Mothers and money

Well, I survived the weekend with my mother. Nothing major to report really. We didn't get into any major rows. She paid for the kids to see Santa, and experienced her first ever winter walk on the beach ("it never occured to me that you could go to the beach in winter time"!!), she managed to restrain her criticisms of Aggie to only a couple of commens and kept her opinion of my my bad parenting techniques to herself for once!

Other than a brief disagreement about the prices in London - I said everything was more expensive there, she said that other than housing everything was proably cheaper! Yeah, right. i pinted out that transport cost more as cars are more expensive to buy, insurance is higher, congestion means that your MPG is worse so fuel prices are higher (plus fuel prices are higher anyway), and the option of walking to town doesn't exist. Then I mentioned that the take away we bought on Saturday night for the 6 of us came to £25.00 here (with enough left over for a good lunch today), and would've been an easy £65-75 in surburban London (I dread to think what it would have been in central London), that a cinema ticket in London costs anywhere between £8-17, and here is abour £4-5, a theatre ticket here is £8-16, in London it's £40-150, a coffee in a cafe here will set me back between 50p-£1.50, in London i don't think I've ever seen any for less than £1 in a greasy spoon, and decent cafe's cost nearer to £3. I reminded her that the reason she always takes so much more home with her each time visits is because she is constantly exclaiming over how cheap the clothes, ornaments and knic-knacks are here compared to London (she had just bought an ornament from a shop in town!). I think she thinks I will still move back "home" one day. even though I've spent more than half my remembered life out of London, and all of my adult life avoiding it, she doesn't reqally believe me when I say I wouldn't come back even if I had enough money to buy bloody mansion there!

Aggie managed to avoid having to do anything with her, or say anything to her by booking the weekend on EVE!

Still, a pretty sucessful visit I think. I expect i'll get the proper run down tomorrow from my sister, after my mother goes round to moan at her about how I'm doing everything wrong!

I did send her home wih a nice big TV to give to my sister. Hers was pretty ancient and has died, and as she & her boyfirend are in the process of splitting up (she's buying him out of his share of the house) there is no money spare for a new one, so i asked the local freecyclers, and was given a 21" working Tv for her, just in time to watch all the christmas rubbish:-) of course that's another good thing about living here rather than there - Londoners are miserly B****** - her local freecycle is pretty rubbish. over here, TV's come up fairly regulary:-) She's got it all set up & working and says it's the best Xmas present I could've got her - which is lucky really, cos I can't afford anything else! We're supposed to be getting ourselves sorted out financially at the moment, but it doesn't seem to be working:-( Money is just so depressing sometimes:-(