Mum's the word

For those not interested I understand if you want to flick onto the recipes because let's face it, you might not tolerate my crazy thoughts and the last thing you need on your Friday is my mum's madness – but try to stick with it!

The letter came with a torn-out newspaper article about a dog that had rescued his “girlfriend''from a cage by chewing the door off. Mum has a habit of doing this by the way, but it's usually saved for when I go home.

Anyway the letter began by saying that this article reminded mum of when our dog chewed through his harness when she had him tied up outside a shop when she was paying a bill and then neatly segued into a story about a family death! Luckily as I read on, with some trepidation, it turned out that one of our big garden goldfish had gone belly-up. I don't think I will make it to the funeral but ... I will think of him and say a prayer! Then it went really surreal with the news that my sister who lives in Cyprus found a big locust under a bush that was supposedly as big as her hand (she does have rather big hands by the way!)

My parents believe themselves to be experts on loads of subjects that they have never had any experience of, so apparently dispensed invaluable advice that she should have put a jam jar over it to let it die that way! It's like Grasshopper Guantanamo!

I don't think big Sis took this on board and just took locust on hand to hand by whacking it with a stick. I think that you are getting a good picture of where my peculiar slant of what's important in life comes from huh! As well as the newspaper cutting, there was a £10 note in the envelope to go towards my phone bills or to “treat yourself to something nice''! Only mums can do that right? Sweet.

Now I have to work out a way of sneaking that cash back to her so she doesn't know because I just feel really uncomfortable taking their hard-earned money.

The letter ended with the honest declaration that it had been written while mum was waiting for the washing machine to finish. That probably explains why the hand-writing looked so shaky – I think she was scribbling while leaning on her washer when it was in fast spin.

I have spoken before about the beauty of receiving hand-written letters and how it is such a dying art in our e-mail, texting modern world. I hope that you found my re-telling as weird and wonderful as I did when I first read through it … but once again it struck me that most of what was imparted was the kind of stuff that you would maybe mention in passing while on the phone or chillin' over a cuppa tea, but is it worthy of being committed to paper and sent around the world? The jury is out on that one.

On the other hand, I hope it provides some insight into the possible source of my story-telling that I inflict on you good people week by week. It's a shock for me to have this revelation, and I suppose I want to thank you all for indulging me and in some way finding it entertaining.

If in my own roundabout way I am trying to offer an excuse then so be it … now you can see that I can't help the way that I am.

It's a biological imprint, like my G*NA!

Missing-Link-ingly Yours