North Yorks Moors, accompanied by the somewhat less tranquil sound made by 30+ ukulele players all trying to play Build Me Up Buttercup in time with each other with no lead. A lady across from us attempts to keep everyone in time by standing up and clapping the beat but there is a hardcore contingency who couldn’t stick to a tempo if it was being beaten on their foreheads with a teaspoon and she soon gives up. The three sections of the carriage are all playing out of sync, it is a like a bad transatlantic conference call but fun all the same.

Out of the windows we see pheasants, deer, and a shooting party, the first two presumably trying to avoid the third. We stop at stations and crossings where people wave at the train, smiling. Steam trains do that to folk, though in fairness ukuleles do that to people too. It’s a very happy instrument. You don’t get many sad songs written on the uke.

True to his word, the cameraman arrives and attempts to interview Mum mid song.  We’re playing Down By The Riverside at the time, and Mum is taking her singing role very seriously, which means all his questions are met with the same response.

Cameraman: “Tell me why you’re here today?”

Mum (singing):”Down by the riverside”

Cameraman: “Do you play the ukulele?”

Mum : “Down by the riverside”

It’s very funny. I suspect she can’t hear what he is saying anyway,  it is a bit of a cacophony on board and since she struggled in a quiet dining room this morning I don’t think he stands a hope in hell.   Anyway, he films her singing away in the flat cap I made her wear, a power house at 92, and leaves us be.

We pass through Goatland station, which was used in the first Harry Potter movie as Hogsmeade. At Grosmont, the final station on the NYMR before we switch tracks onto Whitby, Mum declares that she has a photo in her handbag of her on Grosmont station in about 1960. Thinking that she’s looked it out specifically, I’m impressed. She brings out an envelope full of photographs and I realise that she carries these around with her whereever she goes. It’s the 87 yr old’s answer to iCloud.

After singing the whole songbook through a couple of times we’re pulling into Whitby and it’s time to leave the train and go exploring.   Although it’s been a few years since either of us visited, it doesn’t seem to have changed much.   It’s about 11.15 am and we have a couple of hours to kill before the train leaves at 2pm to take us back to Pickering.  As we leave the station, we meet Matt, one of the organisers of today (the Chief). Mum thanks him for all his hard work, saying it’s super. I take some photo’s of Mum and the train and we toddle off into town.

Looking up at the Abbey, perched high above the harbour, I accept that our tourist days are now confined to things that are flat. We wander along the waterfront and spy a man dressed as a pirate who is touting tours on an ex-lifeboat. At £3pp for a 25 minute trip this is a bargain.  Where I live, £3 won’t even get you insulted.

Soon we’ve paid up and we’re killing time until the boat arrives back from its current trip by dressing Mum up as a pirate.

The boat trip is lovely. Don’t rush, take your time, just get a move on, instructs the Captain, as Mum gingerly makes her way along the gang plank. She wants to sit at the front, so I assure her we will, in a loud voice, ensuring anyone else with that idea gets the message.

She only manages a few minutes in her seat though, and then the urge to ask a million questions gets the better of her and she makes her way up the tiny side of the boat to talk to the Captain.

I can’t hear any of the conversation, but the lady sitting closest can, and I can tell by her laughter that it’s obviously quite entertaining. She then mouths “CAN I TAKE HER HOME WITH ME?” at me through her chuckles and I nod “SHE’S YOURS”.

I enjoy the boat ride on my own, and she eventually makes her way back to her seat as we turn and head for home.  She imparts all the wonderful knowledge she has found out about the boat and instructs me to take some deep breaths of the wonderful sea air. Fill your lungs, she says, and as if I needed an example, begins to breathe noisily. I want to say that at 52, I’ve actually been breathing for quite a while, but instead I humour her and oblige. The sun is shining, it’s not too chilly and neither of us have lost our hats or our rags yet, it’s a good day.

On disembarking, I offer a tip to the Captain, and Mum asks him where the best place is to get a pint of “REAL ALE, REAL-HAND-PULLED-ALE”. He suggests the Station, handily placed for our return journey and soon she’s sitting in a very basic pub room with a pint of Timothy Taylors Boltmaker (PINT ONE). There are some other uke players there, and we start playing from their song sheets, Mum happy to sing along. One very kind chap from Fylde Uke Club charges my iPhone which is close to expiring.

Mum is quite particular about her ale. I’ve been with her many times when she has sent her first pint back. Today I ask her how it is. “Not great, probably the first out of the pipes” she chirps, unimpressed. That’s a shame, I remark, especially as this pub was recommended to us. I say I’m happy to move on if she wants to, we still have over an hour till we have to be back on the platform.

She looks at me as if I’ve just suggested a threesome. Move on? She shakes her head quietly, as if fighting inner anger. Her demeanour suggests that Yorkshire women don’t simply move on because the first pint is substandard.  They are made of stronger stuff than that.  Where would we be, in this great country of ours if the lads in the World Wars had decided to just “move on?”. No.  Women from Bradford plough on through. And so with a certain amount of defiance, she sinks her pint in less than 4 drinks.  When I ask her what she would like this time, she places the glass gently on the table and says “same again please. The next one will be better”.  I get the logic and oblige. (PINT TWO)

More Uke playing, we’re joined by Sian from Welsh Wales, another Uke player. She is wearing red and green and sporting a Welsh bobble hat. On introduction, Mum struggles with her name, so we both spell it out. I mention that there used to be a weather girl on the telly called Sian. Sian explains that it is welsh for Jane, which Mum finds fascinating. I worry it might be information overload and she’ll just end up being called Jane, or Shane, but no matter.

