Mum men

 How I Met your father

Growing up, my father was blind and my mother had bipolar disorder. They were impractical parents. As a child, I needed to be the responsible adult and get the practical things done. This may have lead to my lifelong anxiety through a physiological development of an ever ready adrenaline system.

At work one day, I received an email from my mother in Southampton that my stepfather had died. My bipolar mother was suicidal. And in Southampton. I had never been to Southampton, Much less driven there. Because of my parents disabilities, we had never had a car as a family, but my employment had required me to learn to drive. So I set off Down the lift from the top floor of my office. Two floors down the lift stopped him was being serviced so I had to change lifts. 

Gary took the stairs. And met me at the bottom - as I came out the lift he was stood there. He lent me his satnav and put it in my car and put Southampton in.

When I got to Southampton I needed to navigate the city Centre So I stopped and asked a traffic warden for directions. “I need to get to ordinance Street. My stepfather has died and my bipolar mum is suicidal’. The traffic warden indicated where ordinance Street was, which was very close but, unfortunately - he said - he does have to ticket me because I’ve stopped in an area I’m not allowed to stop. Life can be very unfair to people living with mental health disorders.

So I got in the car and drove to ordinance Street which was literally just around the corner. The traffic warden followed me. Clearly, this man loved his job.

At my mum‘s tied cottage, An integral part of the Quaker meeting house in ordinance Street, She was on the phone to the Samaritans. Mum had never driven she had never owned a car she had never parked.

To park outside her house requires a residence parking permit. And that is something that the traffic warden clearly knew, which is why he was following me on foot. He was determined to give me a ticket.

Even though my mother has never had reason to hate traffic wardens, she did hate men. She slapped a residents’parking permit on my car so-fast The ground shook. That traffic warden was desperately disappointed. For some time afterwards She would joke about pieces of traffic warden in the car’s Grill like pieces of Roadkill When a car has struck a pheasant.