Departure Lounge

Back again and no time for jet lag. The ironing, like Topsy, has growed and growed and is clawing its crumpled way to the ceiling. Mum looks tired and is still in the same clothes that I left her in a week ago. But her son - he who causes the sun to dim whene'er he sits - has taken her out to lunch. She doesn't understand why he leaves and H2, as usual, picks up the pieces in my absence.

Now H2 has flown like a large angel of mercy to collect LGP and escort her home. Up at 4.30 am to catch the flight. Later, there is a panicky call to our house: LGP is already awaiting H2's arrival but doesn't know where he is. This is the exact same flight that she took a couple of weeks ago, but she has forgotten when it leaves, much less what time it arrives.

My cousin calls and just has time to ask if this is a convenient time for a chat, when Mum picks up the phone downstairs and presses a secret code of numbers to obliterate the landline. All attempts to return the call are thwarted: my cousin is ex-directory; I no longer have her mobile number since three generations of mobile later, the transfer of all numbers from phone to SIM and back again are awry. So I call my aunt and leave one of those rambling messages.

Cook supper, wash up, dry up before Mum springs into action with the tea-towel to dry the dirty plates. Run bath, bath children and leave them on my bed watching TV. Run Mum home, change into pyjamas, make tea, heat pad, tuck in bed. Dash back. Don't they charge you for this? No, Saturday night at around 8.30pm is not a great time to sit and chat.

There is no song about ironing. That is because ironing, however you dress it, is unremittingly and back-achingly dull. Still, it has to be done, and an hour and a half later, I am rewarded with three huge baskets and a sense of virtuousness - and an aching back.

M e-mails to ask whether I have broached the S subject with the boys yet. No! I write back in a panic that I have done nothing and isn't it a little early? M, who is blessed with great commonsense and wonderful humour, agrees.

That sort of thing, I tell her, came with Mrs KumaraSwami's lecture on "pubitty" - and a particularly lovely illustration of a neatly squared off penis with my ruler.