Shortly before Mother’s Day last year, I was in Sainsbury’s, arguing with my mother over the phone, and said: “I don’t want to talk about this any more, Mummy!” Everyone around tried to stifle their laughter, but the guy in front of me just couldn’t contain himself, and said, “How old even are you?”, and I said, “47”, with a sort of “What of it? This is a perfectly normal age to call your mum ‘Mummy’, and I am just a normal person, in the shops, having a normal day” and the woman on the till was trying so hard to remain composed that her eyes filled with real tears.
What can I say? It’s a 70s thing. If you missed the window during adolescence to shift from “Mummy” to “Mum”, because you were busy sniffing glue and whatnot, the wind changes and you’re stuck like that. My sister and I say “Mummy”, and, because we know how shameful that is, when we’re in public we call her “the old trout”. Once a year, on Mother’s Day, we stop doing that out of respect, which makes no difference to her because she doesn’t know we do it in the first place. That’s why Mother’s Day, for all the effort Marks & Spencer makes, can never be commercialised, and that’s why it doesn’t change that much from one decade to the next: the genuine way to mark it is with a 24-hour amnesty, where you stop doing the thing your mum hates, even if she doesn’t know about it. That’s why it’s so exhausting and that’s why – thank God – it’s over.
