Saffy Syndrome

Poor old Stella McCartney.  Not contented with living a gilded and privileged life, revered and worshipped by fashionistas around the globe, she is tortured with guilt because she sends her children to private schools.  Oh dear!  She is quoted as saying that the minute they come home “talking posh” rather than being “their awful selves” she will have to “knock it on the head.”  That’s quite an interesting statement there – let us dissect it, knowing a little about Ms McCartney as we do.

First of all, define posh.  At one time it meant being of high birth.  Nowadays it just means wealthy and consequently able to buy a veneer of poshness.  Your children probably will end up talking “posh” if you send them to private schools.  At least they will be able to do so when it matters.  For example in job interviews or when trying to relate to other posh people.  Day to day, they will drop their h’s, make full use of the glottal stop and that irritating interrogative lilt at the end of every sentence imported from Australia?  They will also say ‘like’ like a lot.  I actually overheard two girls recently discussing why one of them wasn’t having school dinners any more.  The reason was “because I, like, don’t like, like them...” 

You could try sending them to St Asbo’s Comprehensive; plenty of kids come out of Comps speaking perfectly normally.  However your children, Stella, have several handicaps imposed upon them before they start.  Number one – they have a famous mum and (somewhat less famous) dad.  Number two they live in a large and expensive house in a posh, sorry, trendy part of town, not at the top of a high-rise.  Number three; they all have idiotic names which firmly mark them out as progeny of a Notting HillBilly.  I’m sorry, but if you insist on adopting the ludicrous American habit of using surnames as forenames and calling your children Miller, Bailey and Beckett, you are stuffed from the off.  You should have thought this through properly and gone for Leroy, Jamil and Lee-anne.

It entertains me that she declares she will “knock it on the head” or should that be “knock it on the ‘ead” because surely you would have to drop the leading ‘h’ in order to sound cool?  True Ms McCartney and her siblings went through the state system but I seem to recall that she has said in the past that she hated every minute of it.  But did her famous surname open any doors?  You betcha!  How many teenage girls would like to intern on Savile Row and at Christian Lacroix?  And how many do?  And it's not every fashion student who can call on Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell to model her graduation collection...

Now let us consider why Ms McCartney would prefer her children to be “their awful selves”.  There seems to be a feeling amongst the creative community that their children should be portrayed as free spirits who are quite untameable.  Viz Jade Jagger’s declaration that she doesn't really parent her two daughters, they bring themselves up and she just kind of oversees it all from a distance.  Call me old fashioned but I don't really rate the sight of a thirteen year old girl posing in a plunging neckline and a provocative manner.  There’s something about the “I’m mad, me and my kids are out of control” declarations of the rich and famous that strikes me as quite sad.  Don’t they think their children need or want any guidance at all?  I have come across plenty of kids of rich families in my working life who have been brought up by the help and allowed to do pretty much as they pleased with every whim indulged by largely absent parents.  I wouldn’t say one of them was happy.

However, for every free spirit, there is the one that breaks the mould.  And here is where you get Saffy Syndrome, named after the long suffering daughter of Edina in Absolutely Fabulous.  Every so often, a child of famous parents decides to keep their head down and live a relatively quiet life – for example Fifi Geldof.  Anyone any idea what Bob and Paula’s eldest looks like?  Me neither.  Or Aimee Osbourne, eldest daughter of Sharon and Ozzy, sometimes referred to as the “missing Osbourne child”.

Wouldn’t it be kind of poetic justice if Miller, Bailey or Beckett decided to become a civil servant and live in a semi in Pinner...?  Stella - you're havin' a larf.

Don't try this at home...

It’s hot. 

Like duh! As my children say all too often to me.  It’s been hot before – for example in 1976 when we had week after week of scorching weather and yet nobody (that I recall anyway) seemed to find it necessary to constantly lecture us about Health & Safety in The Heat.

Am I being unreasonable (really, that should have been the name of this blog, but I suspect it’s already been nicked) to object to constantly being lectured on the bleedin’ obvious by pious pillocks on radio, TV, in shops?  HELLO?  I’m an adult and I am perfectly capable of applying my own sun cream, drinking adequate fluids and staying out of the midday sun.  I do not need some smug  weather man rattling off the number of NHS Direct with every forecast and exhorting me to ‘keep an eye on elderly neighbours’.  Only one of my neighbours is elderly and he is as mad as a box of frogs, owns two properties at either end of the street and strolls between them dressed only in a pair of ancient, grimy safari shorts.  He looks like Catweazle’s first cousin and is clearly a major soap-dodger (you don’t want to get downwind of him in any weather, frankly).  So, if you think I’m going anywhere near him you can think again.  I’ll pass on Michael Fish’s address or whoever it is who reads the weather these days – can’t tell one from another anyhow – let him deal with it, sanctimonious sod.

