Sixteen?*

Forgive my absence....two weeks ago, my husband's mother (Minnie) unexpectedly descended upon us. (I say 'descended' figuratively - if she descended on you literally, you'd be crushed to death. It would be like a whale accidentally squishing a minnow.)

Minnie ('Maxi' as Mekon cruelly calls her) is an artist. A 'conceptual artist' apparently. (She made her name by fashioning a full-sized Bruce Forsyth out of dog-poo bags she'd found hanging on trees. She called it 'The Generation Shame' and won the Turner prize.)

There's no point in trying to do anything when Minnie is amongst us, because she demands our full attention. Since her art started being bought by pretentious types with money but no taste, she has fully embraced the 'celebrity' lifestyle. Whenever she comes to stay, she gets her agent to email us with her 'riders'. This visit's demands included live butterflies in her en-suite, Dom Perignon at 11am and 4pm, and a loose tea from Harrods which is grown halfway up Everest, hand picked by the grandaughters of Sherpa Tensing, and dried out on the deck of Simon le Bon's yacht.

(We let a moth loose in the loo, got some cava from Lidl, and decanted some Co-op teabags into the caddy.....she never noticed a thing.)

Mama Mia (as ABBA liked to say).....