When will I ever learn?

I hate shopping with my mother. Hate it. It all stems back to a time when I was young, had just started to drive, and she kept me waiting for THREE hours as she 'popped' into the shops.
'Twenty minutes max', she said.
It's a wonder to behold. She goes into a daydream and loses all sense of time and sense. So, I surprised myself when she asked me to take her to Booths our local supermarket so that she could buy 'a couple of things', and I agreed.
I went to Harrogate to pick her up and drove back to Ripon. She doesn't get out much so as she was coming for lunch I thought that it shouldn't be too bad especially if I timed it so that we had to 'be quick' because Jan was cooking and expected us.
The knot tightened in my stomach as we approached the store and in order to try and get some kind of control of proceedings I asked her what she wanted.
'Three things', she said, 'no four'.
Could this be true?
'I want some nuts, streaky bacon, cheese and water,' she said.
My original plan to go and drink some coffee, whilst she shopped, went out of the window. This might not actually take much time I thought. So I stayed with her knowing how easily she gets distracted. Whilst she propped herself on the back of the trolley I gently (but forcibly) guided it round the store.
I estimate that the cost for the 'four things' that she wanted came to around £16.
In fact we were in there for about an hour and the final bill came to £154.
Will I ever learn?

What does he know?

My mother has not been well over the last couple of years and of late she has been confined to the house interspersed with short stays in hospital. Naturally  this has led to her wanting to get out of the house and she achieves this by going shopping.

You sense a lot of pent up frustration. This manifests itself in 'over shopping.' Buying all the stuff that she hasn't been able to get her hands on.

Jan looked into her fridge recently and said to me that she couldn't possibly eat all the stuff in there and that she'd have to throw a lot of it away.

She's not wealthy so I decided to sit her down and have a gentle corrective interview.

I failed.

As we entered her house this week, without a hello or how are you preamble, she grabbed hold of Jan and said, 'What's this? What do I do with it?' She was holding a small white packet of something and waiving it in Jan's face. From a short distance I could see 'Paneer' in large letters but decided to let Jan explain.

As the conversation progressed, having to repeat everything three times (she's quite deaf) I lost my cool. Can I say here that as mum is Italian she's used to having shouty conversations and that I'm an expert at them.

'Let me get this right,' I shouted, 'you bought something that you don't have the faintest idea of what it is? How silly is that?'

'I could see that it was made in Denmark, she said.

''Oh that's OK,' I shouted incredulously. 'Indian cheese that's made in Denmark. That's even better.'

She looked at Jan, waived her hand dismissively at me, and said, 'What does he know?'

Mum

I appreciate that I haven't posted much recently but I've been tied up with my mum.
Historically she has suffered from a 'trapped nerve' pain and this has got worse recently. After an unrelated trip to see her favourite consultant at the hospital, and me describing all the events surrounding this added pain, the consultant decided that he was going to x-ray.
It turns out that she had broken her femur, hence the pain, and has been walking on this leg for so long that the crack has started to heal. As one doctor said to her 'we have no idea how you did that, they don't make them like you any more.'
She has been offered to have the break reset and pinned but she has refused because she can't stand the thought of having an operation at her age and doesn't want to spend any more time in hospital. She is about to discharge herself.
If we went to war I'd want her on my side!

Simply the best

One of the principle reasons we moved back to England was to be near my mother who is 'getting on a bit' and is at the time of her life where things are more likely to go wrong (James and Cara please take note).
I'm an only child so if mum needs help then it's pretty much down to me and of course Jan. Actually that should be the other way round because I find myself unable to stay calm when mum says and does stupid things. Jan is sweetness personified which is why my mum really likes her. She knows how to listen and say all the right things and she knows that food is, and always has been, a very important part of mum's life.
Anyway, the other day mum sort of fell and had to take to her bed. So for the last few days we have been scuttling back and forward to Harrogate lending both moral and physical support and liaising with doctors and health professionals.
So far so good and also very good practice for when I need to be doing the same for Jan, the major difference being that my mum gets freshly prepared nutritious food and Jan will have to survive on Morrisons ready meals.
Please note, Morrisons have built a huge new kitchen at their base in Bradford and if you can't get a good curry from Bradford you will never get one. Their chicken jalfrezi is excellent, the best I have ever tasted. Put some in your mouth and close your eyes, you can even feel the flock wallpaper.
Spiritual.

