Wall 1, Mother 0

Well, last Thursday I got in from a friend's birthday supper to hear the phone ringing. It was a friend of my mother, telling me that she had had a call from said mother and gone round to find her in a pool of blood where she had fallen and hit her head on the corner of a wall. She had to stay in hospital overnight and had 19 stitches in her forehead (they didn't x-ray her head. They didn't need to. They just lifted up the flap of skin and saw that she hadn't fractured her skull).

My ma is 65, but she's quite fragile physically. Mentally, she's fine, and her character is - ahem - decided. I find this slide into parenting one's parents increasingly distressing - the acknowledgement that there are things they can't do, and never will be able to again.

I know that part of the reason I am so worked up about this accident is that it's five years since my dad died of a head injury. Caused by hitting a different bit of the same wall that took care of my mother last week. Should I send in a demolition crew, I wonder?