Better

Years ago, before I started working for Telefonica, I worked as a temp in some office that smelled of Cup a soup. My mum met me for lunch at a near by cafe and had her favorite; fish, chips and mushy peas. Or sloppy peas as she called it. (she had her own words for many things, sometimes I had to interpret for outsiders) Anyhoo, sloppy peas were always a gamble for Mum, because they had a guaranteed effect on her. So we ate, I went back to work, and she wandered off to her car. We were in Runcorn Halton Lea, a local ‘shopping center’ and as she was walking through the zombiefest of locals, she realised that she was beginning to get that old familiar feeling. Unlike her, she decided that she wouldn’t just let go, probably because I wasn’t with her to take the blame, so waiting until she got outside to the car park was the plan.

So, there she is at her car and has a brainwave. Why do it in the car and suffer the consequences? Fuck that, I’ll do it before I get in, she thinks. So, being a woman to enjoy the passing of wind, which was a very regular occurrence since having her ‘big end’ removed, she decided to lean on the car and enjoy it. Arse poking out slightly, she got nestled in between hers’ and the car next to her, and let a fart go that a camel would be ashamed of. Imagine a sound of industrial proportions.

When it eventually stopped, something in her mind twitched at her, and for some reason, her head slowly turned. The poor man sitting in the car next to her, reading a newspaper with the car window down looked fucking horrified and scared simultaneously. She’d literally shoved her arse about six inches from his face and let a rasping fart go.

She looked him in the eye, wagged her skirt as if to remove any trace of smell, and said the only possible appropriate word before getting in the car and driving away, straight faced:

“Better.”

Everything that I am, and everything that I ever have or will achieve is because of her. Four years ago today we were sat chatting at her table. twenty seconds later she’d died in front of me.

You and me, Mum. You and me.