A little medical knowledge

Mum, who lives on her own, has an alarm device that she can use to call for help.
Sitting having a cup of tea yesterday afternoon I got a call from the alarm company saying that her alarm had activated so I should check.
Having spoken to her within the last hour because she had been visited by the 'Fast Response Team' after a doctor's visit, I naturally assumed that it was connected with that visit but kept trying to contact her as well.
We went to see her this morning because she needed to be x-rayed after a fall and whilst we were waiting I mentioned that if she is going to activate the alarm she should, if possible, be able to take a phone call.
The alarm looks like a watch but mum refuses to wear it as a watch and pins it to her jumper (don't ask) but, in this instance, had put the jumper in the washing machine whereupon the alarm was continually activated (never mind being rendered useless) until she remembered what she'd done with it.
She seemed to think that it was funny that she had created total mayhem. So far so bad.
Anyway, I'm sitting waiting at Harrogate General Hospital for her to be x-rayed and they have a TV which gives you lots of information about the hospital, the x-ray department and other guff stuff.
One interesting fact that I picked up in my boredom is that the human body has 206 bones and more than half of that number is either in your hands or your feet.
Who needs Wiki when you get so much free, useful information here?

It's where?

About once a week we call in on my mother and either make or take her for lunch. Today we went to Fodders just outside Harrogate. It's a shop (delicatessen) and restaurant that specialises in Yorkshire food and very good it is too. Though I struggle to understand where Arborio rice, Maille mustard, Manchego cheese and a host of other foreign stuff fits into a Yorkshire theme.
Anyway, there's always a queue to get into the restaurant and the group in front had been waiting for a long time. Several other groups had been seated before them. It was half term so there were lots of families and this one was particularly big.
As we were being seated (before them), I said to one of the fathers, "I bet it wasn't your idea to try and get a table for eleven at half term?"
He smiled, rolled his eyes and agreed.
The food and service are always good and Jan wanted a glass of wine with her meal and I noticed that they had Yorkshire wine by the glass (I kid you not) and patriotically decided to try it. Big mistake! They make lots of good things in God's own country but wine isn't one of them.
We weren't surprised when mum preferred what we were eating over her own choice. She always does. I had a huge, manly steak sandwich and mum looked envious despite the fact that I knew she wouldn't be able to chew it properly.
I always know when she's not completely happy because she said that the next time we'd eat elsewhere.
She suggested the Tiger Inn near Knaresborough, not one we'd been to before.
"Where is it mum?" I said.
"I can't remember," she said, "it's either on the Ripon Road or the York Road and then you turn left."
"That narrows it down to about 100 square miles," I said unhelpfully "but we'll check it out and go there next time."
Such a helpful, loving son!

On the road to Damascus

We're having an expensive excellent lunch at The Malt Shovel with my mother and I was looking at Jan with my reading glasses perched on the end of my nose.
"You have a spurious look of intelligence," she said.
Given that we were celebrating my upcoming birthday I thought that, no matter how true, it was a rather cutting remark. But not being one to take offence too easily we chatted about others that share my birth date.
The thing that winds me up the most, that gets my goat, is having to 'share' it with Robbie Bloody Burns. A so called Scottish poet that writes unintelligible drivel, who nobody in England has ever studied (because it's rubbish) but which lots of English seem happy to celebrate with Scottish exiles wherever they are. The haggis, the piper, the toast, it's all total bollocks and has got nothing whatsoever to do with English people.
Anyway, apropos of nothing, my mother interrupted my rant by reminding anyone who would listen (which wasn't many) that it was also a celebration of the Conversion of St Paul. As my mother is rather elderly and I haven't had the heart to mention that I'd converted to atheism, I bit my tongue, avoided a rant, (I thought at that stage that she might be going to pay for lunch) but couldn't resist a "what's that got to do with anything," comment?
I'm not paranoid but it seems like the whole world is against me.

He does what?

So several of us we're sitting around the dinner table playing a game which involved writing the names of famous characters on pieces of paper. It's a bit of a guessing game so any name will do as long as the rest of the players are likely to know the name.
My mother is playing.
Anyway the game progresses and the name David Thomas comes up. The players look around at each other and all wonder who David Thomas is. I looked at the slip of paper with the name on it and recognise my mother's handwriting.
I said, "Mum, who is David Thomas?"
She replied, "Oh, he's my hair dresser."
Bless.

It just makes sense

I was in the car with my mother and I was moaning about two punctures that I'd had over Christmas and the problems of getting them fixed. The first was a nail in a tyre and the second a faulty valve in another tyre.
After a slight pause she said, "It's the garages."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Garages drive around throwing nails in the street to get business," she said.
I had to really concentrate to keep the car on the road.
It's never boring with my mum around.

Cruisin'

Mum has just come back from a short cruise to Lisbon and back. Not bad for an 87 years old. I imagined that she'd come back grumpy but not at all. She enjoyed it enormously.
Jan and I popped round for lunch today  and she couldn't stop talking about it. She went with Olsen Lines on the MS Balmoral and had nothing bit praise for the amenities, food and the trips when in port.
Frankly it's not something that really appeals to me, especially the bit about having to wear a jacket and tie for dinner. Still, not everyone's a scruff like me.
Conversations with my mum usually make me laugh because she has a different outlook on people and life. She mentioned various people that she'd met including a couple of elderly men, the first was 'self made,' but he looked a bit rough, a bit like a gangster and another who was gay, "but he had impeccable table manners", she said, as if in some way that would be unusual.
As she mentioned table manners she took a sidelong glance at me and I said, "don't I have good table manners mum?"
"You could have if you tried," she said. We just fell about.
She also mentioned another person, a lady, who was very elegant, but thin and who also had a catheter but no bladder. I was in stitches.
She couldn't get over how many old people there were, some in wheelchairs, and of course the captain.
"He was Norwegian, you know, from Norway!"
Whatever you say about my mum, she certainly cheers me up, well some of the time. Bless.

