I always feel a pang in the run up to Mother’s Day, watching people in the supermarket picking out flowers and cards for their Mums. It makes me sad and left out. Mother’s Day FOMO.

If I remember rightly, we didn’t make much effort for my poor old Mum, I wish we’d done better. Hindsight can be hard. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until it’s too late.

Not having a Mum is rubbish.

Having said all that, and knowing I should have done more, when it comes to my own approach to Mother’s Day I’ll admit I’ve always been extremely high maintence. I want it all – the lie-in, the cards, the food. The day Will bought me Thornton’s chocolates still goes down in history because I worked out he’d got them from Tesco and threw a hissy fit. Not my finest hour. Or his!

This year I’ve turned over a new leaf. Enough of the Princess act. Ne’re a hint dropped. I’m happy and proud to report that the boys stepped up to the plate, with a full-on fry-up they cooked themselves and a 12″ vinyl of Guns & Roses greatest hits. They know me well. Took me right back to their glory years – and mine. I saw the band at Wembley Stadium and they blew me away. I remember we left a song early to beat the rush, ‘Paradise City’ belting out into the night as we crossed the car park and headed for home. Ear drums numb, voices long gone.

I tried to burn the sausages, bacon, eggs, black pudding, mushrooms and fried bread I’d had for breakfast, off at tennis. It took a while to get my eye in and move from a lumber to a sprint. This resulted in a 0-6 annihilation in the first set, we made a better fist of the second losing only 2-4, and then pulled it out of the bag in the third with a 5-3 win.

Onwards, and more calories burned walking Dolly home from Snelsmore. It takes an hour start to finish and she has to be on a long line or will literally run back to Eddie (who dropped us off). Sunday is completely rammed with a million dog walkers and kids, who seem to have developed a new trick of going through a gate and then stopping for a chat. This leaves Dolly and I waiting for them to move. Sometimes we wait so long that we give up and go a different way. Today we brazened it out and it was with significant satisfaction I watched three chatting Dads jump out of their skins when we appeared behind them. Canapes.

Roast chicken’s in the oven with all the trimmings prepped. I have a herbal tea in hand as I type this, while I contemplate a celebratory Mother’s Day Bloody Mary which will absolutely be a mistake if I go ahead with it. Which I will. Sod it.