The phrase is spelled out in red roses, just like all those Grandads and Dearest Mums, written in chrysanthemums and wedged on the roof-rack of a passing hearse.
Our dear mum, aged 96, is recuperating in a care home after fracturing an ankle and may not get back to her own home.
My dear mum tried to teach me when I was young – it's not a good idea parents teaching their kids!
To this day, I have the most anguished, fever-inducing memory of performing that damn song in a blather of terror with my dear mum mouthing the words at me.
Episode of the year: The Summer Camp Spectacular, largely for the line: "Dear Mum and Dad, I cut my penis when I flunked my canoe test …" Rowan Slaney Stories about friendship, love and the messy beauty of our lives.
In ninth grade I decided I wanted to go into the restaurant business but my dear mum was under the impression that this was the slippery slope to becoming an alcoholic – in the old days, chefs were super hardworking and they drank a lot, it was a very hard lifestyle.
During this last year, Katie and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in Venice, I featured on an ITV Tonight documentary about the need for more antibiotics, my dear mum had a wonderful 70th birthday, I have been asked to work with an NHS consortium to improve drug adherence, my hockey team secured promotion and my darling son Felix turned seven.
Before the Internet, when a gentleman wanted to polish the brass knobs of his dear mum's armoire he would depend on his internal spank bank which, potentially, included nudes he had seen in postcards and museums as well as racy lines about breasts he may have read in the Bible.
Dear Mum, This Is Why I'm Addicted: A Letter from a Lost Daughter.
