5 Mumbelievable Truths

Clive, Colin & Olive are the only Snow White dwarves worth caring about, Michael Pillow is the best broadcaster about train journeys, my head looks like a giant sugar cube, scrambled eggs and toffee will keep you going till 100 and Piers Morgan is the best James Bond ever.  According to Mum, these facts are all true and everything else is fanciful thinking on my behalf.  She’ll often berate me for ‘getting above myself with the intellect’ and corrects me by giving me ‘proper’ stories to relate … and when you think about it, they all make sense – Mum sense.  A load of old Mumsense and I love it.

We’ve all had those moments when someone says something hysterical in front of a crowd and when that person is completely unaware of what they’ve said it makes us laugh even more, even though we know we shouldn’t – but it’s fun isn’t it?  It’s panto season coming up and Tony and I are the panto band again – this year it’s Bluebeard, not Snow White, but Mum won’t be convinced that there won’t be dwarves in it.  She won’t be able to come and see it this year and that’s probably just as well.  The last theatre experience I took her to was to see Tommy Steele in Scrooge and we had seats at the back of the gallery – always a sensible place for Mum as she can’t resist joining in and causing a few shhhhhh’s and menacing looks over the shoulder for those too scared to do a shhhhhh.  Back of the gallery?  Yes, good thinking as she was so far away from the stage, she couldn’t possibly shout out to the performers .  Wrong.  Shout she did. Loudly, waving arms, mentioning me in every sentence.  “Whoooo-ooooo Tommy Steele !  My daughter here wants to marry you”  and a little later “Whhooo-ooooo Tommy Steele !  Do you have a dog?  My daughter wants a puppy.”  Where did THAT come from?  Neither of these heckles were true of course and even though I’ve told myself a million times that people will only be reacting to Mum’s antics and not associating me with the mayhem, I was wrong.  They did and told ME to shut up and stop encouraging my Mum.  Tommy Steele did eventually respond with a “Hello up in the Gods – I’m the star of this show”.  It didn’t stop her and how we weren’t ejected I’ll never know.  Scrooge was similar to panto with its jokes and crafty asides to the audience, so we managed to stay till the end.  She went to the loo after the curtain call and then I lost her.  She’d gone.  Nowhere to be seen.  It was about twenty minutes until one of the ushers asked me if I was THE Sonia?  Oh dear, here we go, straight back to childhood horrors of being rounded up by policemen as Mum was unexpectedly taken into care.  “Yes – is everything ok?”  Yes, Mum says that she’ll only be 10 minutes or so as she’s hoping to get to see Tommy after the show.  Luckily (for me) she’d not got past Stage Door and came back into the main foyer on the arm of a very camp, red-faced young usher who kept patting her arm.  She’d loved every minute of  Scrooge of course and said she’d felt part of the show.  I think I shrunk at least 2 inches by compressing my spine and trying to be invisible.

When my brother was born, Mum had severe post-natal depression which was, as far as I can ascertain, undiagnosed and written off as eccentricity.  She’s never liked her red hair and when my brother arrived with his gorgeous shock of ginger hair she associated him with herself and didn’t connect.  She was a ballerina who’d been asked to dance with Nuryev, so she couldn’t possibly look after a new baby.  She broke toes going up on pointe in the hospital ward and cut the hem of her hospital gown to look more like a tutu.  I’d heard the stories from Dad and Pop as they were always brought up as funny anecdotes, but underneath I knew that things weren’t right with her at the time and although they were funny antics they were, as I started to realise as I got older, the result of severe mental health problems.  The gap between my parents was 13 years – she was the older one – so it had its challenges as a marriage in the 60s when that age gap was more unusual than now.  She was always very astute though in her own way and in between her muddled thinking and outrageous behaviour, there lurked a philosopher and deep thinker.  I can remember going to the ballet and asking Mum who all the dancer characters were.  I must have been talking out loud as there was lots of shhhhhhh’s dotted throughout this memory.  “Sonia darling, what you have to remember in ballet is that dancing has to be very clear on who is a man and who is a woman otherwise people get confused.  That’s why the men have their willies on show and the ladies wear short skirts.  These were the actual words she said.  Yes, willies on show.  I was confused and asked her afterwards if it was ok for men to show their willies on stage?  Yes she said, as long as they are in a ballet.  I wasn’t convinced but went along with it.  I asked her later if it HAD to be men and women getting married, or could men marry men and women marry women.  Only in America she told me.  Ah, only in America, ok that made sense to my 5-year old brain.  Soon afterwards I remember meeting one of Dad’s friends at a concert he was playing in and this man had a funny voice.  I asked him why he had a funny voice and he told me he was American.  Ah – are you sleeping with a man? I asked. Dad spat out his Guinness and his colleague walked away after smiling at me in that I’m-smiling-but-I’m-not-happy way.  Mum had told me that men marry men in America, so surely that made sense?  Why were grown-ups so confusing?

Mum told me yesterday that the care home has a box of James Bond films and she’s going to watch the Piers Morgan one.  Try telling her that it’s Pierce Brosnan … she berated me again with a friendly chide … Pierce? What kind of a man’s name is that?  OK Mum, which film is it?  Tomorrow Never Dies?  The World is Not Enough?  Die Another Day?  “Oh do be quiet Sonia darling, you’re so depressing at times you know”.   We’re having a couple of excerpts of the James Bond theme in panto – when the baddies gets chased by the goodies, so I’ll be thinking of Mum and her box sets at the next rehearsal, fantasising about Tommy Steele in the main role maybe, wondering if any of the flash, bangs or wallops will happen in the right places.  It’s going to be fun – oh yes it is.

As for scrambled eggs and toffee … Mum woofed down a whole jar of Potter’s malt extract and cod liver oil when the carers weren’t looking and had the inevitable digestive ‘alterations’ to her normal routine and she’s on a protest … only accepting scrambled eggs or toffees to eat … to teach her carers a lesson.  A lesson in what, I’m not sure, but with every day we speak I continue to learn from this extraordinary woman.  Dum diddle-um dum,  dum-dum-dum-dum,  Dum diddle-um dum,  dum-dum-dum-dum, Daaaaa Dum, Da dum dum .