Towards the end of the second pint, people have started making a move back to the train station, across the road. I suggest to Mum that we do this too, and that we use the loo before we go. I go first, leaving Mum to get her stuff together. When I return, she’s sporting a fresh pint and hasn’t got her coat on. (PINT THREE). I hustle her into the loo, and realise that we are cutting it a bit fine now, especially if she wants to finish the pint she’s only a third into.

I put my hand in the pocket of my coat, and grab hold of the pint under cover of my coat. It’s a bold move. There is a lot of liquid and I could end up covered in Timothy Taylor’s.  Mum emerges from the loo with one thing on her mind.  Seeing the table empty, she is not happy. Where is her pint? What have I done with her drink? She hadn’t finished with it, was it the bar staff? I hiss that the pint is under my coat and that we need to leave.

She doesn’t believe me and eyes me accusatorially (second time today). Where is it? she demands. I can tell from the way her feet seem to have taken root into the floorboards that she’s not shifting one inch.  I can’t show her it without drawing attention to the fact that I’m stealing a glass under my coat, so I decide to leave and hope that she follows me.  She does, but not without berating me in a loud voice.  Once outside I’m able to show her that I wasn’t lying, I really do have her pint, safe and sound under my coat. Overjoyed and delighted, her face softens and we join the queue on the platform, our numbers seemingly swelled to about twice the number we were on arrival.

The train is packed, not sure what happened there, and we struggle to find seats. Fortunately, Sian, who had the forethought to leave the pub before us, comes to our rescue and we join her at the end of a carriage in some very cosy seats with a couple of ladies named Sue and Val.

There is only a small table between Sue and Val, the window seats, nothing in between Mum and I, nothing for her to rest her pint on. She puts it on the small table while sorting herself out, but as the train pulls out of the station it slowly slips to the edge of the table and nearly deposits Boltmaker all over Val’s lap. Amazingly, Mum catches it just in time. Nothing wrong with those reflexes.

The journey is 1hr 40 minutes, and soon Mum is out of beer. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast, is three pints in and it’s 2.30pm. The next time I look over she is munching on something she’s found in her handbag.  It’s the All Bran.

Sian comes to the rescue with a welsh cake, which she is distributing up and down the carriage. Despite being peckish, Mum squirrels it away into the depths of her handbag and continues with the All Bran. I know it will surface at some point and be “just what she needed”.

I spy a man behind Mum arrive back at his seat with a bottle of beer. I laugh out loud at the audacity – how on earth did the fact that they were selling beer on the train escape Mum’s attention? I point it out, and she looks round sharp and berates the man for only getting himself one. The carriage is enjoying it.  The wife of the Chief is passing through and stops to chat to Mum, asking her if she’s having a lovely time. Mum is gracious and polite, but can’t help herself, mentioning that she’s out of beer and somewhere on the train they are selling it, but she doesn’t know where.

We start playing again, a WW2 song sheet we were handed the night before and we’re only halfway through Mademoiselle from Armetieres when the Chief himself arrives, with a bottle of beer for Mum.  Such a kind gesture, she is blown away. She thinks I’ve arranged it, but I don’t take the credit for this one and say it was all off his own back. She drinks the beer appreciatively and keeps the bottle as a memento. (PINT FOUR)

We pull into Pickering, say our goodbyes and our thank you’s and promise to see everyone later at the concert in the evening.   Mum needs the loo, but when I suggest the loo right in front of us at the station, she has other ideas. Half way up the high street she pauses and wonders out loud where she could go to the loo.  We happen to be right outside a pub called the Bay Horse, so I take the hint and suggest we go in.

Mum interrogates the Landlord about his hand pulled beer, and he recommends Tetleys. Bit of a busman’s holiday for Mum, but she goes with it anyway. (PINT FIVE) I install her in a corner of the lounge bar and leave her while I go back to our room to deposit the two Uke’s I’ve carried around all day.

When I return she is slightly belligerent. Turns out nobody in the bar has spoken to her in my absence. There is a couple sitting RIGHT NEXT TO HER, so close their arms are nearly touching, and she begins talking about them by saying “Don’t look now, but…”. She thinks they are rude for not making conversation with her while she was on her own.   She thinks it is because they are locals, and therefore don’t know what it’s like to be on your own in a strange pub.

I’m kind of with her in a way.  Not that I think people should go out of their way to speak to my Mum when she’s five pints in, especially if they haven’t had practise or read the handbook.   But it is true that the travelled will always be more chatty when it comes to being on a place on your own.  I travel a lot on my own, and can always tell the ones who’ve never stepped foot outside their own comfort zone. They have never experienced the feeling of being alone, and so therefore it doesn’t occur to them to go out of their way to talk to someone in a bid to make that person feel less alone.

