Life is estrange

I'm sitting here in the midst of an essay about the historical effects of fashion and colour on floral arrangements during the Georgian era, with UKTV fucking Gold in the background. (Don't get me wrong - I love my pink laptop - but willingly admit it's a slight pain not having instant access to my 14gig musical library unless my desktop, nowadays known as the family server, is powered up and playing fair on the household, secured, wireless network.)

Anyway, the original pay good money to watch repeats channel is showing the Royle Family. I just have to look, being that so many people tell me I remind them of Caroline Aherne (yeah, right. At her most alcoholic and on a deep-fried cream cake covered in chocolate diet, maybe) and it's a good show and it's won awards and I can laugh at them when I have time to glance up cos they're funny, right?

Er, not this time. This time I look up to see the builders bums of the 'laminating throughout' scene and get hooked into it. I go on to watch a scene where the ridiculously overburdened Barb puts curlers into the sparse hair of her constantly nitpicking mother; an elderly woman that, feeling her time is near, is finally able to admit she needs to hear that she's not a burden even though she knows that part of her is; a mother that, eventually, tells her downtrodden by caring daughter in a very true and basic fashion that she loves her.

As a script, it's obviously meant to tug on heartstrings - and I'm sure it does to anyone that's ever cared for an elderly parent and prayed for physical weakness to translate into emotional strength.

As the daughter of a fucked-up mum, I don't get it. I wish I did, cos that would mean I was normal. But I don't.

What I do get is an overwhelming, emotional panic. What the fuck will I do when my own, estranged, mother is elderly and approaching death?