We drove down by in indirect route, stopping off briefly in St Ives (the one in Cambridgeshire, not the one in Cornwall).
My mother uses a stick now (having resisted for years.) She keeps leaning it up against things, then knocking it over.
We visited my mother's best friend in her nursing home. She pretended to know who we were.
We had lunch at The Peacock in Goudhurst. According to a source I can't back up it was the location of a shoot-out betwen Revenue men and members of the infamous Hawkhurst Gang in the mid 18th century.
It should have taken us four hours to get home. In the event it took nine. The M25 was all gummed up so we detoured through suburban Surrey. I like navigating with a map, but I lost my way in Reading. The M6 was gummed up too but I'd had enough map-reading by then. Heavy weather was coming in from the West and smacked right into us on the M56.