Another thing that gets right up my nose is being asked a raft of fucking stupid questions every time I want to buy something as simple as a box of Paracetamol.  First of all, you can only buy them in 16’s – presumably just in case I take an overdose.  Well here’s a flash – 16 IS enough to kill you and anyway, if I wanted to kill myself, don’t you think I might be intelligent enough to buy a box of 16 tablets at five or six local pharmacies, duh?  Then, when I ask for a box, the zitty youth behind the counter starts to ask me intrusive questions about my medical history.  Generally, I manage to hold on to my temper and the conversation goes something like this:

Me:  A small box of Paracetamol please.

Zitty Youth:  Joo want tablets, capsules, caplets or syrup?

Me: Er, just whatever is cheapest, will do fine.

ZY: Tha’s tablets then.

Me: Thank you

ZY: Joo wan’em?

Me: (now gritting teeth) Yeeessss.

ZY: twenny pee.  Joo ‘ave a clubcard?

However, in a parallel universe or inside my head, there is another conversation running and one day, I swear it will actually happen.  It goes like this:

Me:  A small box of Paracetamol please.

Zitty Youth:  says nothing because he is staring into space, lovingly caressing a small pustule on his chin.

Me: (slightly louder) excuse me?  A small box of Paracetamol please.

ZY: Wot?

Me: PAR-A-CET-A-MOL.

ZY : Huh ?  Stares blankly at the shelves.

Me:  There!  Right a bit!  Down a bit!  THERE!

ZY:  Eventually locates box.  Begins to recite a script he has been taught and has committed to memory, well partially, anyway.

ZY:  Er, are you takin’ any uvver meddysin?

Me: Mind your own business and hand over the pills.

ZY: begins to look panic stricken, clings to script like a lifeline. Um, do you ‘ave any allerjees?

Me: Yes I am allergic to spotty little oiks like you asking me questions you don't understand and demanding answers you couldn’t judge the meaning of in a month of Sundays.  

Then there is the great carrier bag con.  Some time ago, it was decided by someone (possibly Al Gore?) that most of the world’s ills and certainly all global warming was caused by the use of plastic carrier bags.  Almost overnight, asking for a carrier bag in a supermarket became the greatest social faux pas one could commit.  Instead, we were required to purchase a selection of worthy-looking hessian sacks with that ugly reduce-reuse-recycle logo on them, the better to inflate the profits of Mr Tesco , sorry, I mean save the planet.  If you happened to leave all your bags in the boot of the car and decided to ask the nice lady cashier for a plastic carrier instead, you would be treated as if you had just stamped on a kitten.  Somehow, this ludicrous behaviour has now died down and bags appear to be as freely available as ever they were with no discernible change to the state of the globe.

Lastly, there is the “Don’t try this at home” twaddle, closely allied with the “No animals were harmed in the making of this item” baloney.  The best (by which I mean most stupid) example of both came courtesy of the BBC in a morning news item during the recent World Cup .  That little chap who won Strictly (sorry, not very good with names) had been shipped out for South Africa for a jolly er, spot of serious journalism and was inexplicably bussed out to a big cat reserve, where he was pictured stroking a Cheetah of pensionable age.  Crouching behind the supine animal (clearly extremely well-fed and not interested in snacking on a tiny dancer), doing the special whispery voice that everyone has to do in the vicinity of wild animals in order that they can assume some gravitas and sound like David Attenborough, he uttered an idiotic sentence which went something like “Now of course, no animals have been harmed by our visit here but I must stress that we are in a controlled environment and you really shouldn’t try something like this at home.”

Oh really?  Okay, I certainly shouldn’t  pet any of the hundred or so Cheetahs lying around in my back garden then, should I?

Like, duh!

Ready, Steady, GO!

So after the horrors of the school trip there is the (shorter) but equally pants experience of Sports Day.  So much for non-competitive sports – you ain’t seen nothing till you've seen ....drum roll please....the Competitive Parents.

