Belated Homemaker Day greetings

My mum is a failure—she doesn't even have a degree! She will never be a professor of medicine or prime minister, and a Nobel prize doesn't prop up her bed. The closest she's been to a glass ceiling is banging her head in her windswept greenhouse. Power dressing means a clean smock and cords. She carves soapstone into animals and sells them to pale Londoners who see Orkney as an “organic” hideaway. They “smile” at her—she “smiles” at them.

Mother's Day saw the usual run on …