Best daughter in the world

I’m the favourite you know. Sorry but it’s true. It’s probably because I’m the youngest (and brattiest remember?) but also it could be that when Dad left it was just me and Mum so we have a bond that’s a little stronger than that my brother and sister have with her. Or maybe it’s simply because I’m the best. Or because I still live in Hull.

Who knows? But it’s still true.

I work hard to maintain my status as favourite child you know. I know the crown could be tipped off my head at any moment – my brother and sister already have extra points in the form of good jobs, owning property, being married and having offspring, that’s a pretty good headstart on me, I have to be creative.

On Friday I began to get a little worried about Mommie Dearest – she lives at the end of a cul-de-sac and had been well and truly snowed in over the past week without a hope in hell of getting her car anywhere. Add to this that one of her best friends had gone away for a week and she was a Mum in need.

Just call me arty – standing in the back garden early doors on Friday 3rd Dec, just getting the Moon and Venus in my photo. As you do.

Ridiculous amounts of snow + lack of friends about = irritable and cabin fevery Mother.

So I took the day off and trekked to see her, taking care not to slam our front door, lest the enormous snow shelf hanging above Dorothy’s bedroom window, fell and buried me alive.

Avalanche alert!

I got to Mum’s and it was pretty bad, worse than I realised, mainly because there isn’t a lot of foot traffic her way, meaning that the snow on the pavements hadn’t been stamped down like it had on my street. Once inside I set about cheering Mum up which is not an easy task when she gets in one of her doom and gloom moods. I cajoled and hustled and got her up and said we’d take a little trip to the retail park which is about 10/15 minutes away. “Come on, it’s fun!” was the phrase I repeated about 20 billion times. And so we set off on our little journey.

Mum wading through her driveway (told you it was bad).

The retail park is the other side of a huge field at the end of Mum’s road and the landscape looked particularly beautiful, I stopped briefly to admire it whilst the end of my nose fell off in the extreme cold. A quick note to say that I was woefully under-prepared for this sort of weather. I don’t own wellies (I live in the city and it never bloody snows here, why would I need them?!) and every shop has now sold out of them. I had to make do with buying a totally ineffective pair of leather ankle boots from Primark and wearing plastic bags over my socks to stop me developing trench foot. I also don’t own a hat because a) I look like a complete twat in hats and b) I have a huge bison head which doesn’t fit in any hats. However this walk over to the retail park resulted in me caving and buying a woolly number from Matalan for £6 – I’m afraid I had to go for comfort over style this time. I might look a twat but I’ll look even more stupid without ears which have fallen off due to the cold.

Pretty pretty pretty.

By the time we came back Mum’s spirits were lifted and they continued to stay that way. Although my plan was only to stay for the Friday night, I didn’t want to leave her on her own again so I stayed on Saturday and added extra points to my Favourite Child status by shovelling out her driveway. Word to the wise – shovelling snow is hard. Can’t go to the gym? Doesn’t matter if you have over a foot of snow to shovel – you’ll work up a sweat.

I left on Sunday leaving a much happier Mum, plus her friend was back and has a 4x4 so could come and take her out somewhere, much as I helped with the cabin fever, it wasn’t just company she needed, it was getting out of the house that she needed and a walk to Matalan and Asda was the best I could offer her.

I put a status update on Facebook saying that I had shovelled Mum’s drive but that she still wouldn’t be driving it anywhere because I’d have to dig up the entire road for that to happen. About 40 minutes later, my Mum got a text from my brother asking how she was and if there was anything he could do.

Mwahahahahahahahaha.

Favourite child: 1

Rubbish son: 0

Sometimes I wonder if there’s such a thing as too competitive...