Mum went into her slow, kindly 'Let's try to make best friends with the waiting staff and be the most special person in the cafe for no fathomable reason' voice.
"Now. Let. Me. See. D'you know? I think I'll have a coffee. I've had so many cups of tea this morning up in Grafton Underwood with my husband Colin that I'm sick to death of tea. But could you warm me up some milk? I can't drink cold milk in coffee. It gives me indigestion. And then my daughter Bridget will have. . ."
Grrr. Why do parents do this. Why? Is it desperate mature person's plea for attention and importance, or is it that our urban generation are too busy and suspicious of each other to be open and friendly? I remember when I first came to London I used to smile at everyone until a man on the tube escalator masturbated into the back of my coat.
"Espresso? Filter? Latte? Cap: half fat or de-caf?" snapped the waitress, sweeping all the plates off the table next to her and looking at me accusingly as if Mum was my fault.
"Half fat de-caf cap and a latte," I whispered apologetically.
"What a surly girl, doesn't she speak English?" huffed Mum at her retreating back. "This is a funny place to live, isn't it? Don't they know what they want to put on in the morning?"
I followed her gaze to the fashionable Trustafarian girls at the next table. One was tapping at her laptop and wearing Timberlands, a petticoat, a Rastafarian bonnet and a fleece, while the other, in Prada stilettos, hiking socks, surfing shorts, a floor-length llamaskin coat and a Bhutanese herdsman's woolly hat with earflaps, was yelling into her mobile headset, "I mean, he said if he found me smoking skunk again he'd take away the flat. And I'm like, "Fucking, Daddy"" - while her six-year-old child picked miserably at a plate of chips.
"Is that girl talking to herself with that language?" said Mum. "It's a funny world you live in, isn't it? Wouldn't you do better living near normal people?"
"They are normal people," I said furiously, nodding in illustration out at the street where unfortunately a nun in a brown habit was pushing two babies along in a pram.
"You see this is why you get yourself all mixed up." "I don't get myself mixed up."
"Yes you do," she said. "Anyway. How's it going with Mark?"
"Lovely," I said moonily, at which she gave me a hard stare.
"You're not going to you-know-what with him, are you? He won't marry you, you know."
Grrr. Grrrr. No sooner have I started going out with the man she'd been trying to force me onto for eighteen months ('Malcolm and Elaine's son, darling, divorced, terribly lonely and rich') than I feel like I'm running some kind of Territorial Army obstacle course, scrambling over walls and nets to bring her home a big silver cup with a bow on.
"You know what they say afterwards," she was going on. "'Oh, she was easy meat.' I mean when Merle Robertshaw started going out with Percival her mother said, 'Make sure he keeps that thing just for weeing with.'"
"Mother-" I protested. I mean it was a bit rich coming from her. Not six months ago she was running around with a Portuguese tour operator with a gentleman's handbag.
"Oh, did I tell you," she interrupted, smoothly changing the subject, "Una and I are going to Kenya."
"What!" I yelled.
"We're going to Kenya! Imagine, darlings To darkest Africa!"
My mind started to whirl round and round searching through possible explanations like a fruit machine before it comes to a standstill: Mother turned missionary? Mother rented Out of Africa again on video? Mother suddenly remembered about Born Free and decided to keep lions?
"Yes, darling. We want to go on safari and meet the Masai tribesmen, then stay in a
beach hotel!"
The fruit machine clunked to a halt on a series of lurid images of elderly German ladies having sex on the beach with local youths. I stared levelly at Mum.
"You're not going to start messing around again, are you?" I said. "Dad's only just got over all that stuff with Julio."
"Honestly, darling! I don't know what all the fuss was about! Julio was just a friend - a penfriend! We all need friends, darling. I mean even in the best of marriages one person just isn't enough: friends of all ages, races, creeds and tribes. One has to expand one's consciousness at every . . ."
"When are you going?"
"Oh, I don't know, darling. It's just an idea. Anyway must whizz. Byee!"
Bugger. It's 9.15. Am going to be late for morning meeting.
11a.m. Sit Up Britain office. Was luckily only two minutes late for meeting, also managed to conceal coat by rolling it into ball to create pleasing sense of having been in for hours and merely detained on urgent transdepartmental business elsewhere in building. Made my way in composed manner through hideous open-plan office littered with the tell-tale remnants of bad daytime TV - here an inflatable sheep with a hole in its bottom, there a blow-up of Claudia Schiffer wearing Madeleine Albright's head, there a large cardboard sign saying: "LESBIANS Out! Out! Out!" -towards where Richard Finch, sporting sideburns and black Jarvis Cocker spectacles, his portly frame squeezed hideously into a 70s retro safari suit was bellowing at the assembled twenty-something research team.
"Come on, Bridget Droopy-Drawers Late Again," he yelled, spotting my approach. "I'm not paying you to roll coats into a ball and try to look innocent, I'm paying you to turn up on time and come up with ideas."