Laughter can't cure but is a brilliant balm

WISE-CRACKS HELP WHEN PAIN TOO MUCH TO BEAR

- HANNAH JONES

THE winds of change have been blowing a “hoolie” around my parents lately. For now, let’s just say I've had to move back home to look after them, and yes, even do the cooking.

You know things are truly rubbish when I'm allowed near the kitchen, because that time I mixed up salt with bicarb is still talked about like I haven't learned a single culinary lesson in 25 years. Despite things being, let’s say a bit c**p, good humour abounds, even on an ambulance/ hospital/going-downhill-rapidly day.

When I say good humour, I mean gallows humour - that amazing ability to puncture grim moments with ridicule, irony and a belly laugh. It’s a brilliant balm. There we were the other day, waiting for a tender paramedic to do ‘obs’ (something we now sit through quietly humming the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive to the ECG beeps) when Mam Jones came up with a classic.

"Remember when everybody thought I was dead?" she mused.

It turned out that when a neighbour passed away, the gossip morphed into my mother also dropping dead in Morrisons/Tesco cheese aisle/B&Q - any queue will do.