Giving Mother the opportunity to explore her maternal instinct. Or not.

A day in the city is always approved by Mother, perhaps she feels more comfortable alongside her fellow cosmopolitan commuters. Every trip, we seek a parking space in the free car park manned by the foreign crew (possibly illegally) earning a small wage each day. As we pull in, a pleasant man hastily shouts at us to follow him but Mother has become uncomfortable and shakes her head. She wishes to find her own space (independent woman) but he persists.

“NO! No, no, no, no, no, no – DON’T SHOU- NOPE! I want to park over there! IT’S NO GOOD SHOUTING ALL THIS NONSENSE AT ME IN YOUR AFRICAN-SPANISH I DON’T UNDERSTAND!”

We zoom off in the wrong direction.

Escaped parking drama and entered a new realm of awkward. Walking along the boulevard towards the shopping lanes and we encounter two young boys, around eight, playing football in the sun. Their joyous game is rudely interrupted by a vicious British woman as their ball rolls ever so gently into her path;

“Ahhhhhhhh!!!!! Oh my God, that really nearly killed me!”

Mother fixed eyes onto the two boys and sheer terror graced their faces, their beautiful golden skin turning pale. Here, Mother attempts to discipline the unknown children in English.

“Non football! Non, in park! *aggressively points to park beside boulevard* you must play in park - this is for walk – nearly killed me – very dangerous!” Hand gestures aplenty while I watch, mortified, as the boys may be about to cry. Once again, I’m on the verge of scooping them up and running away. Just as I thought it couldn’t get any worse, one of the boys regained a small amount of voice and cried out; “sowwy!” in a heavy Spanish accent. I am still recovering.

After running our city-errands we dined with our amigos at ‘the favourite restaurant’. The regular two hours of inaccurate translations proceeded, Mother completely unaware that she was attempting French rather than Spanish most of the time and was certain that everyone was laughing with her. The young waiter Mother is… let’s say ‘intrigued’ by, has become the topic of discussion this time.  Sadly, the waiter has a traditional Spanish name (of which I shall not disclose… just in case) and Mother spent the majority of the day trying to pronounce it. Frustration brewing, I broke the sad news to her that, in fact, Mr Waiter was definitely too young for her to pursue and could most probably be her son.

“WHAT?! NO HE ISN’T! Anyway he is definitely the correct age because I see a grey hair and surely that’s enough to go by I wonder if he has a yacht what do you think darling do you think he has a yacht?”

Tragically, I doubt the full-time waiter in his late-twenties owns a yacht.

Charlotte-Elizabeth xoxo