"Write a card to Peter. Say sorry from Mary." Who's Peter? I know everyone Mum knows, I write the Christmas cards every year. "My first boyfriend, before your dad. I need to say sorry." My mum has MS. She's had it since I was five. Early on it was simple. I could explain it by saying, "It just means she can't walk," but not now. Now it's worse. It progresses slowly: plateaus and falls, never improvements. Mum's a . . .

”You should drink a lot of mimosas so you don’t get scurvy,” is something my doctor has never told me, but I don’t think he’s a very good doctor. I bet if I switched to a new doctor, she’d say, ”Woah! Your vitamin C levels are low,” and then I could have as many mimosas as I wanted. In the . . .