Mothers Day

I spotted a billboard outside a restaurant: "Mothers Day Special! Champagne and Flowers Included! Book Now!"

Excellent, I thought. I'll take the old dear, put a smile on her face. Budget for a few gins and tonics. Prepare to grin tolerantly while she flirts with the waiter.

And then I remembered: Oh...no, I can't. She's dead.

Much as I dislike the relentless commercialisation of Mothers Day and Fathers Day and What-Can-We-Dream-Up-Next-To-Shift-Some-More-Product-Day - filial love as consumerism - it's a benign enough phenomenon, in truth. Mums like it, and there isn't much wrong with that. If florists and restaurateurs and Lindt make a few bob out of it, well, no harm done.

Part of me resented the whole "Book Now, Buy Now!" circus while she was alive, while a larger part of me resents that, today, this Mothers Day, I can't take part in it. I can't join in. I'll see the sprawling, squabbling family groups through the window of Wetherspoons from the outside. I'll still buy the flowers, but I'll just have to throw them in the river and remember my mum as they go swirling through the arches of the stone bridge among the spring's first ducklings.

So if you have a mother to treat today, do it. Don't think about it, just do it. While you still can.

RIP Dee Wyatt, 1930-2003.