You might think that this kind of thing only happens at Senior School by which age kids might be showing some real signs of sporting talent to be nurtured and encouraged by adoring mummies and daddies – Lord no!  If anything the battlefield is far bloodier at Primary level.

I have known people who:

• ·         Were caught training their child in a local park, making her run endless laps, all the while timing her with a stop watch and screaming at her to go faster.  This was a performance they repeated on Sports Day at school, one parent at the finishing line, apoplectic and purple-faced and the other running alongside the race track, yelling at the unfortunate kid.
• ·         Invented a case of Osgood-Schlatter’s disease the better to buy their child a head start in every race, including at the swimming gala (swimming is non-weight bearing, surely?) where she unsurprisingly cleaned up.
• ·         Suddenly whipped a pair of spikes out of her capacious designer handbag just before the mummies race (“oh it’s just a bit of fun, isn’t it?”).
• ·         Two dads who came close to punching each other over perceived dirty tricks in the dads’ race

And countless others too tedious to repeat.

What is it about these occasions that produces the worst kind of competitive spirit?  It’s just about the only time that parents will brazenly slag off other people’s children, snarling at anyone whose kid runs faster/jumps higher than theirs.

It is almost comical when it’s time for the parents’ race and you have that telephone box moment, when erstwhile charming daddy spins at high speed and suddenly emerges dressed as Superman or, more accurately, SuperPrat.  Ask any man (well, the Shah) and he will loftily announce that there is no point entering a race if you are not going to try and win.  My response is that trying to win is fine – trying to kill your fellow competitors on the field is not and is also a really bad example to set.

The other thing that drives me insane about Sports Day (and don’t start me on Prize Giving) is the concept of “We’re All Winners Here.”  (Possibly my least favourite phrase ever, along with ‘Please make cheques payable to HMRC’) Although children may come first, second and third, EVERYONE gets a prize – aah!  Just like real life! NOT.  How the hell are any of these kids going to learn to cope with failure in the real world? 

Compare and contrast with the event that is a secondary level Sports Day.  I popped into TD’s Sports Day for an hour recently – and that’s another thing – why do they have to go on for bleedin’ hours on end?  Hers lasted four hours by the time all the prizes had been given at the end – yawn.  It was a blazing hot day and the parents’ association was serving cream teas (looking slightly sweaty in the heat) and Pimms (massively watered down for Health & Safety reasons).  Parents were sitting around at tables gossiping and largely ignoring any signs of physical activity.  The girls were gathered together in forms or houses or gangs or whatever, (I haven’t a clue) and were chanting for their teams and largely ignoring their parents. 

One couple had lain on a blanket and just gone to sleep.  It was quite a bizarre sight – they didn’t have the body language of people who just happened to have drifted off in the sun, they honestly looked as if they had deliberately set themselves up for a snooze, pillows under their heads, looking really comfortable.  From time to time Mr Sleepy would come round long enough to wipe a bit of drool from the side of his mouth before snuggling down next to wifey once more.  I didn’t see a child go near them – probably too damn embarrassed – “Hey Jemima – I couldn’t hear the results for your dad snoring...”

When girls spoke to their parents it was hardly with the delight of yesteryear – remember how little Jemima’s 6 year-old face lit up when she realised that Mummy had arrived in time for her starring role in the Egg and Spoon Race? Hah!  Not any longer!  Talk about Not Wanted on Voyage.  Most girls were greeting their parents (who had largely rearranged difficult work schedules and battled to get there on time) with a curl of the lip and “you’re not staying long are you?  And don’t get drunk.” 

I bumped into one such parent whom I vaguely know (and like much more after this exchange).  “Fucking hell,” she hissed at me from behind sunglasses the size of dinner plates.  “I’ve driven an hour to get here, cancelled a meeting by pretending to have a migraine, spent 20 minutes trying to park, hiked 5 miles to the sodding sports field and the first thing she says to me is ‘when are you leaving?’  Fuck me!”  We decided to drown our sorrows in Pimms but it was deeply reminiscent of gnat’s piss, so that was another failure.  TD was slightly more gracious in her approach.  I did get a “Hi Mum!” as she strolled by on endless legs.  “My race is soon.” I wished her good luck and assured her that I’d be watching her and didn’t realise until afterwards that she hadn’t actually stopped to talk to me, just kept moving inexorably on like an escalator in permanent motion, waving over her shoulder as she went.

