Can You Hear Me, Mother?

I visited my mum for Smothering Sunday. She's eighty now and concerned about a hospital appointment on Tuesday but the doctor only sent her there because my mum just wants peace of mind. Her sister had a similar investigation a couple of months ago (dodgy bowels run in our family, don't I know it!) and they didn't discover anything and let her watch the procedure on a screen. She asked what the things floating around were. "That's your poo," she was told.

My mum's still in good form, still slagging off everybody but the people she's talking to. Today it was my stepbrother's wife's turn.

"She's in her forties and she totters around on these really high heels on these big slippery tiles, clop clop clop, she's got a really short skirt on that goes out like this then up like this, her waist must be about eighteen inches, although she makes sure everybody else has plenty to eat you never see anything pass her lips and she says hello to you at the beginning of the party then goodbye at the end but ignores you for the rest of the time. She's got a lovely house, the best of everything, she really fell on her feet when she met Dave, he does everything for her, he's really good with his hands and he has to travel to Brighton every day to work but his company have bought him a lovely new white car with four circles on it, he said he wanted five circles to fit in with the Olympics, he was being funny."