Mothership is here again.

I am here- honest! I’ve been mad busy with work the last couple of weeks, and am mid-way through the first of many visits from the mothership, who wants to see how I am doing (the answer to which is fine. Eating like a horse, sleeping like a log and look like I’ve swallowed a space-hopper). I can’t refer to her as Granny because she doesn’t want to be one. That’s not to say she isn’t looking forward to the arrival of Innes Junior, merely that none of the regularly-used titles for grandparents meet with her approval. Nanny is out too…apparently it makes her feel 100 years old (as do her grey hairs, but she’s having those fixed as I write.) So I have been tasked- because I am a ‘writer’- to come up with a title that meets with her approval. Any thoughts and suggestions you may have would be gratefully received.

It’s great that she’s come to visit. I absolutely love seeing her. But it’s a bit strange, rather like being an ex-pat in reverse. When I was growing up in the various places we were dragged to as children under the auspices of my father’s job, coming back to the UK was a real treat. It consolidated our patriotism and heritage- not forgetting our Northern Roots…Dad used to cheer every time he saw the sign that said ‘You Are Now Entering Yorkshire’. We reminded ourselves what sliced white bread tasted like, and marvelled at the milkman thing (since just being able to leave milk in the open air without it spoiling was a novelty, the concept of it being delivered by a wizened man in the world’s slowest vehicle was utterly mind-boggling. As was the lack of oranges in the shops- them being an expensive commodity in 80′s Britain, though not 80′s Cyprus.) But it also meant living out of suitcases for two weeks whilst we visited all the relatives, got our cheeks pinched way too many times, and had to bite our toungues everytime someone marvelled at ‘how we’d grown’ and made comments like ‘the last time I saw you….’

These days, I stay put whilst the mothership drops in whenever she is ‘in the country’ (what a glamorous life she leads!!) And I love being able to offer B&B- at a very reasonable rate I might add. But I suspect that, although he is now used to it, it’s taken a while for DH to adjust. His parents have lived in the same house in Norwich since he was a little boy. His parents’ attic is filled with things he and his brother made and painted at school. He could see his relatives throughout the year because they didn’t live that far away. Our family had to cram a year’s worth of visits into one trip back to the UK: visits, dinners, shopping trips to stock up on clothes, shoes and Marmite, days out to see landmarks. It left visitors and visited utterly exhausted, but that’s the way that it worked. And to be honest, I didn’t know any different, so it didn’t bother me. It was only when I moved in with the DH (then DB) that I realised not every family worked this way. I had to explain the whole a-years-worth-of-visits-in-one-hit scenario, then sit back and watch what can only be described as culture-shock kick in. It was a big adjustment for all of us, but for DH in particular. And it just goes to prove the old adage that there is no such thing as a normal family… ours is quite far from normal. Even my hairdresser asked if all my family were as mad as me when I dropped the mothership off today to have her grey ‘seen to’. Although that might have been something to do with the Bond-girl hat I was wearing to keep my ears warm. But I doubt it.

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