Trip me up ...

Aah, summer is here and with it comes the season of the school trip.  Happy memories of stomach-churning rides on stuffy coaches, lurching along the roads, bound for Chessington Zoo (as it was in those days).  Once there, we instantly overcame our nausea and threw ourselves whole heartedly onto the Ghost Train and the Waltzer via giving the animals a cursory glance.

A couple of hours later we would be made to sit in the shade somewhere and eat our packed lunches – I don’t ever remember having an insulated lunchbox or an ice pack – such luxury!  It was just a plastic carrier bag – generally consisting of warm, squashed ham sandwiches, some Bourbons or Custard Creams (they were better when they were warm because it made it easier to separate the two halves and lick the filling...) and an emetically sweet fizzy drink.  Approximately thirty seconds after wolfing this lot down, we would be back on the Waltzer, taking bets on who would be the first to spew.  (That’s a great word isn’t it?  Nobody says ‘spew’ any more.)

Then it was time to leave, clutching our tacky souvenirs, bags of sweets and the last remnants of candy floss still meekly clinging on to the stick.  Have you noticed how candy floss comes in nice, clean plastic bags these days?  Probably some daft Health & Safety rule aimed at preventing stick warfare amongst the under tens.

The coach seemed to have been hermetically sealed all day and was a) roasting and b) stinking – a sickly odour made up of sweat (from the driver who had been kipping in it), fag smoke (driver again), the squashed banana that Kevin had left down the side of the seat and the egg and cress sandwiches that the class thicko had forgotten to take with them, resulting in much tears and snot and ensuring that the hard-pressed teachers had to share their lunch with the culprit.  This repellent aroma was generally enhanced by the first child to vomit copiously when we were a mere 10 minutes away from Chessington and still had a long time to go before we reached home.  The teachers would give each other meaningful looks whilst half-heartedly comforting the puker and mopping up as best they could with a wholly inadequate supply of hard Izal toilet paper.  The rest of us would hold our noses and shriek and generally make it as much of a drama as possible until the teacher finally snapped.  When the coach got stuck on the A road home (not on the motorway – there were NEVER traffic jams on motorways when I was a kid), the parents just stood around outside school, enjoying a chat and a cigarette until the coach eventually showed.  Happy Days!

Compare and contrast, if you will, the above with today’s school trips.  Nowadays they fall into two categories – the day trip and the residential.  The day trip requires all parents to fill out a form listing allergies and medical conditions (real and imagined) and to give their written permission for their little darling to take part, whilst confirming that they have apprised themselves and their offspring of the need to behave at all times, adhere to the school rules and listen to the trip leaders.  Once these forms have been collected in (after a series of dire warnings to those who are late) the teachers then write up a risk assessment in which they have to dream up every single little thing that could possibly go wrong, rate it as a potential risk and write down precisely what steps they have taken to swerve said disaster.  Comprehensive First Aid kits have to be carried which are stocked and re-stocked and checked and re-checked to standards that would make your average OCD sufferer feel right at home.  Sheets of medical information on any child who needs it are amassed containing the lists of allergies supplied by mummy.  Every child is given the teacher’s mobile number which they then use for prank calls for months afterwards.  When the coach is delayed in rush hour traffic on the way home, each parent gets a call from a child which they can’t hear because of the level of noise and music in the background.  They take comfort from the fact that Joshua is clearly still alive, whilst being no wiser as to his ETA.  Mummy tries texting Josh, but gets no reply as J is too busy kneeling up on the back seat of the coach making lewd finger gestures at the driver behind who eventually loses patience and flips him the bird, whereupon Josh informs the teacher that “the guy in the car behind is like, a paedo, innit?”

Residential trips are worse – a nightmare of Abercrombie and Jack Wills one-upmanship, designed to drive the average mother to an early grave.  Actually, make that an early, pauper’s grave.

But by far the worst experience any mother can ever have is the Foreign Exchange Trip. 

