Mummy
My mum has that special combination of mental illness and character that spreads woe and misery to all those that come in contact with her.

It’s not her fault, it’s hard to be happy and chirpy when you are sure those around you a putting poison in your food, air and water...but Christ on a bike it’s hard work.

The only end to her misery will come when she dies, and it will be a fucking release for us all.

On the other hand she does bake a very nice fruit cake, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:42, Reply)

My Mum gave me and my sister the best advice growing up:
To me:
"Smoke weed, but don't do acid: someone put one in my beef sandwich at a Rolling Stones concert once and it was horrible"

To my sister:
"Keep your shoes on and they won't be able to get your tights off"

She knows us quite well.
(kidcamel is due to call your mum at, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:39, 1 reply)

Currently caring for my mother..
..after a minor operation which has left her pretty much unable to fend for herself. It wouldn't be too much of a hassle if every last sodding thing wasn't a thingy or a doodah or a what-do-you-call-it. Seriously, I'm asked to pass the doodah quite regularly. If I ask what she means then it's invariably the one next to the dooberry behind the you-know-what. Things can also be "oojars" if all other explanations have failed. I have no idea what she's on about most of the time.
(Haywood Manley, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:35, 5 replies)

The 'Hostage' effect...
Uni for many, including me, is often the first time the offspring fly the nest fully. There was the obligatory phone call once a week to keep them updated on the exciting student world in the North West and all ticked along nicely.
Mum never has been one for getting emotional, and I hadn't expected much of a change in the first few weeks away in my first term - September to late December. Come the time to go home for the Christmas Holidays they insisted on picking me up from Norwich station when I arrived there.
As you may expect, it's a bit busy on the trains to say the least at that time of year, and stepping off the train carrying a rucksack and other various bags, I was trying to fight my way up to the platform to find the folks.
Then I saw her. And she saw me. Then something happened which has never happened since and I daresay would take some effort to happen again. In the middle of a packed Train station, in front of the best part of five hundred or so people, she broke down in tears of joy and ran up to me flinging her arms around me in a huge hug.
Surprise was the first emotion, closely followed by the realisation that people were glancing sideways at us as they hurried past. On reflection of that moment I had become the student equivalent of Terry Waite or John McCarthy in our Family and she was so happy to have me back home for a short while.
Slightly embarrassing at the time, but on reflection, a really nice thing :)
( The Great Architect is still waiting for his account to be deleted on, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:31, Reply)

You want to do what on E?
By posting this some people may be able to identify me as it's one of my favourite stories to reel out but seeing this week’s QOTW, I have to share.

My mother is a highly intelligent woman. I look up to her immensely and wish I could have just a fraction of her brilliance.

However for some reason she gets two turns of phrases hilariously, hilariously wrong.

When talking about the worldwide web and all its wonders, from email to websites and all, she refers to it as being "On the e".
“I was on the e last night and it was brilliant, found some really good stuff.”
“The e’s not working, is it working for you?”
“I sent you an e.”

The absolute best however is when she gets angry. I used to visit her in her office and she would exclaim:
"I'm SO angry at that man! ARGH! He INFURIATES me, the little bastard. Argh, I'm so angry, I could FIST him."

After picking myself up from the floor from laughing too hard imagining her performing this act on a high ranking official in her chosen profession..(I'll just say..legal profession to give you a hint of the hilarity) I always try to correct her:

"Mum.. I'm not sure you mean fisting."
"I do, I really want to...ngggh..” *makes fist..shakes fist*
"No no no.. you don't. Look we've spoken about this before, can you please stop saying fisting?"
"Why? I want to! I want to fist them, you know, punch them. Really hard. Why, what else does it mean?"
".....never mind "

I've found out she says this in front of other people too. I've tried over and over again to make her stop (honest) but without explaining it (not a chance), what can I do?

*snigger*
( MademoiselleDave is drunk and on the internet again on, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:11, 9 replies)

Aside from being one of nature's great tyrants,
my Mum, bless her, often can be the source of great amusement, and as time has mellowed her, these occasions have happened more frequently.

Skipping back about 14/15 years or so still brings happy memories of the first of many of these occasions. Christmas Eve, and Mum has finished work, returning home about 8pm. It's a great festive spirit in the house, and not being an especially big drinker she decides she fancies a glass of Martini, which - and it had never happened before to my memory - eventually ended up as 3 or 4 glasses of Martini, making her extremely full of the festive spirit. It's after these Martinis she gets the munchies and reaches over to pull the first thing out of the 'chocolate tin' to eat.

