SHE HAD THE LAST WORD

If it's wrong to despise one's mother, or, equally, one's son, we are both one hundred per cent in the wrong. We have never been apart for long, unless you count my few nights in the Working Man's Club. My escape and entitlement for working conscientiously in the packing factory and avoiding Mother's complaints. She, the fount of all wisdom, has this annoying habit of quoting well-known phrases or proverbs and attributing them to myself, or any luckless person she meets. I digress: and anyway, in her defence she has no husband to support her as he escaped the rantings by dying. My wages support us and by some judicial saving we endeavour to have an annual holiday. It would be agreeable to stay in Cornwall just for a break. By myself. I could enjoy the bracing air and Cornish pasties.

No, on second thoughts she could or would not manage without me as her baggage controller. So- here we are once again in nearly-the-end- of -season-time in our familiar resort. After checking in to rooms 26 and 27, I left Mother to sort her belongings and ventured outside. Nothing much has changed since last year except by the empty pool is a donkey. Not a living breathing donkey, but still, a donkey.Well made , sleek and glossy, with an erect tail.I stroked the back of the unusual model, which felt warm from the sunshine and sank down on the concrete beside it resting my head against the body.

The tranquility was short-lived. Mother came waddling over to me with her beach hold-all and various other items.

'My, don't you look a right pair!'she sneered. 'Here's my stuff, I'm ready for the beach.They say that donkeys go best loaded. I'll just take a snap of you and Eeyore, to show that you made a friend on holiday.' As I was struggling to my feet and adjusting my sunglasses, she stepped back, holding the camera, still cackling over her joke and disappeared over the edge of the empty pool...