Rebellious teenager, aged 37 and a half

Maxine Riddington's mother is at her wit's end. If only her daughter was a bit more... respectable

THE FARMHOUSE roof let in light, it had never been heated, condemned wiring threatened instant electrocution and water streamed down every wall. It was the first time my mother had been inside and I could tell the moment she crossed the woodwormed threshold that she couldn't believe I was born of her flesh: why wasn't I moving to a nice semi in the suburbs with a block paviour drive and people who eat red meat every Sunday?

She became fixated on the absence of curtains at the soon-to-be re-roofed attic windows. "People will think you're poor, or can't be bothered," she said. I refrained from informing her we were both, given the size of the mortgage and the overwhelming amount of work that needed doing on an underwhelming budget. "Mum. I don't care what people think!" Ouch, I felt the sting of an invisible slap on the back of my legs. She descended the wobbling staircase and went outside to the yard, surveying with motherly disdain the weed-infested garden, tumbling down outbuildings and colony of bats, dive bombing the spot where she was standing in protest at such unwelcome disturbance of their habitat. I know exactly how they feel.

She disapproves of me. Not because I take drugs, am a bigamist or steal children. No. She can't come to terms with the fact that I like junk furniture, work from home and use e-mail. I could be a spy for MI6 for all she knows. But that would be okay because it's respectable employment, and she would tell her friends I was a policewoman. They would nod politely, pour another cup of tea and ask after her geraniums. As it is, any mention of my name draws a sympathetic "How is she?" as if I warrant incarceration and long- term care not in their community.

She thinks pounds 30 for my haircut that "looks like it's been cut with a knife and fork" is a mortal sin: "You could buy a pair of Footgloves for the same price." "But I don't want to walk on my hair," I protest, like a rebellious teenager aged 37 and a half. The thing which divides us most is my utter lack of interest in housework: the fact that I can go out without making the beds and not get an angina attack fills her with dread. What if I was ill and the doctor had to call? Presumably my harassed GP's beds aren't made either, I argue, but my reasoning falls on practiced deaf ears.

She is deeply superstitious and expects a thunderbolt, plague of locusts or visit from Harry Secombe to inflict me if I dare say out loud that I'm an atheist. My child will burn in hell because he hasn't been christened. Whenever he tells her he's an atheist too, she hurriedly responds: "Don't say things like that, Tom, there's a good boy. Say that other word beginning with "a", but don't copy your mother's ways, it's wicked."

Five years on and the farmhouse is more of a home. But three years without heating, a nasty bout of pleurisy and infestation by mutant, poison-resistant mice that ate all the chocolate off the Christmas tree, have convinced her she was right all along. Plus the fact that we have installed a clapped- out Aga, a contraption she regards as one stage removed from the cave. "There's a sale on at the electricity board, let me treat you to one of those Halogen cookers for your birthday," she pleads, as I get back to nature stoking the Aga with coal. Oops! There's another reason I should go to bed early without a story: the fact that we keep our coal in an old bath in a run-down part of the house, rather than have to trek outside for it in the rain. She regards this behaviour as bordering on anarchy - if we all kept coal in the bath where would the world be? When the coal merchant delivers more fuel she makes sure it is deposited inconveniently in an outbuilding rather than suffer the indignity of witnessing said devil bath being re-stocked. "Whatever next?" she asks. Small pox and a home abortionist business, I shouldn't wonder, would come as no surprise from her wayward medieval girl child.

Earning a living as a writer is as far removed from her experience as being an astronaut. I sometimes think it would be easier to call and say "Haven't mopped the kitchen floor, Mum, been a bit busy on the moon," until I realise she has a monopoly on that particular place. Ploughing through a huge pile of ironing (mostly mine) she once exasperatedly attempted to explain our differences with: "You just like to get dressed up, drive off and talk to people!" She thinks I'm a slut. Not in the sexual sense, of course. She sees me as a societal slut: my mother taught me to pay bills the moment they arrive, never row in front of children and always defrost the fridge once a week. My generation embraces what hers rejects, be it an unfathomable preference for dusty wooden floor boards over wall- to-wall shag pile, or an obsession with candlelight over hundred-watt electrical incandescence.

She fails to see the benefit of waiting until you're virtually menopausal to have children, while the attraction of peeing on expensive lolly sticks to discover every intricate detail of your bodily function is a mystery. And it's criminal to have an only child because "they're never happy". But then people like me who include their children in conversation and do not insist they genuflect to anyone, whether they're over the age 45 or not, shouldn't really be allowed to breed at all. So where does that leave us? At home drinking cocoa, listening to the shipping forecast and knowing better. Because that's how we've been raised. Isn't it?