Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

However, while your mother is being the tower of strength every mother ought to be, she has plans, not just to 'have friends for dinner' but for a future with a difference, at least different from the one you imagine for her. Your mother, like countless other women at this certain age, is dreaming of her second adolescence, a time at which she can rebel against your expectations and, as Jenny Joseph puts it, 'make up for the sobriety of my youth'. It is this second adolescence that Ms Joseph's poem illustrates in her funny, poignant scenarios of a woman, not too unlike our mothers, who plans to 'wear purple /With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me'.

Remember, Jenny Joseph's poem is titled "Warning". Invest in this little book, with its hilariously irreverent illustrations by Pythia Ashton-Jewell, and prepare yourself for a mother who flitters her 'pension on brandy and summer gloves /And satin sandals'. Better still, buy this book for your mother and watch her face. You run the risk that it would never have occurred to her to 'eat three pounds of sausages at a go' but the chances are she'll recognize herself in the character musing as to whether she 'ought to practice a little now?'. Go on! She'll love it. And you never know, she might even forgive you for forgetting Mother's Day!