Thank you all. I enjoyed all that very much
My mother was not as bad as I feared, but which I suppose I mean she was 'all there'. (She remembered telling me to shut up, justified it, then
sort of apologized!) I still think she was confused and was possibly covering her tracks. She is, of course, terrified of dementia.
She was in al ot of pain, althugh she'd had a lovely night with morphine apparently. SH's hirt her elbow - possibly a tiny fracture - and her hand has swollen up which they say is arthritis... but it wasn't swollen before.
I am currently trying to summon up the nerve to ring the hospital to see how she is before I set off for France. (Mind you it usually seems to take about five attempts before anyone can tell me anything.) She says 'they' lost her wedding ring so I probably ought to chase that up.
My visit was much appreciated I think. I ended up spending about 4 hours talking with her, which is more than usually happens when I spend a weekend with her. Note to self: try and arrange things at her house so that I can sit closer to her so that she can hear me. I realise I don;t engage in proper conversations with her so much as communication is difficult.
Wuthering Heights: before this, I had tried to read it several times and failed. I did enjoy it this time (I was kind of studying it too, I suppose, which always helps) although the person who sits next to me at work had endure my many outraged invectives again Heathcliff. What a B**s*ard. I can only think that people who regard him as a romantic hero haven't really read it. He says himself of his wife Isabella "She abandoned them under a delusion... picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions she cherished." Now there's irony for you. And as for the death count. I had a mental tally of progressive deaths which I used to mark off where I had got to in terms of writing it.
Dombey and Son is very witty... and very wordy. I am utterly daunted by the task as it's to be reduced to a chapter in a collection as opposed to a book in itself. Still I did a couple of Shakespeares last year, but these were mini marathons compared to this.
Thank you all again. OH is having a Skype job interview right now

and we will be heading for the coast not long after... with my mother's sanction.
p.s. after Dombey, I am 'doing' Sense and Sensibility.