NeverthelessI feel it’s not really our place to start dissing the locals on their home turf, so I warn Mum that she is getting cantankerous and suggest we make a move back to the White Swan.  I’ve already checked out the hand-pulled selection in the bar and think she will approve. I know from experience that the chances of Mum slowing up in order to make the concert tonight are slim, so I feel it’s probably a good move to get her closer to our hotel room now, while she can still walk up the hill.

After a lot of coaxing and the threat of us falling out, she finishes her pint and shrugs at the very people she’s been moaning about, as if suddenly they are her best friends and I’m dragging her away from them.

Up at the White Swan I finally relax. We get a nice spot in the corner of the bar where a couple of ukers are just leaving (we’re all over the blooming place).   From there Mum has a birds eye view of the rest of the bar, but can do the least damage, so to speak.

At the bar, there is Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, Black Sheep and Golden Best.  Mum is literally spoilt for choice. Perhaps wisely, she asks for the ABV of the beers, opting for Golden Best which at 3.5% is the lightest of the three, Landlord being the heaviest at 4.3. We settle down with a pint of that for her (PINT SIX) and I join her with a large gin & tonic.

There is a large party of girls who are finishing a late lunch, they are loud, a bit sweary, but clearly having a good time.  Mum and I chat about the day. She loved it. I am pleased. Whatever our differences have been over the last 38 years, I want the best for her.

It can’t have been easy for her, raising four children with a husband who was either away on a business trip or propping up the bar in the pub.  My father was a textile salesman, and worked for one of the large mills in Bradford, Drummonds. His territory was the Middle East and his business trips took him to the Lebanon, Beirut, Saudi, Kuwait. I remember he was never at home for my birthday in June, and very often was away for 6 weeks at a time.  We would all go up to Leeds Bradford Airport to see him off on a trip, we would watch him walk out onto the tarmac, board the plane for London and always knew where he was seated, as he would hold his newspaper up to the window. When he returned, his case would be full of gifts, electronics, toys, exotic sweets and usually, a doll in national dress for me if he’d been somewhere new. I was probably the only girl at my primary school who knew what the national dress was for a woman in Afghanistan, and that their faces were covered by something called a yashmak. As dolls go, it wasn’t the prettiest.

Up till the age of 8 I shared a bedroom with my two older brothers. Naturally we made a lot of noise in the morning, and at the weekends when Dad was trying to have a lie-in if you went too far he would fling the door open, wielding his impossibly large flip flop. My brothers got a wallop more often than I did, but I didn’t always manage to escape.

Back to the White Swan, and Mum who has sat opposite from me for most of the day, decides to share her findings with me.  She tells me I have three earrings in my right ear, but only one in my left. This is not news to me. She can’t remember me having them pierced, which I tell her was on Otley market around the age of 15.

The girls are enjoying themselves, and Mum, bored with my piercings, turns her attention to them.  She is bemused that there are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9…9 girls and only 1 boy.  Is he a stripper? Wait, he’s taking his clothes off now.  I bet he’s a stripper. Now just see here, he can’t start stripping in the middle of a pub…

I look over. He’s taken his jacket off and sat down to join the girls.   I catch one of their eye, and explain that Mum is dying to know why there are 9 of them (girls) and only one boy. They laugh and scream that he’s gay.  Mum doesn’t exactly embrace homosexuality, preferring to believe that same sex couples are in fact just good friends, even if they share a bed together, a bit like Morecambe and Wise. She once got really cross, and I mean REALLY cross with me for intimating that my neighbours in London (both women in their 40’s with severe haircuts and comfortable shoes) were lesbians. Why did I have to be so coarse all the time? Why did I have to be so crude?  Why did I find being disgusting so funny, etc etc. I argued that there was nothing coarse, crude or disgusting about suggesting they were a lesbian couple, but she was having none of it and we didn’t speak for the rest of the night.

Fortunately tonight she either doesn’t hear the comment, or chooses to ignore it, and soon the whole party are marvelling at Mum’s story about the trains, ukuleles, lifeboats and beer. Turns out the birthday girl is from Leeds, her friends live in the surrounding suburbs, one girl is from Pudsey and another from Queensbury, just down the road from Mum.  We laugh that she can drop Mum off tomorrow instead of me. They are lovely, enjoying a 40th birthday weekend away in nearby lodges, and we exchange big hugs as they depart back to their hot tubs.

Next to join us in the bar are Allan and Kathie.  We’ve just got another drink when they join us, but they are kind enough to offer us one anyway. Mum has opted for another Golden Best, (PINT SEVEN) and, on the recommendation of the girl behind the bar, I’m having some hedgerow gin, made locally up in Malton. It’s very popular, she says, adding that some people like it with a slice of apple.

Allan and Kathie are from Berwick on Tweed, and are here to Uke, joining the train tomorrow. As we’re discussing accents, where we’ve lived etc they tell us an amazing story about how in 1986 they were travelling Belgium and living out of a camper van, picking fruit etc. The season was nearly over and they weren’t sure what to do with themselves, when they saw an advert for Babysitters in the bar they were in. They called the number from the payphone and went round to see the couple, who had two sons, aged 4 and 8.

