Life in Culebrón

My mum, that's really our mum but I often claim ownership, lives in Cambridge. She's 94 years old and she doesn't remember much. Telephone conversations between us are often very, very short and completely non sequitur because she doesn't really know who's talking to her about what. Most of the responsibility for caring for Mum falls on my sister. I'm happy to believe that the main reason for that is because she lives closest but I know that the real reason is because, between the two traditional sexes, just one usually gets lumbered with anything associated with care. The other has a pressing need to pop down the pub. To salve my conscience, and, I suppose, to see my mum, I've taken to popping over to England to visit her every couple of months. Well, that may be being a bit economical with the truth. I think I've done three trips between December and the first week in March and the next one is planned for May. Because of where Mum lives, I can do the w...

I went to the UK last weekend. I don't go very often but my mum moved, just before Christmas, into a care home and I felt nosey enough, or bad son guilty enough, to go and have a look at her new digs. A long weekend, Friday through Monday. My mum seemed fine and happy enough, given her 93 years and her circumstances, and it was good to see her. To make it even better I got to see my sister and brother and their partners. I just asked Maggie how long she considers I've spent in the UK in the last 20 years and she reckoned a month. I think it must be more than that but I'd be amazed if it added up to more than three months. This means the UK is a bit foreign to me. Obviously it's not really strange to me because I'm British and lots of stuff just got coded into my DNA - be that sausage rolls, drinking tea, double decker buses, Boxing Day or the winter sound of cawing crows. Just after we'd arrived in the UK, in the bus on the airport apron, a group of young people...