Gassing with my girlfriends at the weekend, I noticed that Amanda looked a little frazzled.

“Everything OK Amanda?” I dared to ask.

“It is now,” she raised her eyebrows.

We looked at each other and guessed that Amanda had endured another fraught incident with her mum, who, like most mums, can drive us up the wall sometimes. (And that probably includes me with my daughter).

“She phoned me in a panic because she found a letter stating she had a hospital appointment in a couple of days,” Amanda explained.

“Calm down Mum and give me the details,” Amanda mum gave her the details over the phone and Amanda promised to sort it out with the hospital first thing next morning.

According to Amanda she was on the telephone to the hospital for ages whilst being passed from pillar to post until finally a lovely young girl explained that she had searched all computer systems and could see no appointment for her mum.

“So I decided to drop in on her and have a look at her appointment letter.”

We wondered why Amanda had been so tetchy until…….

“She did have an appointment alright,” she rambled.

“But it was in 2015!”

Apparently Amanda’s mum had cleared out her kitchen drawer and discovered the letter assuming she had put it there recently for safe keeping.

“Oh that’s nothing,” butted in Fiona.

“I was doing mum's ironing whilst she hoovered round about me and suddenly I could smell burning,” she added.

“I thought I had scorched her blouse, but oh no," Fiona explained.

“She was talking to me whilst hoovering at the same time and didn’t notice that her long black nightdress was being sucked up in the vacuum.”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I visualised the scene.

“And she was STILL hoovering whilst her nighty wrapped around the wheels causing all sorts of noises whilst smoke smouldered out of the bottom of the vacuum.”

This led us on to many revelations of household calamities and I was the first to confess to doing something, which in hindsight, was exceptionally stupid.

“I attempted to put on a DVD but no matter what I pressed, the bloody thing would not play.

“Even when I changed the batteries in the remote control.”

Red faced I admitted.

“Having run out of options and having just bought my first touch screen mobile phone, I tried to swipe the screen on my TV!”

“But you don’t have a touch screen telly,” Fiona pointed out the obvious.

“Talking of DVDs,” Susan added.

“When we got our first DVD player our mum used to rewind the DVDs to the start so that they were ready for the next person to use.”

“That’s nothing,” Julie giggled.

“I told my gran I was heading home because I had lots of emails to send and she piped up,

‘I’ve got stamps in my purse if you need any.”

Now it was Mary’s turn to confess.

“Starting a new job computers were relatively new to me and for the hundredth time I phoned the IT helpdesk for some assistance.”

I wondered how this was going to pan out as Mary added.

“The young chap sat beside me and very patiently explained, ‘OK Mary, at this point we need to open a window.’

Mary scoured the room before eagerly jumping up on a chair and opening a nearby window.

The young assistant said nothing, but as soon as Mary’s colleagues had gotten over their hilarity they quickly pointed out that the window she needed to open was in fact in her computer.

Now some of us know that a firewall is a computer programme which helps screen out viruses and hackers, but for Mary this seemed to be an issue too.

“I bought my first laptop and my nephew Steven phoned and kindly offered to help me set it up.

“Is there anything I need to get before you come?” Mary thought she was ahead of the game.

“You will need ………..” he gave Mary a small list.

“And it might be wise if you think about a firewall.”

Arriving at Mary’s, young Steven stopped in his tracks as he quickly noticed that Aunt Mary had arranged her living room furniture to accommodate her compute desk and chair so that they were attached to the wall with her fireplace.