The couple were leaving in two weeks to take a boat down the Nile, in Egypt, and needed someone to look after their boys while they were away. They engaged the services of Allan & Kathie without checking any references, and duly left 2 weeks later.  Allan & Kathie moved in, looked after the boys and didn’t hear from the Mum and Dad until 2 weeks later when they returned from their holiday.  Not a phone call, not a sausage. No communication whatsoever, just left their kids, home, cars etc with a couple they’d only just met and buggered off. That was 1986 for you.

We have a lovely time chatting, exchanging stories, but soon it’s time for them to go and get some food, they have a table booked up the road.

It’s clear by now that we’re not going to make the concert we have tickets for tonight.  Mum has been adamant all day that she is definitely going, but finally agrees with me that it might not happen for her and says that I should go on my own.  I could do, but I don’t want to leave Mum in the bar on her own, and she won’t leave the bar to go to the bedroom yet, so I miss the concert. I’m not overly fussed. It would have been nice, but it would have been a different night, and this one has been a lot of fun in other ways.

After Allan & Kathie depart, the dog people arrive.  She is limping on crutches, he has control of a large golden Labrador.  She tells me that on a walk last November, the dog (named Sunny) got overexcited and bowled into her leg from the side.  Instead of going down, she railed against it, and ended up ruining her knee. She’s just had a knee replacement. Well done Sunny.   They are joined by friends with a sprocker called Fraggle who jumps up on the seat next to Mum and a chocolate lab who had the same gum disease problem Rex had, and as a result can’t eat carrot sticks as they get lodged in his gaps.

My hedgerow gin has gone down very well, and I head up to the bar for another.  I ask Mum if she is sure she really wants another (I’ve been keeping count), and she says no. I breathe a sigh of relief, until she adds, “not of that”.  She drains her glass and asks what’s on offer again. Landlord, Boltmaker and Golden Best, I say. Oh, go on then, she says to the bar girl and me, I’ll have Landlord, as if finally agreeing to something we’d been asking her to do for ages. (PINT EIGHT)

The dog people depart for dinner in the next room, and it’s all quiet for a while. Then, we’re joined by a brother and sister, also here to play Uke on the train tomorrow. He lives in Strasbourg (France, I thought it was Switzerland) and she lives in Alice Springs.

They decided to meet up and play uke as they hadn’t seen each other for ages and it seemed like a quirky thing to do.   I introduce myself.  As they turn to Mum, he says “Pleased to meet you, I’m Mark” and she says “..and I’m Joy”.

Mum stares straight at her.  “And where’s the rest of it?” she asks.

“The rest of what?” asks Joy

“Your name” says Mum

“My name is Joy, that’s my name” says Joy, puzzled, and a little intimidated.

“Ahh, well.  My name’s Joyce” says Mum, triumphantly, “so I got two over on you there”.

It makes perfect sense to Mum, in fact I can tell she’s rather pleased with it, but the rest of us are struggling.

Thankfully, they are perfectly lovely with Mum, asking her questions, but as she’s on pint eight, she just uses the word Suuuuperrrrrrb a lot when asked for details of her day.

I have opted for a slice of apple in my hedgerow this time and it’s bloody lovely. Never had apple in gin before, but will do again.  After a short while chatting Joy and Mark leave (maybe to go in search of her two missing letters) and it’s just Mum and me. I decide it might be a good move to try and get some food inside Mum, neither of us have eaten since breakfast, unless you count the Bran on the train (not for me Mum, thanks).

It’s a this point that I realise that not only has Mum not eaten, but she hasn’t been to the loo since the Bay horse, and before that, she only went once in the Station. Which means that over 8 pints of ale, she’s only been to the loo twice. There are nights when I need the loo every half hour, the liquid running out of me as fast as I’m pouring it in, a bit like a dehydrated pot plant. I suggest she go to the loo, and say I’ll go in after her.

I order food and the bar girl asks if we want to eat in the restaurant.  I decide that would not be a good move, lots of very nice people have arrived in very nice clothes to spend a very nice evening in a very nice restaurant and none of them will be prepared for Mum’s eight pints. So we will stay in the bar, I say, and they duly cram cutlery, condiments, napkins and finally HUGE plates onto the narrow bar table.

Mum reappears from the loo and I follow her in.  The first thing I see is a nappy pin, spiked into the loo roll.  How odd, I think, taking it out and putting it on the back of the cistern. You don’t see nappy pins much anymore at all, anywhere, least of all sticking out of the loo roll in a hotel loo.

Back at the bar, I order Mum fish and chips – we were supposed to get them in Whitby, but well, you know the rest. She will have another Landlord, she tells me.  I oblige, but not before I tell her in my most serious nursey tone, that it will have to be her last as I’m tired. Thankfully, she agrees. (PINT NINE). I choose pork belly on mash with Savoy cabbage – it would literally be my last supper, and it doesn’t disappoint, it’s lush.   Mum has a good go at her massive haddock, but it only sustains minor injuries and we ask for the remainder to be wrapped up so we can take it home tomorrow.

Mum’s done in after eating, and falls silent.  She occasionally seems to be about to say something, but instead just smiles, shrugs and enjoys her thoughts.

Finally, at 9pm I call time on the evening, and suggest we adjourn to our room.  Mum hasn’t finished her pint and will only go to bed if I carry her drink up for her. Carrot and donkey, we get upstairs. Once there, I marvel at Mum’s drinking ability. I tell her she has just drunk the best part of 9 pints.

