Hell on Earth

Was wondering what epilepsy had to do with it [strikeout]phenobarbitol[/strikeout] pentobarbital Geronticide the fun way to start the new year.

It's the only option left. She has refused to slip into a diabetic coma despite the amount of cake she's pushed into her face, and she seems to be immune to alcohol: I've given her enough pina colada to drop a rhino, but she still keeps wittering on...

Look on the bright side - in 30 years time you'll be probably just like her so you'll be able to annoy your kids just as much.

Taking my mother back to her house today, and for the first time since I bought it I found myself opening the curtains this morning praying to God that nobody had stolen my car in the night.

Don't mean this to be a downer, but now Mum is no longer with us I regret every time I cut her short, and told her I was too busy to talk. If I could turn the clock back...

Just a thought.

Taking my mother back to her house today, and for the first time since I bought it I found myself opening the curtains this morning praying to God that nobody had stolen my car in the night.

Lol, I remember when my mum had her heart attack about 10 years ago and she was in the hospital receiving anti clot drugs etc, I thought I'm never going to not want to go for dinner again.

On a lighter note I sorted her new Samsung phone out today think she likes it... All is quiet and well so far

Don't mean this to be a downer, but now Mum is no longer with us I regret every time I cut her short, and told her I was too busy to talk. If I could turn the clock back...

Just a thought.

Hmm...

This Christmas has followed the exact same pattern as every other time we visit her or she comes to us, with roughly the following chronology:

1. Interminable anecdotes in excruciatingly tedious detail about her neighbours cats. She has become a mad old cat woman for whom they are a convenient and sufficient surrogate for people, and she treats them like her babies. I nearly ran over one of the festering things as I was leaving, which would at least have given her a new story to tell, but luckily I saw it just in time.

2. Endlessly rehashed stories from a scintillating life in middle management, all told exactly the same way she always tells them, and as though they were being told for the first time.

3. Updates from her visits to the chiropodist, dentist, doctor, and cancer care specialist.

4. Reminders of how she didn't tell anyone at work that she'd had two types of cancer and they never knew, amply compensated by the fact that she's told me this five billion f*cking times in the intervening 14 years, and always with the same smug self-congratulatory tone.

5. General criticism of anyone who goes out in the evening for a drink, all of whom she labels 'drunks'. Drunks also include anyone who makes a noise in the street after the curtains are drawn, or who does anything even slightly out of the ordinary in town.

6. A maudlin pseudo-psychologists dissection of my father's suicide 30 years ago. I didn't care then and I still don't care now.

7. Boring stories about people I don't know, some of which go back to the mid 1960s and concern people I have never even met.

8. Gloating over the misfortunes of others - especially people she likes to feel superior to, and usually whilst pretending not to remember their names to illustrate how inconsequential they are.

If any of the above occurs during a meal, it will be delivered with a mouthful of food, most of which ends up splattered on us: years of living alone has given her the table manners of a starved pig at a trough of swill.

Don't mean this to be a downer, but now Mum is no longer with us I regret every time I cut her short, and told her I was too busy to talk. If I could turn the clock back...

Just a thought.

There’s no point trying to appeal to a softer side, there isn’t one

Poor ol’ ma.

There’s no point trying to appeal to a softer side, there isn’t one.

Correct.You're welcome to have her on a timeshare basis with Six if you feel sorry for her.

It’s a very tempting offer but I fear my sympathetic christmas spot is already taken up with a narcissistic crone that invades my life with little warning on a too regular a basis. This threads great for me, Ive realised how lucky she is

Although it has annoyingly set off an imaginary story about a poor old lady and a cold hearted son, might have to write it down to dispense of it.

Nobody can be so bad as to deserve being thrown to the six. Surely?!

Can she still cook and iron and that .... and I like my toes licked .

It’s a very tempting offer but I fear my sympathetic christmas spot is already taken up with a narcissistic crone that invades my life with little warning on a too regular a basis. This threads great for me, Ive realised how lucky she is

Although it has annoyingly set off an imaginary story about a poor old lady and a cold hearted son, might have to write it down to dispense of it.

Nobody can be so bad as to deserve being thrown to the six. Surely?!

It's Six I'd be feeling sorry for!

Anyway, I'm not cold-hearted - far from it. I've just had enough of her endless self-aggrandising stories and the fact that she elevates herself not through her own achievements but by belittling those of everyone else. She had a middle management role at a mediocre university and carries on as if she'd been the bloody Vice Chancellor. She disapproves of my parenting because I let my kids discover for themselves where their interests lie and then help them to develop them, rather than using her method, which was to make me do whatever she thought would get her the most social status with her 'friends' - all of whom I thought were vapid flakes at the time, and all of whom dumped her when the old man kicked the bucket rather than deal with the social stigma. She may be my mother, but I don't like her much - she's got a shitty personality. I've made many mistakes in life, but the one I regret most is ever having confided in her: anything she knows she just treats as ammunition to be used in an argument, no matter who else gets hurt in the process.

