That was the weekend that was.

I've been deprived of my broadband all weekend owing to a bit of perhaps self-inflicted cyber mischief because I had the temerity to change my broadband account password to one that was still 'strong' but easier for me to remember.

Cue a day - aka Mother's Day - and this morning too for good measure spent on the telephone to various 'techies' in India answering Q&A on our computers and the (shared) broadband connection via router. Mum did the talking to the techies at first. She may be - ahem, better not say exactly, but I'm 43 and she's old enough to be my mum - but she knows what she's talking about and has more patience than I do. Said techies would not believe that she - or we - knew what we were talking about and wouldn't believe the problem was theirs - as ISP - and not with our equipment.

"Contact your computer vendor," one said before helpfully putting the phone down. I saw red this morning, dialled Talk Talk and chose the option "to discuss closing your Talk Talk account". This got me a caring British voice (still Indian, but closer to home) who put me on to the top level of techie (beyond the 'turn it off and on again' types). He talked me again through the pings and IP configs before getting me to manually enter the DNS numbers which fixed the problem. It only took two days. I should be grateful - last time it took ten.

Is that the way to spend Mother's Day? Possibly not, but there were so many other bits to make up for it. My mother is not fussy. She's about to start lambing, so a prodigious amount of Thorntons chocolates were welcome. She can enjoy them carte blanche knowing she'll burn off any excess calories in the lambing shed. Brian deals with his mother in his own sweet way and no amount of my nagging ("can I send her some flowers?") will change things, so that's one thing I don't have to worry about.

H8 and R6 had made cards for me in Welsh at school. Both totally lovely. The one from R6 had a teacup on the front and a bag of Typhoo inside for my cup of tea on the day itself. Sweet. H8 also made a card in English at Brownies, so R6 then had to spend Saturday morning making a 'Muther's Day' card for me in English. See bilingual has its advantages - sometimes it means you get things twice!

R6 made me a cake, which worried me on account of my doctor's orders low fat diet, but it turned out to be an everlasting sort made from clay. Perfect! H8 came home from Brownies with a handful of daffs in a jam jar. Also perfect.

On the day itself, Bri was working so there we were up at our usual time of 7.30am. H8 and R6 delivered a book, Running for Women (admittedly I had ordered that myself, using Mother's Day as an excuse) and a yummy mummy mug. Bri gave me a card, four bottles of Guinness, a bar of G&B 85% chocolate, and a pile of Body Shop pampering treats, including some minty foot cream for soothing my runner's feet.

I made pancakes for breakfast, ran 6.5 miles and then all of us girls - mum too - sat down to enjoy the Bahrain grand prix with sandwiches in front of the telly. That was it really. A simple day. Later H8 and R6 helped mum get the shed ready for lambing. Lots to clear up and to scrub. We walked the dog, snaffled a few of Mum's Thorntons Continentals, ate a big roast chicken dinner cooked by me (but partly prepared by M&S) and mum and I shared a nice bottle of white before staggering off to our respective beds slightly squiffy. It's a simple life!

Today we finally solved the problem of the broadband, which was annoying but preferable to the alternative Monday occupation of cleaning, and the sun is shining.