Don’t be ridiculous she says, I couldn’t drink 9 pints if I tried.

When I next look across, I realise she has fallen asleep in the chair.

Day 4 complete

Beer 9 pints (Mum)
Gin 10 (me)
Disagreement .5
Giggling fits 4
Patience levels 7

Friday dawns, and as usual, I’m up with the dog. The dog is a bit like a disabled child. Full of love, means well but utterly no comprehension about anyone else’s need for a lie-in.

Because I’m up early (and I haven’t actually cooked Mother any food at all since she arrived) I decide to get up and go off to Lidl. This will enable me to walk the dog, as he didn’t get a look in yesterday, what with all the excitement about the 50 pence piece.

I make Mother a cup of tea but she’s making the most of a lazy morning and doing that thing where you pretend you’re asleep so that the other person doesn’t speak to you.

So into Petunia the dog and I pile. Although it’s routine, happens at least once a day most days of his life, the dog is beside himself with excitement. I swing by Costa and experience a similar feeling about my large skinny decaf latte and soon he’s shitting and I’m scooping, the natural order of things having been resumed.

In Lidl afterwards, I pretend that I’m going to pick up items for breakfast so I can cook for Mother, but actually the real reason I’m there is for the battery operated de-fluffer I’ve seen advertised in the magazine. Last time it was in store, I got one and flaunted it ostentatiously at work the following day.  My colleague coveted it so badly, that I caved and gave it to her, meaning to call in and get myself another one, but by the time I did, they had sold out.   Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I get in early.

My search is rewarded with a basketful of them, but as I’m selecting one I instinctively know that I’ll be in the same situation with Mother coveting it, so I buy two. I also buy mushrooms, bread, eggs and bacon for breakfast.

When I get back home, Mother has surfaced and has just eaten some old granola I found in the back of the cupboard yesterday morning. She can’t manage a cooked breakfast now, so I suggest that maybe we have something around 11am and then head off about 12pm, so we don’t have to stop for lunch on the way up.  It’s going to take us around 5 hours to drive to Pickering, so if we can avoid stopping for long, that would be good.

I present Mother with the battery operated de-fluffer and she acts like I have read her mind, which in a way I guess I have. She is ecstatic, and I am happy with her reaction – worth way more than the £4.99 it cost.

We spend an hour or so pottering and packing, eat a bacon sandwich and I show Mum how I can play Danny Boy really badly on my piano accordion.  I also play her Moonlight Sonata on the keyboard I bought at auction. I feel a bit like a needy child showing off.

Of course we don’t manage to get off at 12pm, in fact it’s nearer 1pm when we finally leave. I’m already in the car, having decided to take the “lead by example” method. I have the engine running, to signify to Mum that it really is time she stopped procrastinating, and committed herself to joining me.  I didn’t realise it would take this long to leave the flat. When I want to go somewhere, I do it. I don’t have to wait for anyone else to check their pockets, check their handbag, check the kitchen counters, check the back door, check the stove, check the lights, check the heating, check the telly.

Finally, Mum is outside the flat, all her bags are in the car.  Mum hesitates on the step, asking what she should do with the front door. Close it, Mum, I say. She is again incredulous that my home security relies on just the one (seemingly flimsy) Yale lock, and by the look on her face wonders just how I made it to the age of 52 without being attacked by the hoards of robbers, rapists and sneak thieves who lurk around every corner.

We drop the dog off at Oli’s – he’s looking after him while we’re away, and hit the road. Mum has a birthday card to post, it’s the birthday of my younger brother’s partner. Unfortunately, and despite them being together a fair few years, Mum doesn’t know her surname. “I’ve never needed to know it before now”.  So the card is addressed to just “Karen”.

Over the 240 miles we cover a lot of ground. Mum tells me the story of how she discovered my father’s infidelity after 26 yrs of marriage, how the voice in her head told her to look in the boot of his car, and then under the spare wheel,  where she was rewarded with a stash of secret love letters between him and his married lover. She moves on to the family tree, drawing it mainly by death and disease (“he had lung cancer, she committed suicide..). I marvel at her long term memory. Her father, my grandfather was one of 9 children, each having children and grandchildren of their own, leading to a lot of cousins, most of whom I’ve never met.

The journey itself takes around 6 hours, which is tiring, by anyone’s standards, and we’re thankful to reach the hotel around 6.45pm.  We check in, I order Mum a Mail on Saturday – at which point she feels the need to explain to Rachel on reception that she doesn’t get a Daily Mail every day, just on a Saturday. Would she like one on Sunday, asks Rachel. Gosh no, says Mum, astounded at the thought, as if two papers in one weekend is the height of extravagance.

Mum remarks that the tartan carpet looks just like a suit fabric.

The room is lovely, though too hot for her Northern bones and my menopausal ones. Mum is concerned that we might not be able to open the window, as it’s a large window which once unlatched, could be opened the whole way by anyone who just happened to be 12 foot tall or perched on the roof outside.

We explore the room like it’s the first hotel room either of us have ever been in; (“Look in the bathroom… they’ve every kind of toiletry you could ever need… even cotton buds..”) and I check the time and ask her if she wants anything to eat.

