Every Argument You'll Have with Your Mum

Mums are basically all the same. They all comment on Facebook pictures of you from 2011, all have a genuine passion for soap operas, will all eat half a Mars bar and put it back in the fridge, and they all talk constantly about Zumba classes after attending precisely one eight months ago.

For better or worse, mums are also often the people we'll be the closest to throughout our lives. Some of us even lived inside them. And yet, they are just so insufferably annoying sometimes. Treating you like a teenager even though you’re acting like one, and getting annoyed when they have to give you lifts places like it wasn’t them who chose to live in the middle of nowhere.

But that's just a mere aperitif of the annoying shit mums do. To celebrate their special day, see below for every other argument you will ever have with your one. Happy Mother’s Day!

Your mum hasn’t come into your room since she saw that Ann Summers butt plug under your bed. So why is it when you’re debilitatingly hungover she decides to invade your personal space? You wake up after a night out, your body a shrivelled sack of skin, gums dry, head throbbing, flakes of last night's Dixie Chicken congealing around your teeth. She marches in and flings open the curtains. "What did you get up to last night? It smells like a bloody brewery in here." She’s pleased with that comment.

All day she sniffs you like you’re some day-old salmon that she doesn’t know whether or not to chuck. You sulk in your room and tell her to fuck off when she comes near. She has successfully reduced you to your fluffy armpit-haired pre-pubescent self.

She wakes you up at 4AM. Your face is swollen like a blow-up mattress. You drive to the airport with Radio 4 mumbling into your ears and hurry through arrivals, feeling your arse crack slip out your jeans. It’s only when you get to Gatwick’s departure gate that you realise the time of the flight. You could have woken up at midday. "Well, now we can just take our time," she says.

Obviously you're furious. You try to nap on those departure lounge chairs with the stiff armrests, but you crick your neck. Unable to sleep, you buy Pick Me Up! and wait for your dad to bring you a McDonald’s breakfast bap. You’re sitting there for so long you actually read the magazine twice, before moving onto the health and safety requirements written by the nearby fire hydrant. You even play "guess the stranger's job" with your younger brother.

It’s only so long before you lose it, exploding into a teary sleep-deprived diatribe about the stressful nature of your family unit. God help your mum if she dismisses the whole thing by saying you’re "just tired".

You head towards the fridge and withdraw a Müller Corner. "You sure you want to eat that, darling?"

"What do you mean?"

"Dinner’s in ten minutes – have some fruit."

Have some fruit? Have some fruit? You’re starving. You could pass out from low blood sugar for all she knows. Who is this Gillian McKeith-wannabe, fat-shaming cow? You feel the fleshy muffin top spilling over your checked PJ bottoms. How dare she? You storm off and sob into the yogurt before eating two helpings of her fish pie out of spite.

Mum has been on the landline for two hours and 25 minutes, talking to Janine, who lives one mile away.

"Where’s the iron?" you ask.

She points at the phone.

"Can you just tell me where the iron is?"

She opens her eyes wide with anger.

"Mum????"

Janine is balls deep into describing how her spaniel Barney won't eat Pedigree dry dog food any more, and after five minutes your mum yells, fully incensed, "IT’S IN THE FUCKING KITCHEN."

"Right," you say, cool, calm and collected. "That is all you had to do."

Mature child 1, mother 0.

It’s the Christmas holidays. You have returned to the suburban graveyard that is your hometown and you’re off out. The buses arrive every 20 minutes and every hour after 8PM. The bus shelter smells of aged urine and teenagers' wet kisses. To save you the trauma of public transport in regional England, mum offers to drive you in. Five minutes into the journey and she’s already salty.

[Gassy exhale of breath] "I might as well run a bloody taxi service."

"Take me home then?"

[More breath comes out of her] "Well I’m here now."

Mum is fuming. She gave up that glass of Tesco Finest Sauvignon Blanc just so you’d be comfortable. She could be propped up against the radiator in front of the new season of Masterchef. If she was an actual taxi service, she deserves a 2.5 UBER rating for this piss-poor attitude. She shouldn’t have had kids if she didn’t want to make sacrifices. Although, don’t say this to her because it will tip her over the edge and you'll have to walk the remaining 0.8 miles to the pub.

WATCH:

Mums only remember friends names if i) at any point they threw up on the carpet; ii) are very polite; or iii) she likes their parents. Other than that, they genuinely don’t have a clue.

"So tell me again – who are you going to Croatia with?"

"I’ve told you this like seven times."

"Alright! I just want to know about your life, is that a crime?"

"Jonny, Freddie, Will and Max."

"I like Max, he’s the one with the dad who’s an accountant? They have that lovely house in Alwoodley, don’t they?"

"Nah, that’s Jonny."

The only person your mum remembers is someone you're not even mates with any more. Like nice Amy who came over for tea in Year 7 because you sat together in Science. You point this out and she gets upset, taking it as an indication of a torn relationship, the out of touch mother, the forgotten child. "I just don’t know who you are any more."

On the surface, this is a nice gesture. Mum doesn’t want your skin to become cold and pink. But why does she have to be so aggressive? Her voice shrills: "No coat? You’ll catch your death!" You would rather lose a toe to frostbite than concede. It’s like Touching the Void, except instead of a mountain, the crisis is caused by a nightclub with no cloakroom.

Like most people, mums don’t give a fuck about the planet. They would rather drive their Toyota Yaris that barely scraped through its last MOT down the M1 for five hours than get on a train. Pretty sure the last time my mum used public transport was when she was 28. And yet, when you leave the bathroom light on for two seconds your mum will turn into some environmental crusader – Britain’s answer to Al Gore.

"This lovely Polish builder came round the other day to plaster the living room."

"Why did you feel the need to point out he was Polish, mum?"

"For Christ’s sake, I can’t say anything any more."

You've backed her into a corner now. She's finished. Pass me the fork because I’m about to do her in with a preliminary understanding of identity politics.

You probs do want something tbh.

@annielord8