I was driving her home from Manchester once, many years ago, and came across a bad accident on the A34 that must have happened only moments before. I stopped to see if anyone needed help, and the haranguing she gave me was sickening: at one point she said "What did you stop for? They don't matter - I want to get home and have a coffee." I nearly kicked her out at the side of the road.

I don't like my brother much either. He's a pompous ar*ehole with a grossly inflated opinion of himself, and has looked down his nose at me his whole life. The only time he didn't was when he lost his job (apparently they had enough of his arrogance too) and it looked as though he'd lose his house. I paid his mortgage for the 18 months it took him to find another job, at which point he reverted straight back to being an ar*ehole. I'm not on the breadline by any stretch, but with a young business to run neither am I rolling in it, and the money for a second mortgage that was bigger than my own took some finding. We don't even get invited for Christmas now.

F*ck the pair of them.

[mention]MarkW[/mention] Some of this sounds a little too familiar although thankfully not all of it.

Weird thing that your bonded for life to people you don’t even like, some of which are damaging to know but also damaging to cut off.

Your describing the modus operandi of the thicky, I can help you here, you’d be happier if you were much thicker, try this remedy for family ills- take large quantities of drugs and alcohol, mix up a nice cocktail of sedatives and spirits and view them occasionally through hazy eyes whilst generally sleeping through the whole thing, I call it ‘The Temporary Thick Shake’

Your welcome.

On the other side of the coin - my nephew who is skint student kept quiet about the fact that he didn't receive my cheque at Christmas. I knew he was going to his parents' house for Christmas so I sent his cheque there as I thought it was safer than sending it to his student digs which is shared with various nefarious sounding characters.

His sister and brother's cheque arrived so he knew they'd been sent - but he just kept quiet that he hadn't received anything. It was only when I checked the bank records I noticed the cheque hadn't been presented.

All sorted now I hope - I've sent a replacement cheque to him.

Not necessarily bonded for life. I have not seen my Mum for about 8 years. Not spoken any of her side of the family for eighteen. I barely have contact with Paternal aunts and uncles and won’t stand for the sort of stuff [mention]MarkW[/mention] describes. It’s why I don’t have anything much to do with the aunts and uncles.

Blood might be thicker than water but not sufficiently for me to put up with people who’s values are so far from my own.

I have some wonderful family I keep in contact with and an amazing group of chosen family too.

I won’t give houseroom to people expressing malignant nonsense.

my Dad's dead, I hardly speak to my Mom (maybe twice a year)

I don't speak to either of my sisters, I get on well with 2 of my step sisters

I'm happy with the friends and family I do get on with.

It certainly isn't worth fretting about people who couldn't care less

JUST SO YOU CAN FEEL MY PAIN, THIS WAS THE CONVERSATION WITH MY MOTHER OVER LUNCH THE OTHER DAY:

Mark, Remind me to go into Waterhouses when I'm in town.

- Where the f*ck's that?

The bookshop.

- You mean Waterstones.

Yes, Waterstones. There's a book I want to read by A.A. Milne.

- One of his early novels? I'm guessing you don't mean Winnie the Pooh...

No, he's a restaurant critic who died a couple of years ago. I've read some of his stuff and it's quite funny.

- That's A.A. Gill.

Oh of course. A A. Milne.

- Gill.

Yes, Gill. Laura, could you pass me the salt?

- That's Vicki. Laura is my brothers wife.

Oh for Gods sake Dominic, are you going to correct everything I say today?

- Hmm...

Anyway, what was the name of that woman whose daughter was in your class?

- Which class?

I think she was in your year at primary school, or the year above. Or it may have been secondary school.

- OK...

We went to their house once.

- When was this?

Ooh, let me see... it must have been 1988. Or possibly 1989. They lived in a village.

- Well, that narrows it down...

And there was a church in the village.

- Yup, we're homing in now...

There was a wedding at the church - it was up the A50, past the football stadium.

- Well can you remember who any of the other guests were?

No. We didn't go.

- What? Well who did?

Let me think... err... it was Charles Darwin.

- Hell's bollocks! What are you driveling on about?

Just tell me where Charles Darwin got married.

- Maer.

Maer! That's the place!

- And you think that's up the A50, do you?

It is - I see signs for it when I'm in Stoke.

- That's Meir.

That's what I said!

- No, you said... oh, never mind. Right, so we're looking for the mother of a girl - as yet unidentified - who may or may not have been in my year at school, who lives in a house in Maer that we went to 30 years ago.

Actually it might have been your brother who came with me.

- Marvellous. What a fascinating trip down memory lane this has been...

Did you know that AA Gill’s son is AAA Gill ?

Did you know that AA Gill’s son is AAA Gill ?

He looks the same but is a little smaller.

Did you know that AA Gill’s son is AAA Gill ?

 

He looks the same but is a little smaller.

His mother had double Ds