She hasn’t eaten anything since the picnic we had whilst stuck in traffic on the A1.  I had bought a single cheese and tomato sandwich at the petrol station before we set off, along with a packet of Walkers Salt and Vinegar (the king of crisps, or potato chips as Mum calls them.)  We split the sandwich, she supplemented her half with some home grown tomatoes picked this morning from the grow bags outside my lounge doors (doors number 14 & 15 – thank the lord she never realised) and bits of other food she has accumulated over the previous weeks and squirrelled away in her handbag.

She eats half the crisps. She thinks I don’t notice, but once she’s finished eating, I see her carefully fold up the remaining crisps in the packet, like she’s folding up a tube of toothpaste, and squirrel them away again in her handbag, waste not want not.

She doesn’t want to eat, and doesn’t want anything to drink. This is Mum speak for “I’m worn out and I want to get into my nightie”.  I on the other hand, need sustenance. I also know that it’s important to have space, so I gave her a kiss and headed down to the bar for a gin and tonic intending to get something to eat. I was going to give the Friday night Sing and Strum in Pickering’s Recreation Club a miss, I didn’t know how far away it was and I frankly couldn’t be bothered venturing out on my own.

However, I re-read the email from the organisers and the words Pie N Peas stand out, so I venture out, bag myself a seat, grab some pie and peas and enjoy the Open Mic sing and strum on my own. I meet some lovely people, two of whom are staying in the same hotel as me and Mum.

When I get back around 11.30pm, Mum is tucked up, so I join her and we turn the light out on another successful day.

Day 3 complete

Beer 0
Gin 10 = me, 0 = Mum
Disagreement 0
Giggling fits 0
Patience levels 10… okay 8

 

 

 

 

Thursday dawned, and I got up to feed the dog, who had fortunately stopped farting before being allowed to sleep on my bed.

Just as I was leaving to go to work, Mum appeared, so I was able to give her brief instructions on the telly (I put the telly on and showed her the up and down buttons on the remote), where the “proper” teabags are kept (I drink redbush which just brings a look of contempt from her) and the location of the nearest pub, should she wish to venture out.  I explain that if she does, she will need to leave the back door open and go out via the back gate, as I don’t have a spare key.  (Actually I do have a spare key, but it’s in the spare key hiding place, and I don’t have time to show her a. where it is, b. how it opens the door or c. listen to her tell me that I shouldn’t have a spare key in a hiding place outside where just anyone could find it and let themselves in. )

She is horrified at the suggestion that the flat would be ok if left unlocked. People could get in. Yes, they could, but they don’t, I say. It will be fine. She shakes her head at my virtual invitation to burglars up and down the country, and I leave for work.

Whilst I’m at work, Oli pops in to see Mother. Only he doesn’t manage to gain entry to what is now Fort Knox, as Mother has put the chain on the front door so Oli only manages to open the door a couple of inches and also nearly knocks himself out by walking into a non-opening door. Fortunately the dog gets wind of the situation, and alerts Mother that Oli is at the door, so she lets him in.

He explains that he can’t stay too long, as he is due at work at 1pm. He plans to leave at 12.45pm. For reasons known only to himself, he parks on the road, which is a resident only street, and none of us have permits, as we have 3 off road parking spaces.

At 1pm I get a text from Oli saying “Just left yours – got a bloody parking ticket…..if I’d left at 12.45 like I’d wanted I wouldn’t have got it”. I tell him to contest it on the basis that he had to park on the road as he was waiting on an ambulance coming to see to his 87 year old Grandmother, but I doubt he will.

When I get back from work at 5.30pm and I ask Mum what she’d like for supper, she opts for a gin and tonic. She is keen to share her day with me.  She reports that there is “money everywhere”, which I’m very interested to know more about.  Turns out she found £1.05p in the lounge, 15p in Alex’s bedroom and a large amount of money in the kitchen. She is of course referring to the ex-cocktail cup I once stole from Mahiki, which we all call “the Man”, which, not surprisingly, is where we keep our spare money for the odd take out, loaf of bread etc.

Me : “Can you pick up some dog biscuits.. the money is in the Man”

Toby : “The shop didn’t sell biscuits, so the dog got pretzels” (This actually happened, but not today).

Mum tells me that in order to ascertain just how much money she had “found” in the Man, she began counting it. She had it all in neat little piles, on the dinner table, when she suddenly realised that there was something a lot more exciting about it.  She had read in her paper (the Mail on Saturday) about the rarity of certain 50 pence pieces, and how they could fetch quite a bit from coin collectors. Now, here she was, sitting in my dining room with one of these very coins.   It was a Mrs Tiggywinkle 50p.

Understandably carried away with her find, she abandoned the count and shoved all the other money back in the Man, keeping said 50p piece separate to show me.

I don’t read the Daily Mail, not on Saturday or any other day of the week, so I was oblivious to the stories of instant wealth from the Mrs Tiggywinkle 50p, but I’m already planning how I’m going to spend it. A nice holiday – heck, I’ll even take Mum with me – a new car, maybe a classic convertible – eyelid surgery.

I’m on Ebay quicker than you can say Blepharoplasty, and I discover that the latest sale on said auction site had scooped the seller a massive 85p. I let Mum down gently, she is clearly deflated, having hoped her efforts were going to result in a slightly bigger gain.

