And you stop worrying when?

August bank holiday weekend: the weather’s not ideal but good enough for lunch outside an attractive country pub if you don’t mind an avalanche of wasps. You enter the bar, fight your way to the counter which is four deep with other wannabe diners and place your order only to be served by an otherwise smartly dressed young man sporting a black eye, gashes down one side of his face and an unpleasant oozing blob where his chin should be. An obvious scrapper if ever I saw one. There’s hundreds of unemployed folk out there. Is this the best they can do? It’s the parents I blame. Actually, I am the parent.

Every time he goes out I say ‘do be careful son’. I’ve had years of this. He’s an accident waiting to happen; a walking disaster zone. And he never seems to know exactly how things occur. I used to dread collecting him from school if he’d stayed behind to play rugby or football. Other mums just had muddy kit to wash; ours always comprised the blood-soaked remnants of Armageddon. On arriving there one day, the game seemed to have terminated early and a large group of boys, teachers and parents had formed a huddle on the field. I thought it was the post-match discussion and asked a couple of lads on their way back to the changing rooms if they’d seen my beloved. ‘He’s on the ground in the middle of that lot’ one replied. ‘Don’t worry, they think he’ll be coming round soon and there’s a doctor with him’ he said, cheerfully dismissing me.

He was desperate to go to one of these summer activity camps where parents are not allowed to telephone every five minutes. No need to really as they phoned me. Bungee jumping or white water rafting was not involved but blood was: all he was doing was riding a bicycle. He couldn’t just fall off. He had to tumble in such a way that some unremembered part of the machine went through his thigh necessitating a rush to the nearest hospital for stitches and more scars. Should I come and collect him? ‘No thanks mum; we’re doing target shooting this afternoon’.

Then, having undertaken the CBT, he got the first of a succession of ill-fated mopeds. It didn’t take long. The first call at work came from a helpful passer-by who had witnessed the accident, taken details and wanted to let me know that he looked reasonably comfortable in the ambulance. I arrived on the ward to find him prostrate on the bed with his head in an iron brace. The major problem for mothers is trying to behave and look as if everything’s normal. I’m an abject failure at this I’m afraid. Luckily, on this occasion, we were ably distracted by the other calamities around us. In the opposite bed, a woman was being asked by members of the Spanish Inquisition whether she knew who the current prime-minister was and who had won World War Two. Next to us, hidden behind drawn curtains, the questioning was even more sinister: ‘are you really sure you want us to revive you next time?’

Mopeds were subsequently replaced by motor bikes on which he fared no better, coming a cropper on the slip road onto the Upton by-pass in a fit of ill-temper. Although I felt sorry for him, I was secretly pleased when the beast was later stolen. Not that it made much difference as he simply borrowed someone else’s scooter and was horrified to be stopped by the police at a customs road block near the ferry terminal. Not that he was illegally importing anything…just didn’t happen to be insured.

Is there an illness going round? Oh yes, I’ll have some of that please. Naturally, he’s already had Swine Flu; choosing to develop it at a time when everyone else was away leaving him to deal with it lonely and alone. Glandular Fever knocked him for six at an important point in the first year of A-levels and weakened him to the extent that every other passing bug settled happily upon him. The only thing that surprised me was the receipt of a letter from the school saying that he was unlikely to attain his projected grades due to prolonged absence caused though conjunctivitis. So when did you have conjunctivitis son? When I was at work and he was lurking indoors with a bad case of Fantasy Football addiction.