So there she is, sitting in front of the roaring open fire, martini in one hand and full of the festive spirit. Opening the chocolate she proceeds to take a bite. However, she hadn't reckoned on the chocolate bar fighting back.

Struggling to finish the bite, she took out the chocolate bar halfway through, and along came her set of upper dentures wedged very tightly into the top of it. This, of course, results in the biggest giggle fit known to man.

And, for the record, she's never eaten a Toffee Crisp since.
( The Great Architect is still waiting for his account to be deleted on, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 16:05, Reply)

"Hey, that looks like fun!"
I'm sure I've told this story in here before, but it bears repeating.

It was March of 1993, and upstate NY was being hit by a freak blizzard. I lived southwest of Syracuse at the time, and we got about four feet of snow overnight. I spent two days digging us out, and everything was thickly buried.

Mom called me to ask for help- their house in the Adirondacks had better than three feet of snow on it, and they were forecasting rain later in the week. When a thick layer of fresh snow gets rained on, it acts like a big sponge and soaks it up- and that's what collapses roofs. Dad needed my help to shovel off the roof. So I agreed, we packed the kids in the car and we drove two hours to get there, and the following morning Dad and I bundled ourselves up and got to work.

We quickly developed a routine. The snow was up to the level of our belts- about three feet deep- so we found that we could use the snow shovels to cut it into blocks, get the shovel under it and slide a three foot tall block to the edge of the roof and let it tumble off. It didn't involve any real lifting to speak of, but it was still pretty tiring work.

Dad and I finished it about one in the afternoon, then came down for lunch. We drank some hot coffee to defrost us, ate the BLTs Mom made for us and drank the beers we had waiting, and felt pretty good about ourselves.

"But what about the wood shed roofs?" Mom asked. "They'll never survive it!"

The wood sheds are about twelve feet square, built of timbers stacked like Lincoln Logs so that there are gaps between them to allow air to go through. We normally filled them during the warm months, and used the contents of one shed during the year while the wood in the other one dried for a year- so one was full and the other still had about a quarter of the wood left in it. They stand about three feet apart and have flat roofs that slope toward the back.

Dad was completely wiped out by five straight hours of work. "The hell with them. We can rebuild them later."

Mom turned to me. "What do you think? Are you up for shoveling more snow?"

By now I was warm, had food in me and had had a blast of caffeine. "Sure, just let me get my boots back on."

We got out there and I leaned a ladder against the back edge of the nearer shed, climbed up and made enough room for us to work in, then Mom climbed up too. We started digging and I showed her how to slide the blocks off, and we merrily chugged along with each block making a soft whoosh as it hit the growing pile at the back of the shed. We stepped over to the other shed and did the same there, and after about an hour or two both sheds were free of snow.

I went to climb down and immediately saw our mistake.

I had put the ladder against the back side of the shed because it was the lower edge of the roof, and because it was downhill we had tossed all of the snow off the back edge. The ladder was buried under about eight feet of snow. "Aww, shit... Okay, I'll jump down. you give me a shovel and I'll dig out the ladder." And I hopped into the snowbank, going up to my waist. I worked my feet under me and struggled clear of the snow and stood on top of the bank.

I heard, "Hey, that looks like fun!" and looked up in time to see my 65 year old mother sailing over my head and land waist deep in the snow a couple of feet away.

It took me ten minutes to dig her out because we were laughing so hard...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 15:52, 5 replies)

There's a reason we call her Big Liz, and it has nothing to do with her weight.
I might as well have titled this "The Reasons I Am Not Intimidated By Anyone".

Mom is something of a force of nature. My parents live in a small town in the Adirondacks, and in truth Mom kinda rules the place like the Godfather. She has made her presence known as a tough old bird, as she puts it, through everything from town planning meetings to running a small business to being one of the founders of the local arts center. Once Mom gets it into her head that something should be done in a particular way, she'll steamroll over anyone who stands in her path.

In truth she comes by it honestly- her father was The Great God Damn (so nicknamed for his favorite curse), who she describes as the original Pig Headed Kraut. He was a very autocratic man, a hotshot pathologist sent all over the globe by Cornell University to study various ailments that had them mystified. He even won a Lasker Award for his virology work. Grandma was no less formidable- she got her MD in 1925, worked for Planned Parenthood in its infancy, worked with Eleanor Roosevelt on bringing London war orphans to the US, and when asked why she never wore a wedding band replied, "I'd as soon have a ring through my nose." With parents like these, it's no wonder Mom's something of a powerhouse.