We’re on our second gin before I realise the telly is on Comedy Central. Turns out Mum got confused with the channel up and channel down buttons, and having landed at Comedy Central lost all sense of direction and decided to just stay put, enduring 9 hours of canned American laughter. She hasn’t seen the news and so has no idea what’s happening in Kent today.

We FaceTime with Alex again briefly, Mum by now quite blasé about the whole procedure. Our third gin prompts Mum to go get a bag of things she has brought down with her, that I “might want”.  Mum does this at every opportunity, and actually, although I don’t want any of the stuff, I’m all in favour of her doing it. Her house is a tiny two up two down back to back and is stuffed to the gills with things Mother has accumulated*. (*For accumulated, read hoarded).  So if it alleviates the situation at all, then she can offload a bag or two with me and I’ll ditch it in the charity shop round the corner and no-one will be any the wiser.

My booty this trip includes various long necklaces of polished stones which Mum used to wear, a glasses case, a tea towel (RNLI, brand new), some bed socks (YES – GET ON MY FEET NOW!!), a jam jar of roasted almonds, four packets of Jakemans© Throat and Chest sweets (one for each of us, packet reads : Throat and Chest Aniseed and Eucalyptus Menthol Sweets ONCE TASTED THEY WILL BE YOUR FAVOURITE SOOTHING SWEET) and some bits for the boys which I insist I will wrap up for them to open at Christmas.

Another gin and a bit more shouting at the telly (she has some rather extreme views on certain issues, I avoid them, as I would avoid stepping in a big dog turd on a lovely woodland walk.)

We watch The Apprentice but she can’t hear a lot of what they say as they all mumble these days, and soon we’ve finished the Plymouth gin and started on the Lidl one instead.

I can’t remember now what we giggled at, but whatever it was, it was lovely. I declare it’s time for bed, but not before I’ve dispatched a Touchnote card to a friend of hers who she hasn’t been in touch with for so long, she’s now embarrassed to do so. I tell her I’ve done this, and she says if I have, she’ll be cross in the morning.  I say she won’t remember it in the morning.  She says she will.

It hasn’t been mentioned since.

Day 2 complete

Beer 0
Gin 10 each
Disagreement 0
Giggling fits 1
Patience levels 10

My relationship with Mother has never been an easy one. Not since I went through puberty and emerged a young woman, with thoughts, ideas and a strong will of my own.

Mother seemingly didn’t cope well with any of this. Looking back, maybe it co-incided with her own menopause (she had me at 35, so by the time I was 15 she’d have been 50..) who knows. She doesn’t remember experiencing any of the symptoms of “the change” as she calls it, which is hysterical really, because I certainly remember some vicious mood swings.

Up til puberty, I enjoyed a blissful childhood. Summers were long and hot, we holidayed at the same chalet at Hunmanby Gap (a place I was always embarrassed about whenever I was asked where we’d been on holiday, as no-one ever knew where it was) near Filey on the east coast.  The car would be piled high with bedding, clothes, buckets, spades and food for the fortnight. We sat on the bedding, meaning we always got a good view out of the windows of Mum’s maroon coloured Morris Minor traveller.

Fast forward 40 years and it’s Mum who needs the linen to sit on, as I now tower over her, a giant at 5 ft 4.

I’ve decided to try and document our trips together, as they are so ridiculous that I know that when I come to retell them to my children, or even grandchildren – I will doubt my own memory and resort to “no, that can’t be right… she can’t have drunk 9 pints at the age of 87..”

So here goes.

We’re on a telephone call. I don’t phone as much as I should. Usually Mum phones around 9pm at night.  The timing of the call is a big indicator that she’s just got back from the Upper George, where she calls in after 3 pints in Jacob’s Well in Bradford. She gets the bus back up to Wibsey, then calls in the Upper George for another couple, then they call her a taxi home.

I don’t remember the timing of this particular call, but I end up telling her that I’m coming up to Yorkshire in November to go on the Uke Express, a steam train on the North Yorks Moors Railway out of Pickering, filled with Ukulele players.  As I hear myself saying the words, I realise she would absolutely love this trip, and impulsively I invite her on it.  The fact that I only bought one ticket for myself, and the fact that I know the trip is sold out will need addressing at some point, but for now, Mum is made up.

Plans are made. As we near the date,  we agree that in order for Mum to see Oli, and the flat I moved into earlier this year, she could come here first, then we’ll both travel up to Pickering together.

So on Wednesday 31st October 2018 Mum wakens at 4am. She doesn’t need to get up that early, but can’t get back to sleep. At 6am, she stops trying and gets up, in order to be ready for the taxi at midday. Mum has not embraced the smartphone and although she does have a mobile phone, bought for her by one of my brothers, she never has it charged or ready to use. So I have no way of contacting her, and just have to hope that she arrives at the right station at the right time.

I’m on the platform at Colchester at 17.52, feeling rather proud of myself, as I didn’t leave work until 17.30 and normally I’d allow 30 mins for the journey I just did in 20. I had to ask the guard to let me through the barrier so I could be there to help Mum with her bags. I know from previous trips, that she doesn’t pack light, despite there being only one of her.

