7 Signs of Ageing: "T-Rex"

A lot of these things my mother does are just small mistakes. But she has developed such a strong style for her antics that she inadvertently creates perfect moments of idiosyncratic stupidity, pretty much generating her own brand of comic mishaps.

This is going back to around bonfire night. I remember gathering in my mother’s kitchen with my niece and nephew; my mother excitedly telling the kids she had come across some sparklers she’d forgotten about. She got the matches out of the drawer, everyone got muffled up, she gave the kids the sparklers and went outside. But just before lighting them, my nephew queried, “Nan, are they supposed to be made of wood”. And there you have one of those perfectly stupid moments; my mother gathered outside with her grandchildren, disappointingly realising they’re all holding sticks of fucking incense.

She really does attract these kinds of situations. Like putting her rubbish out in a bin bag because she has too little to use a wheelie bin. Only when my mother does that does it get collected by a charity, thinking it’s a kind donation of clothes and teddies.

She hasn't always been like this. But I'm not sure to what extent it can be blamed on my mother’s hormones. She couldn't even decide if to go through hormone replacement and in the end went against her GP and did it for a bit.... just replaced a few. Basically the women's health equivalent of when Alan Partridge is asked if he'd like still or sparkling water and he chooses half and half.
There's definitely evidence of a considerably hormonal imbalance when you consider the frequency and intensity she gets the hots for (mostly gay/black) random men. Oddly, I've never know her fancy a gay black man, so maybe she can only contain her racism or homophobia one at a time.
But a few months ago I discovered she had some workman doing some manly work on her house. The thing is, I found photos on her camera she’d taken through her window of him sitting in his van! Yes. And I stole them just for you.

To her credit, she's not always the one looking foolish as a result of her mental malfunctions. Not all mothers ask their grown son to “break in” their new high heeled boots as soon as they walk in. Even though she only has very small feet, maybe I was the stupid one to gladly rise to the challenge. But when people walk in and see you walking with your toes jammed in high heel boots whilst making a loud growling noise, telling them your mother asked you to and the noise was because you looked so much like a tyrannosaurus rex is actually a lot worse than just removing them and looking shameful.