It's Life Jim But Not As We Know It.

I've spent the last two weeks feeling as if someone took a carrot, stuck it in my ear and then rammed it home with the aid of a few hefty whacks from a baseball bat. If ever you have the chance to avoid an infected Eustachion Tube, then I recommend you do so.

I've taken to having three hour naps in the afternoon so that I can continue working in the mornings. Alcohol tastes vile (can there be a worse punishment) and after a course of run of the mill antibiotics, I am now on a course of orange and grey nuclear warheads.

I am going through the motions of life but don't seem to be here. Mike has gone out in the afternoons to do various shopping and household errands as I don't seem aware of what needs doing and I don't seem to notice he went out.

Worst of all, I took mum to meet a cousin today, she is the lady I mentioned previously who had an article published in a local paper about her visit to our mutual great uncle's grave in France. He died in WW1. On the way home from meeting her I used the F word !!!!!. In front of my Mother.

We had a lovely time looking at photos but after two hours I was getting tired and in need of my afternooon nap. As I was driving Mum home we came to a large traffic roundabout with three lanes around it. As we approached it three cars were coming from the right, only one seemed to be coming very fast and it then accelerated in clouds of black smoke and a huge roar. I expected it to be going straight on at that speed but no, it skidded round the roundabout and went three quarter's of the way round, most of it on two wheels. I have never seen anything like it outside of the movies. I fully expected  it to overturn in front of us and was so startled that a word not to be used in front of my mother popped out. I'm sure it was because I was tired and not feeling well.

Thankfully Mum was so frightened by what we saw that she didn't seems to notice, which was just as well as I was fully expecting a sharp slap across my bad ear.

Which made me think, at what age do we stop being scared of our mothers? At 52 I still have to temper any difference of opinion with Mum, for fear of a telling off.

Mike has the same problem. He's 60 and his mother is 86. For his 60th birthday she bought him a half hour flight in a light aircraft, despite knowing the he has been terrified of heights all his life. Yet he daren't tell her he doesn't want to go in case he gets a sharp backhander.

No doubt  on the day he finally plucks up courage to go on his flight, she will be there, spitting in her hankie and wiping imaginary dirt from his face.

Is it something peculiar to our generation, that we live in fear of our mothers but also our children? I'm always doing what I think my mother would like and at the same time what my children tell me to do.

When will it be my turn? When do I get to be top of the food chain? Is life like this for everyone, or is it just me that constantly rides the guilt train to nowhere? Trying to please everyone and consequently pleasing no one, certainly not yourself.

My Mother is a funny woman, she's quite clever but there is a faulty connection somewhere and often comes out with the wrong word. A sort of modern day Mrs Malaprop.

I may have aleady recounted the tale of my sister's singing lesson and being patted on the scrotum. But you are not allowed to question what she said, even when it was blatantly incorrect and has people falling about laughing. Yet things I say, which I know to be correct have to be disputed and I am made to feel a silly little girl.

Could someone please tell me at what age, in my Mother's eyes, I become an adult?