Mum's birthday

We arrive from London late on the 20 April as the 21st is the Queen's birthday we set out immediatly for Mother's place. You see it also happens to be Mother's birthday. Mother is a royalist and her pleasure at having the National Anthem played for her on Radio 4 on the morning of her birthday suits her to her tiny little toes - and they are tiny, she's got very small feet.

Mother and Bartelt have a few things in common, but one of the ways I interact with my mother is definitely a winner with Bartelt: they both like lots and lots of notice about plans. I told Mum ages ago that we would be coming for her birthday and that I would try to keep working to a minimum that day, and this has given her the chance to look forward to our arrival. For a while the plan was to buy lunch in town. Buying lunch is almost unheard of for my mother, though in her old age she seems to be getting into it. To be fair to her, when we were growing up not only was money rather scarce but there was virtually nowhere to buy lunch in Bury St Edmunds (BSE), though we would sometimes get fish and chips when she was particularly exhausted and at the end of her tether with the whole single-parenting malarkey.

So, we were going to go wild and have lunch, but due to the summer having inserted itself here and now in April, and given that who can tell if we'll have more, Mama has decided that she'd like to go to the coast. The fantastic thing is Martin loves the sea and the sun and so I will be able to take them both, in full knowledge that they are both going to have a fantastic time. I can just let them off the lead together, they can run around barking, wagging their tails, taking photographs and I and have a good lie down myself. They are both very excited.

The day starts with presents and cards (there are loads – Mum is a very popular woman) followed by a bucks-fizz/croissant/fresh coffee breakfast with my aunt and uncle who have been staying since my cousin James's wedding.... three years, or five days ago, depending on how you look at it. And we eat it in the garden.

I suspect that one of my mother's ambitions as a child was to Eat In The Garden. It delights her, and though she is 71 today and a very serious, hard-working woman, she gets only-dogs-can-hear-it-screachy over a few things, including Good Weather and Eating In The Garden.

We are Mother, Bartelt, my uncle and aunt and me. It's utterly lovely. We toast Mum, the weather, the bucks fizz. Aunt and uncle head off, we do a bit of admin (I do a bit of admin) an then it's off to Orford. Most of our conversation is about 1. The weather and how sunny it is. 2. How much this area looks like northern Germany, especially thatched houses 3. The weather and how hot it is.

I had made the rash decision of trying to find someone to mend my laptop, which is developing a few unfortunate habits, by posting on a site where people quote to do the work, so I end up taking lots of calls where I say, “Yes, Linux is the operating system... yes, I know, that's part of the problem. I guess it would be easier if it was Windows, but it's Linux, you see.” But the coverage is mercifully patchy.

It was a great birthday day, but I think Mum is happy to see the backs of us as we leave the next day for Wells-Next-The-Sea in our newly acquired hire car. Mother and I have estimated somewhere between 2-2.30 hours, and it takes one hour twenty of easy driving, with little traffic, through the beautiful Suffolk/Norfolk countryside on yet another unfathomably beautiful day. We stopped once for Bartelt to take a picture of a thatched cottage – he wants to put it on facebook to show his German friends who will, apparently, simply not believe it's not northern Germany. Once we have stopped for him to take the picture and gone through various shenanigans, I notice that there is a couple in the garden watching us with a wary eye - just the one, it is Norfolk. I drive off as swiftly as I can, feeling guilty, as if we were casing the joint.

We have delightful hosts in Wells and... what a place! So pretty and.. wild, with the huge sand banks. I always feel that the north Norfolk coast is the edge of the world, in a good way. We sit in a pub with wifi, Bartelt reads, I work. More correspondence, months and months late. I am so neglectful. It's shaming, really. Once it's dark we head for a wander down to the water's edge to have a look at the town. It has all the shops you could want, but virtually no chains. My friend and her husband run a cafe, we pass it. We'll be seeing her tomorrow, though she may not come to the show: her mother has ovarian cancer. People seem to think that I search out trauma, but really, it's everywhere, wanting to be asked about and listened to.