Mothering Sunday, with expensive flowers and a suitably poignant card, was a nice excuse for a rather pissy Sunday lunch with the parents yesterday. We had a leg of lamb, cooked just rosy in the middle, a hand-picked mint sauce macerated with caster sugar and vinegar and chopped so finely that the blade left deep scratches on the wooden chopping board. Roast Maris Pipers, crispy at each side and the middle fluffier than marshmallow. Cauliflower gratined with Taleggio. Carrots from the farm shop just five minutes' walk from my parents' front door. A rich, end-of-winter gravy made with meat stock and bones, dates, a drop of port and a squeeze of clementine. Mum's homemade lime posset and her garibaldi biscuits.
I used to resent Mother's Day, placing it in the same regard as I held for Valentines Day when I was single, or May Day when there was no fair to attend. Father's Day was alright. I usually just got him a bottle of gin and a card. But my mum no longer drinks or eats any sweeties and doesn't need clothes (and that's hardly a Mother's Day pressie anyway, is it? Who in their right mind gives their mum a card and a new tweed skirt or a pair of velveteen pantaloons on Mother's Day? It's as incongruous as my dad buying her a new iron for Christmas). So flowers it was.
£60 lighter after buying two supermarket bouquets and a miserable-looking bunch of Alstrameria, which behaved much like a moody teen in the car on the way home, refusing to raise their heads from the navel-gazing on mobiles, I gave them a quick sniff when I got home and was horrified to smell fags. I'd had a fag just before getting back in the car with them. It was me. Suddenly, the thought of clothes sounded appealing. Still, I reasoned, kept in plentiful water until Sunday, they may perk up a bit and lose that nicotine twang. Then I remembered something my mum had told me years ago about 'Tobacco Roses' and checked the label, just in case. Nope.
Thoughts of giving my mum flowers which failed to raise their head and smelled of fags caused a few nervous reassurance-searching sniffs on Saturday. I even considered giving them a quick once over with the Febreze.
Tel didn't help. Mrs Tel had a migraine on Thursday so he couldn't come out on Friday as she was still suffering. He rang me on Thursday night, adopting what he fondly thought was his 'whispering' tone, but just sounded like he'd contracted laryngitis. "Can't leave 'er" he said, more with exasperation, I thought, than any tenderness. He took the phone outside so he could talk normally. I asked him if he'd tried her with Feverfew, as that had helped my mum when she used to get them. "Oh bleedin' great advice" he said tersely. "She's in bed wiv a wet flannel on 'er 'ead. I'm pretty sure she won't fancy a bleedin' G and T". I explained patiently and he became less irate. He even agreed to try Boots the next day.
He rang again on Friday. No Feverfew. He had however found extra-strong paracetamol and something that helped migraines by cooling the temples. I asked him how she felt now and he said "Blindin'. She's out runnin' at the moment" sarcastically. Then he apologised a little and said she'd kept him up all night with sickness. ""ad to clear it off the barfroom floor" he said, expecting his medal in the next post.
So Friday was spent in, watching the telly and eating whatever I could find in the freezer that didn't need defrosting. And drinking Guinness and the rest of Tel's brandy, which he probably forgot about from last week.
Saturday was shopping morning proper. I went after the walk, before breakfast, in Waitrose for bits and bobs and supper stuff for that night, keen to get home and make use of the tenner I'd spent on Monday last week for the Plymouth game. Came home at eleven, put the shopping away, made a ham and pickle sarnie and a pot of tea and fed the birds, who now resemble puffballs. I had another walk, through the spitting hail, and came home at 2pm to get ready for the game.
Even though we won, I was a bit disappointed. We should have won by more, yet we let Plymouth back into it time and time again. Still, a win is a win. The second half was terrible though. Just aimless punts and lack of intensity.
Tel rang again at 7pm, just to catch up on the Ipswich result and tell me he'd won us £280 on the football bet he'd done that morning. "Bin darn the chippy for tea" he said proudly. "Bit'o' cod and chips fer me, 'addock'n'large fer the wife, though frankly might as well 'ave not bovvered 'cos she aint bleedin' touched it. Just ungrateful. All this for a bleedin' 'eadache. Given me a bleedin' 'eadache in return. And the arse'ole. Jus' lays there in bed wiv wet flannels on her fore'ead drinking water and Diet Coke and moanin'. Really good weekend this is".
He rang off, promising to be there for next Friday come 'ell or 'igh water. I smiled as I thought of him as a nurse. He'd be more Nurse Ratched than Florence Nightingale.
And that was that. The flowers perked up as well. They didn't need the Febreze in the end. My mum cried a bit and hugged me, and then shoved them in a big vase and put them on the coffee table in the lounge. They're probably dead today. Never mind. It was the thought that counted, I'm sure.
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