TS had no truck with any of this nonsense and flatly refused to have anything to do with residential trips.  “Oh, are you sure?”  I crooned, whilst silently offering thanks heavenward.  TD was, by contrast, immediately up for it, thus proving my theory that whatever child 1 likes, child 2 instantly dislikes and vice versa.  Her exchange trip took place with a German school – shock horror – it was a MIXED school, so that meant that someone had to volunteer to house BOYS!  TD put herself down for either sex on the grounds that, if she could cope with an older brother, she should have no problem with a nervous German lad.  Several of her friends did likewise.  A couple of weeks before arrival, we were told who we were to have staying with us for four days.  Yes, she got a boy and his name was....(no sniggering please), erm, Fritz.  How we howled!  Even her teacher was unable to keep a straight face.  They began emailing each other and struck terror into TD’s heart as F’s emails arrived in perfect English – Gah!  She had only been studying German for a year – she would be shamed!  No need to worry.  When Fritz arrived it became apparent (from the lovely letter his parents sent to us, in perfect English) that he had been having a little help.  His command of our mother tongue was so basic as to be non-existent and we quickly had to rely on shrugs and hand gestures.  So that was Crime Number 1.  As the coach pulled up outside TD’s school, hysterical teenage girls could be heard yelling “mine’s FIT!  Is yours FIT?”  So Crime Number 2 was that the poor lad was not “fit” by any stretch of the imagination.  Crime number 3 was ours.  At the time the poor boy was billeted upon us, we were in the middle of a kitchen extension (and general shoring up of Crap Cottage) and had literally no kitchen, just a couple of electric rings in the living room and a microwave.  To this day I am not sure that he understood what was going on as we picked our way through the building site every morning on our way to the car. 

All we needed was to find an unexploded WW2 bomb in the foundations and that would have finished it all off nicely!

In which my boy becomes a man...

Today is Father’s Day and it is also the 18^th birthday of the Teenage Son.  Good grief, is it a mere 18 years since I was lying in a hospital bed wondering if the bit between my waist and my knees would ever function as nature intended again whilst the Shah was dancing around the labour room shrieking “I’m a dad!  I’m a dad!”?

One look at this photo of the newborn and you will see that the experience was not great for him either.  In fact, he didn’t stop frowning for about five years after this was taken.

In the past eighteen years he has brought us 

• Pride (academic scholarship to a good independent school, hockey colours, great GCSE  results)
• Irritation (he once annoyed his music teacher so much that he was chased out of the classroom and across the playground.  “Why?” we asked wearily.  “Oh I, er, fell off my chair and into the cymbals...” came the reply...ahem)
• Worry (passing his driving test only a few months after his 17^th birthday, causing me and the Shah to hold our collective breath every time he ventured out the first few times) 
• Laughter (he has an excellent sense of humour – inherited from his mother, naturally) 
• Revulsion (he can belch like a feckin’ foghorn)
• And enormous joy, as has his sister.

But it has never been dull having him around.  We have taken photos at all the major junctions of his life so far...first day at school, the day he became a teenager – all those things that doting parents do and no doubt we will force him in front of the camera again later today and no doubt he will groan and pull faces and eventually give in gracefully.


This morning, he came down to open the cards that had been accumulating: Card number 1 from an aunt contained a fat cheque - huzzah!  Card number 2 from maternal Granny contained a slightly leaner cheque, but huzzah! anyway.  Card number 3 from paternal grandparents contained, er, two balloons.  Go figure....

The poor old Shah’s Father’s Day celebrations have been somewhat eclipsed by the birthday boy.  However, he did receive two very nice cards from his children – TD made one which featured a drawing of her and her father (they are so alike as to be virtually interchangeable in personality).  Under her portrait she has written ‘Dad’ and, of course, her name under his.  It couldn’t be more true and he was thrilled with it.

The birthday boy, meanwhile, ‘ceebsed’ making a card and loped down to the local Clintons to buy one, via talking his way out of a parking ticket in the process.  (How?  That’s so unfair, I’ve never got out of a parking ticket in my life).  His card listed the top 15 things every dad in the world has said at least once and goes like this:-

1.   Don’t ask me, ask your mother!

2.   You didn’t beat me, I let you win!

3.   We’re not lost, I’m just not sure where we are.

4.   Call that a haircut?

5.   I’ll tell you why – because I said so, that’s why!

6.   You’re going out dressed like THAT?

7.   Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

8.   Careful!  You’ll have somebody’s eye out with that...

9.   What do you think I am, a bank?

10.  Now in my day...

11.  I’m not going to sleep, I’m just resting my eyes

12.  Oh for God’s sake, where the hell are my *&*@ing car keys?  Oh thanks, love.

13.  Oi! That’s my chair, now shift yer butt!

14.  What part of NO do you not understand?

15.  Call that music?

The Shah has many other delightful and not so delightful sayings, but I feel I should save those for another day.....