Yet for all of her overbearing presence, she's fiercely devoted to her childrens' well being, and for the well being of those she cares for. This extends to friends, to her community, and anyone else who happens to get on well with her. So Mom is both loved and feared in her little town in the Adirondacks, and as such my family holds a rather special place in the community- all my kids have to tell people in town is that they're her grandkid, and their way is instantly paved for them. Want a job at a particular place? Invoke the name of Big Liz. Want to take out a library book for an extended time? Invoke the name of Big Liz. Need a restaurant reservation on a busy night? Invoke the name of Big Liz.

Mom acknowledges all of this with good humor, at least. She doesn't really want to be such a big and imposing presence, but that's just the way she is. It's from her that I have inherited many of the traits that often irritate people, such as my habit of being rather blunt and politically incorrect when I wish to cut through the bullshit. (As she puts it, "You might not like what you hear, but at least you know where you stand.") I've also inherited her ability to direct my own family and delegate tasks to make the house run a bit more efficiently, and steamroll over the invariable objections that I get from my kids when I ask them to stop playing Warcraft and take out the garbage or some such.

The best story I have on Mom, though, occurred at my aunt's funeral.

Mom and Joanna did not get along at all, but for the sake of her brother Mom put up with Jo. When Jo died of cancer, Mom insisted that my siblings and I all accompany her to the memorial service, as we were all the family Fred has apart from his own children. All of us rallied around her, of course, and were there to support Fred.

Afterward at the open house, Mom spotted Jo's sister across the room as she was talking to me. The sister has some sort of developmental disorder and has spent her entire life in institutions of some sort and is not very functional, so Mom excused herself from me to go talk to her and remind her of who she was. She returned to me a few minutes later, looking very rattled.

"Well? How did it go?" I asked.

"I introduced myself to her because I wasn't sure that she'd remember me. She said, 'Oh, I know who you are. You're the one Joanna called The General.'"

I choked on my mouthful of wine and stared at Mom for a moment in shock. We stood there looking at each other for a few seconds, then about pissed ourselves laughing. Mom had to hold onto me to stand upright, tears streaming down her face, and it took her a minute or two to regain enough composure to explain to Fred why she was still giggling at a wake.

It's now a title that she holds proudly.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 15:17, 1 reply)

Random text

Here's one from earlier today

Hi i'm having a happy new sideboard day it came yesterday its lovely i have'nt done much today just looked at it all day have a lovely weekend if i don't see you love ya g xxx
(Sir_Digby_Chicken_Caeser [email protected], Fri 12 Feb 2010, 15:17, 1 reply)

My mum...
...when I was young told me that women don't poo.
Still freaks me out to this day to even think about it
(littleben hasn't anything funny to put here, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 15:02, 2 replies)

A pearoast in which I received the bollocking of a lifetime off my mother...
It was 2 days before my 6th birthday and I was merrily skipping home from school with my sister. Chatting about this and that we made our way up the drive and saw our mother at the door looking thoroughly pissed off. Dragging me into the house she sat me down on a chair and proceeded to interrogate me. ‘Flim-Flam, have you invited anyone to our house for a birthday party?’ I looked blankly at my mother, mainly because I had no idea what she was going on about. I said no and then she went berserk and burst into tears.

It transpired that one of our neighbours had been having a spring clean and came across an invitation to a birthday party at my house, this invitation was for the previous year when I did in fact have a birthday party. So my neighbour called up my mother asking if the party was still on for the 11th. Now my mother rather than work out the connection between someone cleaning their house, discovering old paperwork and getting their years mixed up, assumed that somehow I had managed to - go out to the shops, buy invitations, write in readable print that I had a birthday coming up and distribute said invitations around to our neighbours without her being aware… I WAS 5 DAMMIT, I COULD BARELY PUT ON MATCHING SOCKS LET ALONE ORCHESTRATE A BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR MYSELF WHILST KEEPING IT A SECRET FROM MY MOTHER! So rather than believe that I hadn’t actually arranged anything my mother grounded me and went out to purchase party supplies!?!

Cue me sitting in my living room on my birthday, with a party I didn’t want, festooned with party paraphernalia, with no guests except for my retarded neighbours kid, no presents and no idea what was happening.