The train arrives from Ipswich and spews out its passengers onto the platform.  I wait until they dissipate around me, but there is no sign of Mum.

I wait for the next train to arrive, at 18.02. The same thing happens.

I go back through the barrier, wondering what my next move is. Should I just go home and wait for her to phone me? But how would she phone me? Would someone allow her to use their phone? Would she even have my number on her?  I realise I haven’t planned this through very well. I now have absolutely no way of knowing whether she made any of the 4 connections she was due to make today, or at what point on her 211.5 mile journey she is at.

I realise I can’t very well leave the station without her, so my only choice is to wait for the next few trains from Ipswich to come in and hope that she’s on one of them.   I ask the guard to let me back through again, and head over to platform 3, where the Intercity from Norwich (calling at Ipswich) is due to arrive shortly.

I’m losing hope as the last of the passengers filter past my desperately hopeful expression on Platform 3. Then, as the train pulls out, I see a very small figure moving slowly up the platform, pulling a large suitcase whilst carrying a holdall and a handbag.  It is Mum.  Apparently, she was assured she had plenty of time to make her connection in Ipswich. Whoever told her this obviously doesn’t quite understand that Mum has two speeds. If she has her drinking pants on she can achieve quite impressive speeds in getting her next pint.  If it’s not a drinking day, things are considerably slower and you will need the patience of a saint to not start muttering about hurrying up under your breath.

Anyway, we’re both relieved to see each other, I take her bags and we get back to the car, pick up fish and chips on the way home and are soon home safe and sound. Mum is tired after her 6 hour journey, which involved getting a taxi to Bradford, a train to Leeds, another train to Peterborough, another train to Ipswich and a final train to Colchester. All I can hope is that people were kind and offered to help with her case, as it’s bloody heavy and I have no idea how she could lug it up and down the steps on the train let alone the stairs over the platforms.

Despite being told not to, she feeds the dog from her plate.  Mum disagrees loudly with my practise of only feeing the dog once a day (in the morning) and appears to try and make up for 12 years of dietary distress and negligence by giving him a fish butty. Soon the air in the lounge becomes heavy, the dog is farting up a storm. Thanks Mum.

She asks me where Toby is. I remind her he is at university in Canterbury. She asks me where Alex is, and I remind her he is at university in Northampton.  But we can see both of them, I say, and fire up the laptop.  I point at the screen and hit FaceTime and Alex appears on screen, in someone’s kitchen somewhere on the Northampton campus.   Mum is bewildered. The fact that the person on the laptop bears an uncanny resemblance to her grandson is enough, but the fact that he appears to be hearing what she is saying and responding to it, is frankly, blowing her mind.

Alex is chuckling. So is his friend. So am I. Mum is happy to join in. Soon we’re all giggling uncontrollably, and nobody really knows why.  It’s Halloween, so Alex pulls out his V for Vendetta mask and scares his Grandma.  It’s comedy gold.

We say our goodbyes, and I hit Toby’s number on FaceTime.  He answers. He is walking back from the gym in Canterbury so it’s dark all around him, then light (lamppost) then dark, then light etc. He is wearing a ridiculous 80’s style John McEnroe headband.  Despite this change in appearance and surroundings, it’s a while before I realise Mum thinks she is back talking to Alex again.  I have to demonstrate with my phone how the video could be working, as she can’t get her head around the fact that Toby doesn’t have his own camera crew stumbling backwards three feet in front of him, like a politician under fire on Channel 4 news.

Still reeling from the miracle of modern technology, Mum disappears.  When she returns, she announces, with more than a note of incredulity, that I have 13 doors.  She has counted them. She looks at me, expecting a reaction. I pretend to be astonished. Not that I’m underwhelmed by 13, but just that I don’t consider it to be remarkable, in the whole scheme of things. It’s a big old house, converted across the three floors to three flats and I have the entire ground floor. My ceilings are 3 mtrs high, although I don’t share this with her, feeling any more architectural info could be more than she can cope with.  She remarks at the height of the skirting board and shakes her head. Incredible.

We attempt to watch Gino, Fred and Gordon but she doesn’t like Gordon’s swearing. She’d like to watch the news, can I get Look North on the telly for her.  Feeling I should be able to, I start to scroll up, then remember that on Sky a few years ago, the regional channel sat just below BBC1, so I start to go backwards.

The screen is soon full of xx channels and for some reason pauses for an agonising two or three seconds on MILF TV. I am pressing channel down furiously, and thankfully the radio stations appear, then the regional stuff.  But I can’t find BBC North.  BBC Northern Ireland, yes. Look North, no.  No Mum, I can’t get Look North or Calendar. In actual fact, it turns out my telly thinks I’m in Kent, so I can’t even get my own local news. So Mum contents herself with someone else’s news, still managing to get upset and shout at the telly at issues which aren’t on her doorstep and therefore don’t affect her at all.

Mum gets lost on the way to the bathroom again (“is it any wonder, with 13 doors to cope with?”) and I call it a night. I show her that all the lights in the lounge go off with the big switch, and tell her to leave the hall light on so she can find her way around in the night.

I’m asleep before Mum has seen what the weather is going to be like in Kent tomorrow.

Day 1 complete.

Beer 0
Disagreements 0
Giggling fits 2 4
Patience levels 10