Bread and cheese

Talking about being mentally scarred - Jan asked me to pop out for some bread rolls today, pointing out that a nice lump of a really good Lancashire cheese needed eating.
I pointed out that after 15 years of 'marriage' I would have thought that she'd have realised that I rarely eat bread with cheese. An issue that stems from my childhood. From my Italian mother's attempts at making sandwiches.
Don't forget an Italian (in her day) hadn't really come across the notion of a sandwich. My mother's attempts at packed lunches  involved half a loaf of badly cut bread with several pounds of cheese in the middle producing a cheese sandwich about four inches thick.
As a growing lad I tried my best to eat them but the first mouthful was always the start of the problem. That first mouthful congealed into a solid, flat paste and stuck to the roof of my mouth and was really difficult to shift. Given the time it took to release said mess from the top of and around my mouth, lunch-time had finished and it was impossible to eat any more. I went back to class still hungry.
It was the start of my psychosis.

Obstinate women

Reading this news piece about trying to get Vegemite into the US reminded me of the time that my family (including my mother) took a holiday in Hawaii. We flew via Denver, where we refuelled.
As this was the first port of call that's where we went through immigration formalities.
So, there we were standing in line and I checked with my wife and kids that they had nothing that was likely to be confiscated by Ag and Fish (or whatever they're called).
When I got to my mother, deep down inside I knew that I would have a problem. My mother was (and still is) an elderly Italian, from an era when you travelled with food. In her day there were no roadside snack bars or motorway service areas, you had to carry what you were likely to need to eat and drink.
'OK, what have you got Ma', I said?
She looked a bit sheepish (I knew it) but she eventually admitted that amongst her various food stuffs was a melon. She had hidden it. I got angry because I had told her but also because I knew how tough they can be at immigration and if she failed to declare something, and they found it, we would all get turned over and we might even miss the onward connection.
My mother HATES throwing food away. She just couldn't accept that they wouldn't allow her food into the country.
What a row we had and that started a sulk that lasted almost another week. Never again I said to myself, but needless to say I did.
Now I've got Jan, who mum likes, who's very diplomatic (with the patience of a saint) and who mum listens to, to help me. Yippee.


PS That's not my mum, I just like the photo.

A moment of extreme foolishness

I hate, Hate, HATE, shopping with my mother. She drives me nuts.
This all stems from a time when I was 17 years old and she kept me waiting for three hours, THREE HOURS (yes you read that right) parked on a yellow line whilst she popped to two shops 'for a maximum of twenty minutes.'
She has no sense of time or urgency and she point blank refuses to think ahead about anything. I was very scarred by this incident.
Yesterday, I made the inexcusable, stupid, pathetic, decision, out of pity, in a moment of absolute weakness and stupidity of promising to take her to the supermarket this morning "for a bit of fruit."
What a mistake. It's like a child in a toy shop, she can't get things into the trolley fast enough. Well actually that's not quite true. She headed to the fruit and held up an orange to show me. 'What's this?' she said, and starts to pick up fruit before she has a bag to put them in and then has to put everything back until I find a bag for her. And so it goes on throughout the store.
Every single item has to be discussed. She asked for 400 grams of clams. When Jan buys 500 grams she says that's what she wanted. So Jan gives her ours and we move on but not before she asks the fishmonger where they are from.
'Shouldn't you have asked that before you bought them?' I added unhelpfully. And so it goes on throughout the store.
At the cash desk the cashier asks her if she wants cash back. 'Oh no thank you,' she says, but just as the cashier has finalised everything she says, 'I'll have £50 please.' The cashier looked at her in disbelief and so it goes on throughout the store.
Even Jan who is patience personified (she has to be going out with you - Ed) said, 'I'm going to scream in a minute.' And so it goes on throughout the store.
Never, ever feel sorry for my mother. When it comes to shopping she will wreak a revenge on your stupidity in a way that you didn't think was possible. You have been warned.

Confused of Ripon

We made a special trip over to Harrogate yesterday afternoon to pick up some medicine for my mother and buy her any provisions that she needed.
'Hi mum, how are you?' I said as we walked in through the front door.
'You're not wearing those baggy jeans again are you? I hate them', she said.
'Can we deal with my question first?' I said, ' how are you, then we can deal with what I'm wearing.'
Jan, of course walks in gets an effusive hug and a kiss and pleasant conversation. I sometimes wonder whose mother she is.