Mummy’s on father’s day….

Well blow me down, readers, it was alright! Woke up slightly foggy headed and constructed an unconvincing costume for the occasion.

Got the midday train. Father’s day. Rang father. Father hung up on me. Joke, apparently! Brilliant.

‘where are you off to?’ says he.

‘haywards heath to see a boy’

‘ooooooooooo’

At which point we entered the tunnel of doom and lost reception. I texted him and asked him for advice for the meeting of mummy. My mummy answered back,

‘just be yourself and listen when appropriate and be chatty like you normally do.’

Unconvinced. I text back that I want dad to give me some advice.

‘what problem?’ was what came back. Oh yes, retire and you drift through life like you’ve got no knickers on. Which, incidentally, I haven’t.

I get to the station, he will meet me. Car or foot, I ask, he doesn’t reply. Then honing round the corner comes a clapped out old mobile and he steps out of it, fur coat at the ready. Marvellous.

And mummy is in the front, (he failed his test). And she smiles at me and is sweet but a bit nervous…….almost excited……

So it turns out that I was some sort of welcome visitor to their ramshackle beautiful affair of a residence. Wooden panels had fallen off the side of the house, and the garden was free and beautiful.

There had I, images of sitting down to lunch. No chance. It was all ornaments and piles of paper. Wicked.

So the boy and I spent the day spray painting his van, playing with kittens and getting on. But unfortunately, not getting off. La la la la la, sure there’s no problem there…..it’s all good though, it’s not awkward, and mum comes and smoke rollies with us and tells us about mad relatives and how much she hates cleaning. And I just hope the fact we’ve hit it off like a fart to a flame is because she sees me as the daughter she never had, not the co-parent…

And now it’s time for dinner. We cook together, it’s late, and we decide the only option is sausage dicker…..have I mentioned the dish dicker? Samson and I invented it. It’s basically any food that is smeared with delight and baked in an oven. For example, chicken dicker, the original. Get some good breast, cover it in peppers, onions, capers, tomato and top it with torn mozzarella. Dribble over a dob of pesto. Shove it in the oven. Watch it bubble and dick. Serve with roasted sweet potato and olive salad. Shove in mouth. You too, can make dicker, spread the word.

The sausage dick we cooked was great. It had mashed potato topping – mummy’s idea, and we greedily feast upon it till it’s done. And mummy gets out her poetry and we read together, as a demented family. I use my snakey wiles and she lets me read some that the boy isn’t allowed to. It’s about groping, as far as I can muster.

Mum, (as I affectionately refer to her), tells me about this awful horsey woman who owes her money. I encourage her, she relents. As she describes the hag, I mouth ‘bitch’ in her face. She loves it, I’m saying what she’s thinking, and at least it wasn’t me, it was some other bitch she was talking about….

At one point during this exchange, as I stared intently at her, loverboy decides to toy with me and drops in a comment about schoolboys, in a voice that riddles me luscious, and I flash him a smile and some eyes as a Shakespearian soliloquy.

And then it’s youtube, harsh kisses and ‘see you when I get back’. And I get back, and we text. I love mummy, she loves me. He’ll miss me and dicker.

I’ll miss him……