How did I mark Mother’s Day? With a dream about putting mine in a home

‘I wish I’d known Polly Toynbee could stop you – I’d have tweeted her.’ Photograph: Maskot/Getty Images (posed by a model)

There is usually a bit of space between International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day, which means we don’t have to run straight from the swill of empowerment platitudes into the tooth-aching blancmange of filial adoration. I try to avoid the first and keep the second as an opportunity to guilt-trip my children and eat cheese with my mother, defiantly asking no questions at any point in March about the female or maternal condition.

This year IWD and Mother’s Day abutted each other in the same week. While I laboured in my waking hours to ignore them and concentrate on guilt and cheese, my subconscious didn’t get off so lightly.