I have been delegated by my mother to a lower position in the list of Household Things To Deal With When Leaving the House. This morning her parting shot to me was a tweet, the pursing of lips and rapid sucking in of air she used to greet the budgie with before he morphed in her eyes into something more human, therefore neccessitating proper grown-up speak, intelligent, intellectual conversations (albeit a little one-sided) on Saturday mornings when the rest of the family is still in bed, and the shortening of his already short name - Dodo - to something reminding me a little too much of the royal family - Dodes.

Onto the budgie she lovingly lavished her most affectionate terms of endearment, the waving-of-the-spinach-leaf spiel, the croons of consternation over the extortionate number of lost feathers. I no longer get even a peck on the forehead.

This either represents the inherent confusion addling my mother’s brain (there did pass across her face a shadow of confusion when I spoke, rather than tweeted, and again when the budgie stared mutely into her eyes before pecking languidly at his own reflection in his little budgie-mirror), or a sign of some backwardness in familial relationships. The day she brings back Trill for me from Sainsbury’s as a consolation for a horrible day, I will worry for real.