I GOT the usual breakfast in bed, home-made cards and promises to unload the dishwasher and clean the car on Mothering Sunday: “All I need now is for one of you to do something that gives me a good story for this week’s Mum at Large column,” I joked.

Albert, unwittingly, did his best.

Unusually quiet at the table in the restaurant where we were having lunch, he blushed and looked rather worried when his pizza arrived.

When I asked him what was wrong, he blushed some more and gestured to his right hand under the table.

He had got his index finger trapped in his lemonade bottle. The more he had twisted and pulled under the table, the more his finger had swollen and it was now stuck fast. Try eating a pizza with a glass bottle on the end of your finger, it’s impossible.

Everyone had a go at trying to remove it, but it wouldn’t budge. “If the circulation gets cut off, you’ll lose your finger,” said one of his older brothers, doing his best to sound genuinely and uncharacteristically concerned. “You might have to have it amputated,” added another grimly.

Albert got more and more upset.

In the end, after his brothers had helpfully pointed out that they thought the finger was beginning to look ‘drained of all blood’, I told Albert to go to the toilets and use soap to release it.

He soon emerged, mightily relieved, waving his freed but red and swollen finger at us. His brothers looked disappointed: “How selfish can you get? We thought we were going to have to take you to hospital.

What’s mum going to write about this week now?”

Brotherly love, that’s what. Need I say more?

I PICK the 18-year-old up from school after his rugby practice at school every Monday, half an hour after I drop his younger brother off to his swimming class next door. Since it’s not worth wasting 30 minutes driving home and back again, I sit and wait in the car park instead.

Last week, Patrick still hadn’t turned up after 40 minutes, so I called him on his mobile phone: “What’s keeping you?” I asked.

“I’m at home, I didn’t do rugby today,” he said casually.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I screamed at him. “You didn’t ask,” he replied.

Next time, he can walk.

ALBERT’S friend came up to his mum outside primary school and pointed at his runny nose: “Do you have a hankie?” he asked.

“Here,” she said, after rummaging about for a tissue in her bag. He didn’t look too pleased when, just as he wiped his nose, she added: “Careful, I think there might be a bit of old chewing gum in that one.”

ALBERT is in his last year of primary school now and there’s suddenly lots of playground talk about kissing and relationships as boys and girls start to take an interest in one another. Albert appeared terrified when he heard that one girl had, apparently, told friends she didn’t want to marry him, “just kiss him”.

Then he announced that one of his best mates had a girlfriend.

“Are they going out together then?” I asked. “Oh no,” he said, looking momentarily disgusted: “They’re not going out together.” There was a pause. “They just love each other.”

ANOTHER of Albert’s friends was initially delighted when he became one of the first in his class to get a mobile phone at Christmas.

When his mum noticed that it didn’t have any money left on it, she asked if he wanted it topped up. “No, don’t bother,” he said wearily, the novelty of having his own phone obviously having worn off. “The only person I get texts from is grandma.”

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