In a tawdry semi between the northern towns of "Ponty" and "Donny", Mum (Jacqueline Naylor) shuffles through 45 years of desperately dull memories as she waits for her belongings to be taken into storage prior to moving to Spain.

With some plays, although you know that the writer has their own agenda, you don't mind as their touch is subtle and sympathetic. John Godber's, however, is not. The only examples of writer's humour come through Dicken Ashworth's perfectlypaced wit as Mum's dour husband, Ted.

Political points are scored via the miners' strike and the decline of the couple's council estate, where new neighbours Les and Sonya belt out music while clouting their kids round the earholes.

Rather than listening to each other, the actors appear to be playing a fast game of shouting pingpong with their lines. This gets so off-putting that at one point, when the couple's son Jack (Matthew Booth) revved up his monotone so-called accent for yet another diatribe, I had to stop myself standing up and shouting back, "I'm not deaf, I'm just not northern!"