I still bring this up every now and then with my mother she apologises each time blaming her behaviour on being a bit mental at the time. I can sort of understand her behaviour, having three annoying kids all under the age of 10 doing her head in 24 hours a day, but still... I have not entirely forgiven her or my neighbour for that matter. *folds arms and nods*
(Flim-Flam the Magnificent "You is talking loco and I like it!", Fri 12 Feb 2010, 14:49, 1 reply)

My Mum always wanted me to follow in her footsteps
So I did, and I enjoy every bloody minute of it.

Hate this fucking hockey mask though
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 14:43, Reply)

I had a tough relationship with my mother...
...actually, I was a crack baby.

While my siblings were all cesarian.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 14:36, Reply)

I posted this on /links a few weeks ago.
It's a heartwarming story about the world's best mother.


Not.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 14:31, 5 replies)

Your Mother Smells of Elderberries!!
My mom's pretty awesome, still looking after me, though i'm not always welcoming to her interfering ways.

When I was little and sent to my room for sundry minor crimes my mom used to make sure I couldn't just escape. She'd unscrew the handle from the door and take the bar that connects both handles out so the door wouldn't open from either side.

Move over, Jo Frost, with your poncy naughty step/chair/corner/rabbit... my mom has you beat hands down.
( SubCulture Hero ... ... He... .... Comes ... ...., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 14:17, Reply)

Your mum is a proper cunt
And your dad is only still with her because he can't afford to get divorced. Of course, if you hadn't have come along they would have split after a few months and would no doubt have achieved something with their lives.

:0)

ps, chances are she's been fingered by someone other than your old man.
(The Boy Monders I have ginger bits in my beard., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 14:15, 1 reply)

Not my mum but...

( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:54, 5 replies)

If Holy Cremola hasn't pea'd this he should
so I will for him
( Larry Vest One day at a time, sweet Jesus, FFS., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:50, Reply)

Guys...
All of you that are on here ragging on your mum...

Don't rag on your mum... That is what a dick does.
(jimwon, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:38, 6 replies)

My mother
told me we 'couldn't get ITV on our television' because she didn't want me to watch vulgar non-educational programming or advertisments. Consequently I had no fucking idea what any of my classmates were talking about when it came to most television programmes.

Utter shit like 'Why Don't You?' rarely came up, sadly.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:34, 12 replies)

A shameless pearoast.....
My old mum and dad are sadly no longer with us, but this is one of my favourite stories involving them.

I used to live in a tenament flat in Edinburgh. A big solid looking building, but sadly the walls between flats could have done with an awful lot more insulation - especially between the bedrooms, if you get my drift.

My next door neighbour seemed a pleasant enough girl. I didn't see too much of her, but she always said hello on the stairs. However, she started seeing a guy who was a bit of a prick. He'd double park his car if he couldn't park within 5 yards (literally) of the front door, played loud music at all hours of the night, slammed the front door as he went in and out of the flat - you get the idea.

The loud humping, initially anyway, was slightly entertaining. Every night for a fortnight was getting a bit much - especially as he seemed to work shifts and 5:45am on a Tuesday morning seemed a popular time for making my lightshade swing - firing clouds of dust over my sadly unaccompanied form, whilst I was forced to listen to her taking a pummelling.

My mum and dad were coming up to see me one weekend. They were going to have my bed for the night, and I was going to kip on my living room floor.

I'm sure you can see where this is heading.

I hoped to Christ that she'd have the painters in that weekend, but I had to prepare for the worst.

Sunday morning arrived, and my mum came through to the living room.

[important point: my mum was always quite naive regarding 'downstairs' activity]

'Sleep ok mum?' I enquired.

'Not bad son, but I was woken up by a heck of a racket at one point.'

'Oh, really?', I enquired, cacking it slightly.

'Yes, I heard a baby crying really loudly, and lots of banging - like someone running up and down the stairs. I haven't a clue what was going on.'

At that point, my old man appears.

'Hi dad, sleep ok?' I ventured.

'Not really, that pair next door were at it like a pair of friggin rabbits all night. Does the girl ever sleep? She must walk like a cowboy.'

A mouthful of coffee squirted up my nose.