The Blow Out

Sometimes it seems to me that there are people in the world whose lives run without incident – I don’t mean they have no drama in their existence – we all have the odd bout of personal excitement – births, marriages, deaths etc; I’m talking more about the kind of day in which you set out to achieve something entirely mundane and life pulls the rug in a most unexpected way.

This happened recently when I went to collect my mum to come and stay with us for a few days.  Now mama is currently aged 86¾ and very lively with it.  She lives alone, still drives (gasp – but only within a very small radius of home) and generally copes well with life.  However, she is 86¾ after all and much more infirm than, say er, me for example.

So....we joined the motorway on the way home and, within a few hundred yards, it became obvious that there was something very wrong with the car.  After a very few more yards it was akin to driving a bucking bronco and I had to stop.  Fortunately, as we had only just joined the motorway, I was still in the slow lane.  Unfortunately, as we had only just joined the motorway, we were still on a stretch that had no hard shoulder.  Fantastic!

I should have mentioned that mama is extremely deaf and a noisy environment simply interferes with her hearing aids making communication nigh on impossible.  I realised that I had more than likely had a blow out but decided to err on the side of least drama (Mama is dramatic enough at the best of times) so I yelled “I’ve had a puncture,” to which she bellowed “You’re at a juncture?” rendering me nigh on hysterical. 

Anyway, she hopped gamely out of the car and we trotted up the edge of the slow lane until we could reach a crash barrier a little further up and stand behind it.  I thought the best thing to do was call the police as the car was presenting a considerable hazard, abandoned as it was in the slow lane.  There have been many occasions in my life that I have had to talk to the emergency services – one of the most memorable was when TS (aged 2) was playing with the phone and I suddenly realised he was actually talking to someone.  “No,” he said, “no mummy.”  “Oh shit,” I thought and grabbed the receiver off him.  I got a very frosty reception from the lady on the other end of the phone who gave me a lecture on wasting her precious time and said that they had been within a few seconds of sending the police round to make sure he was not left alone...ahem.

Anyway the nice police officer on the phone assured me that they would be along soon and that we should stay as far back from the road as possible (yup, right, you try that when you have two inches of tarmac to stand on before you hit a bank of nettles).  “Can you move the car further up?” he asked.  I was tempted by sarcasm (as ever) “well yes, I could, but I thought it would be more fun for everyone if I just left it in the middle of the sodding motorway” but decided against it.

The noise was incredible, as was the stupidity of the remaining drivers on the road.  The number of people who seemed unable to spot a silver car with its hazards on, stationary in the road was extraordinary.  They zoomed up behind it, slammed on their brakes and pulled sharply out into the middle lane.  Then the pillock in the middle lane wouldn’t pull over (I Got Here First syndrome) so the two of them would jockey dangerously for position, meanwhile gawping at us, huddled together a few yards further up.  This is what they were avoiding:-

Pretty spectacular, huh?

I was terrified, not least for my mum.  Mama however, was absolutely thrilled.  “What an adventure!” she cried, tottering out into the slow lane, the better to crane her neck and spy the rozzers.  I continuously had to pull her back – it was like having a toddler likely to make a dash out into the traffic at any moment and just as stressful.  Eventually, the rozzers whizzed past going in the wrong direction, but waving comfortingly.  It seemed to take them bloody ages to find a junction where they could turn round and come back again, but arrive they eventually did.  Charming and young (argh – did you read that?  Policemen are looking young to me now!) They offered to change the wheel but, hey, guess what?  Despite several imploring phone calls to the Shah and his assurances that there was definitely a wheel brace in the boot, wheel brace was there none.  So the rozzers (these were real police, as opposed to the Traffic Police who turned up shortly after – talk about overkill) kindly arranged for us to be “recovered”.  A large lorry turned up and hoisted my poor jalopy onto the back.  We hauled and pushed mama up into the cab - “whee!” she roared – and took off.

To cut a long and immensely tedious story short, a journey that should have taken an hour took 5 and cost me £200 (“No VAT tho’ love, because the police called me out, so they pay the VAT” -  small comfort).  Luckily my mama is as generous as she is adventurous and insisted on paying half on the grounds that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been collecting her.  Could still have done without it though!