Celebrate Your Mother

Mothers Day has arrived; just one of the multitude of commercial festivals designed to stimulate routine expressions of love and appreciation between humanfolk. It's all harmless enough though. If truth be told we probably do need jostling in such a way or we'd all be just wrapped up in ourselves all year round. So there, Mothers Day, I formally accept you into the calendar of legitimate commercial festivals.

As the Manics once sang in 'Are Mothers Saints', the cracking b-side to 'Life Becoming A Landslide' in 1993: 'Why worship a god when a mother is a saint / Why worship stone?'

Well, indeed. Although admittedly most mothers aren't quite saints, let's not go overboard - they still break wind, shrink your favourite top in the wash, and tape over Match Of The Day with Gardener's World. But these flaws aside, they do a tough job to the best of their ability, and I hereby celebrate my mother. To confirm the sentiment, I got her a shit plant from the Co-Op (but she likes it) to go together with what I got her for her birthday, which has handily fallen on the same day. I'm taking her to see the perennial mothers' band Travis play in the North York Moors on their forest tour in June. She really likes them, so regardless of how queasy I might feel at the thought of packing a wicker hamper with savoury items and setting off for a family night of musical mediocrity, I'll put up with it. It's certainly the best present she's ever had from me, and she seemed genuinely excited by it, so I suppose that's good.