Mum didn't have a clue what he was on about. To the day she died, I don't think she ever twigged what the 'crying baby' noises really were.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:26, 1 reply)

My mum
I loved her so much, I killed my father to have her all to myself.
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:25, 3 replies)

My mum is an irritating old sod
who constantly whines to mutual friends that none of her kids want to talk to her anymore.
One event though, sticks in my mind. Some years ago when I was about fourteen, I had a small porn stash. It was just a few carefully selected and clipped pictures, not a bad collection for what you can dig up in a small country town, where everyone knows everyone. With my mum being the suspicious, intrusive person that she is, I knew that it wouldn't be long before they were found in my room.
I should also make mention at this point, that my mother also hand made most of our school clothing. This in itself was rather embarassing, not because they were poorly made, but because they were made several sizes too large and then pulled in with elastic, creating a very unique look, not something you want as a teenager trying to fit in.
Anyway, I was in the process of relocating my miniscule porn stash to somewhere less frequented by my mum. I did this discretely by laying the pictures flat under my t-shirt and attempted to slip past my mother who was between my room and the back door, working on another hellish sewing project.
As I slide past, she grabs my shirt, shorts and underwear in one hand, restraining me, and muttered something about having to measure me for some article of clothing. As she did so my tiny little stash slid down further, halting in the front of my undies, more or less resting on the top of my genitals.
She alsmost missed it, until she lifted my shirt to run the tape measure around my waist and then squinting to read it, notices foreign material in her son's underwear. After removal and a brief perusal, she then said something, in a rather know-it-all fashion, about me putting it "THERE" so "IT" would get "BIGGER". No explanation, was changing her mind.
It probably wouldn't have pissed me off so much if she hadn't told all her fucking friends about it.
(M61A1 CUPID- STUNTS, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:21, Reply)

How I Discovered My Mum Could *Really* Drive
As a wee fella, maybe 8 or 9 years old at most, both I and my mum were studying classical guitar. I should say that this "mum and I" thing was already starting to get uncool. Anyway, she was driving us home after lessons one day when....maybe I should set the scene.

We lived in a very hilly suburb with lots of lovely twisty roads on which many years later I was to learn all about how not to ride a motorbike well (thus becoming eventually a good rider). We were a 2-car family at that time. There was a forest green Ford Cortina station wagon (an Australian horror story of a car) and also 'Charlie Brown,' the puce coloured Mini. Dulux call the duco colour 'Plum Loco.' It was most distinctive, being ostensibly an ordinary Leyland Mini with a black sunroof and this awfully loud colour but underneath the previous owner had 'done some work.' My dad was a deputy at a local high school and usually drove this car to work.

We were coming home in the Mini this day (and yes you can just get 2 guitar cases in the boot of a Mini), all is well with the world in the late afternoon sunshine, and suddenly a pair of teenage boys in a hotted-up Torana (look it up if you must) shot past dangerously around a blind bend, shouting out something to do with our surname, and in the split second they were level with us suddenly looked just a tad surprised and embarrassed at who was actually in the car.

"Little bastards" says she, slamming down into third and flooring the worked motor, headed straight for the tail of the offenders' car. To their credit, they attempted escape. Despite the Torana's superior power and their teenage lack of fear they were quite simply no match for the joyous rage and sheer skill of my mother's technique, hitting every apex perfectly and keeping the engine right in the sweet spot the whole time. I was, needless to say, just a tad white with fear. I had never seen this before. She's hardly angry at all it seems, now she's just having fun!

You see, it turns out that not very long before my mum had been diagnosed with cancer, and the jury was still out on a prognosis but it was not likely good. So in some sense I guess she was off the leash, as it were.

Anyway, in the end, the boy racers bottled it. As we neared the plateau that topped our suburb and some larger, straighter, busier roads, unable to shake us, they simply slowed right down and crept over to the left, heads meekly pulled in.

My mother pulled up alongside. I was afraid she was going to attempt a swear and ruin it all. Instead, she reached across me and gave them a steely-eyed finger. Yep, the wrong one. Here's my mum, the vanquisher of teeny boys at their own game, fucking it all up totally by oh-so-coolly showing them the might of her index fucking finger. And drove off smugly.

Oh, the shame.

Dad didn't let her teach me to drive.
(dadadali has hybrid vigour, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 13:20, Reply)

My mum is heavily influenced by my aunt.
She sends her email forwards, about how plastic bottles should never be reused as plastic is so unstable, and you will get plastic molecules in you, which are carcinogenic. My mum takes this as gospel, even though my girlfriend, a science teacher, pointed out that this is not the case, and plastic is very stable.

Still though, my mum harps on about only storing food in glass bowls now, no tupperware etc, as it will give you cancer. The 'doctor' who provided the email pointed to the fact that since plastic came into common usage, cancer rates have shot up.

