Tuesday 11 November 2008

Monday 13 October

It is my mother’s 90th birthday this week. I have decided to make the effort to go down to see her for the occasion, after not having seen her for several years. The trouble is that she lives a couple of miles from Land’s End in Cornwall - not the sort of place you can pop in to on the way to somewhere else. As well as that, it costs a lot of money to get down there, money I simply do not have!

I brave the six-hour journey; my mother is genuinely pleased to see me and we spend a pleasant few days together. Seeing someone so old reminds me of my own frailty. My mother has numerous health problems and relies on home help and nurses coming in to see her, in her isolated cottage in the middle of nowhere.

Being a Londoner, I soon miss the noise and bustle that I am used to. The silence is eerie, without the sounds of emergency vehicle sirens 24 hours a day. As my mother exists on a pension, I cannot ask her for any financial support towards my journey, so will have to economise heavily – the cost of the trip and a small present for her is equivalent to what I get in benefits each week!

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