A Kit Kat break...

A visit to home.

My real home that is, where I wrote on walls and reared caterpillars and once went through an unfortunate phase of ethnic cleansing with some family pets.

It brings an enforced break from online activity (newfangled inventions such as the internet and the microwave oven are not tolerated there and are in fact suspected to be the devil's business).

It also brings me into constant contact with my mother.

Being sick has brought its advantages when it comes to these visits. There was a time when on my arrival, I would be presented with a list entitled 'Jobs for Reg' and told to get to work. Chores would include everything from mowing the lawn - which isn't so much a lawn as a scene from 'Jumanji' - and painting the kerbing around the drive, which should in my view be set aside as a task for those on Community Service.

Now that I'm poorly - and such is the joy of the family at the simple fact that I'm alive - they don't make me wear my little fingers to the bone anymore. I get to sit down a lot and look out the window, which as you know is one of my favourite things to do.

On the downside, it has turned my mother into a bit of an overly alert sentry when it comes to monitoring me. She seems to be of the opinion that my condition may visibly change before her eyes and thus she devotes her days to staring at me.

If I remain motionless for more than two seconds, she'll be there at my side, poking me. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, are ya alright?...Reg...REGGG!!!!"

If she could move her bed into my room and sit up all night, watching me sleep and checking my breathing, my heart rate and how Brendan is progressing, I don't doubt she would.

Which brings me to a relevant pearl of wisdom I wish to impart - there are few things in life more valuable than a reliable locksmith.

I realise that many would find this very annoying. It may even cause some mother-daughter duos to fall out. But I'm a patient sort when I want to be and always there has been the fear of losing her in the same way I lost my dad. Without warning.

So I put up with being mired in a technological blackspot for a few days and with the long drives with Brendan jumping around in the boot and ten boxes of fluids on the back seat.

I also endure that feeling that I am being watched all the time and the knowledge that it is only when I go for bathroom breaks (not an excuse I can call on very often with failed kidneys) that I will escape the staring competition with the woman who foolishly gave me life.

One does it for the simple pleasure of waking up in the most familiar surrounding of all and for the sense of being completely at ease that can only come from going back to what you know best.