My response to this rant last night:

"Mum, if you are so worried about carcinogens in plastic, which you have no scientific basis on, why do you smoke, when there is an entire school of knowledge PROVING that smoking causes all sorts of cancer, and other illnesses?"

Her response is generally a deft wave of the hand and a coment such as "what do you know?", then goes back to drinking her gin with a dash of tonic.

Still love her though!
(The Kwyjibo A big, dumb, balding North American ape., Fri 12 Feb 2010, 12:52, 3 replies)

My mum said "minge" recently.
She's 53.

And I still don't know if that's utterly cool or utterly cringeworthy.
( admiral crunch holds the newsreader's nose squarely, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 12:45, 8 replies)

My Mum was on the pipe
My mum used to smoke a pipe for several years back around 1975. A pipe with a wooden bowl and a silver curved stem. She packed it with Borkum Riff whiskey flavoured tobacco, lit it up and puffed away. Thankfully not in public though.
(rodgerroop, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 12:29, Reply)

Now that I am a grown man in my thirties
my mum seems to have moved away from her role as a mother, to that of a harmless mental patient who manages to twist every conversation into a passive aggressive comment about how I haven't provided her with any grandchildren.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 12:13, 11 replies)

My mum is great!
With one exception:

That sex ed talk at age 14. You know the one - you're sat playing on your N64 and she siddles in and the tiny alarm bell goes off in your head but you think, "No, my mum is too laid back for this...". And it happens. The, "You have started bringing girls back now so I think we should have a chat..." chat.

Fuckity wanking hell this is awkward. And the truly low point of the conversation: my mum uttering this which will haunt me forever. "You know, girls can still get pregnant even without penetrative sex [OMG my mum just said 'penetrative' - floor swallow me know] so please just be careful".

My dad's advice however shows the gender differnce nicely:
*lowers paper* "As long as you use protection and I don't hear you, go nuts!".
(satanstolemyteddybear Mu hõljuk on angerjaid täis, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 12:07, 7 replies)

My mum, the menopause and the PI
My mum is a wonderful women and i can recall countless tales of wonderful things she's done for me and my sisters when we were growing up. However there's a much more amusing story I'm going to recant here which stems from when she went through the menopause. For any younger B3tans whose mums haven't hit this magical milestone yet then allow me to offer some basic advice....fasten your seatbelts and get a helmet!

My mother flatly refused HRT as there are potential cancer risks with the treatment and as a result, at times, went a bit mad. Actually, a lot mad. One incident though stands out head and shoulders above the rest and involved my older sister and mothers day.

My sister had just had a couple of children and decided that for that years mothers day, she was going to spend it with her family and not our mother. This was fine with my mum as she understood that this is a normal progession with getting older, having your own kids etc.
Unfortunately though my mother got it into her head that my sister was lying to her and spending the day with her husbands mother and father (the in-laws).

When this claim was ridiculed by all, my mum claimed that a friend of hers had even seen my sister, her husband, their kids and the inlaws in a local restaurant having lunch on mothers day. My mother was furious. I was living abroad at the time and I started to get phonecalls from my mother who was very upset and angry. Mum claimed it wasn't that my sister had chosen to spend the days with the inlaws but the fact that she'd lied to her about it. I spoke to my sister who told me she'd no idea what i was on about, she hadn't spent the day or had lunch with the in-laws. Despite me telling mum this, the phonecalls kept coming day after day. After a week of this I said to mum offhandedly, 'Look mum, if you're so sure about this then hire a private detective and he'll be able to check through her credit cards to see if she was at this restaurant having lunch on the day in question'. Mum said don't be so silly and I assumed that was the end of it.
The next day I get a phonecall from my absolutely livid father.

"What the fuck did you say to your mother? Did you tell her to hire a private fucking investigator??"

"Ehhh yeah dad, but I didn't mean it, I just said it as an off commen..."

"400 fucking quid a day....FOUR HUNDRED....FUCKING.......POUNDS....A DAY THEY COST. What the fuck did you do?????"

I tried to undo the damage but my mum was in full hormonal lunacy now. The investigator was hired. A few days later I rang my mum and asked if the PI found anything. I'll never forget her response.

"He checked her credit card history and there was no restaurant payment on it...."

"So mum, I guess that's that then"

"....I betcha that sneaky bitch of a sister of yours paid in cash so I wouldn't be able to find proof"

Mums, Brilliant!
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Fri 12 Feb 2010, 12:04, 4 replies)