In which Mother invades personal space

I enlisted Mother to join me on a bikini-hunt. Now, I am quite a savvy shopper and rarely encounter the typical female-shopper problems. However, when it comes to bathing suit shopping, I find it highly-stressful and mostly disappointing. Purely because, for some obscure reason, Spain only design 'bandeau' style tops (which are not for me) with no other options. Also, it is rather lucky to find any bikini tops at all, considering the majority of women over here sunbathe topless. I will not be adjusting to this carefree way of bathing. Some things simply must remain British and reserved.

Anyway, on our final leg of the quest, I begrudgingly took whatever Mother was handing me to try on and walked to the changing rooms.

The shop is rather small, with two fabric-curtained little changing cubicles situated in the centre of the shop just before the main changing rooms. The two curtained cubicles were occupied but I chose the more private, main section and wandered inside. Within a minute of grumpily changing I heard a vibrant, familiarly shrill holler;

"DARLING!!!!!!"

"DARLING!"

Ah. There she is. Bringing me more unsuitable bathing suit choices for me to prance around in. I peer out of the door, expecting to see Mother shaking items at me. Instead I see nobody within a few feet, so I look further... beyond the changing room entrance and into the store.

"Darrrrrlinggg! Sweetie! Are you ready?? LET ME SEEEEE!"

Oh dear. There she is. There she really is. Standing closely outside one of the curtained changing cubicles with her nose submerged in the joining of the curtains, muffling something about sizing.

I alert her to my whereabouts;

"Mother, I'm here... I'M HERE!"

"YES DARLING I KNOW..." *Mother replies into the curtained cubicle*

"No, no... HERE!" *my head has now poked outside of my door, trying to attract Mother's attention without attracting the whole store*

"I'm not quite ready yet.... what have you got in your hands?!"  I say, as my eyes fall upon an assortment of interesting colours and shapes spilling out of Mother's arms. However, Mother's vision is clearly deteriorating and she has not spotted my head. Also, her ears have not detected the location from which my voice is coming. 

"Darling!!! Look what I've f---"....

At this point, I witness Mother transferring her collection of items into the opening of the curtained cubicle she is still standing beside. As her hand grasps the curtain, her head immediately disappears inside the cubicle.

I hear a gasp and a shriek.

"Oh! OH DARLING YOU'RE NOT... DARLING? DARLING? WHAT? Oh I'm so sorry! Oh dear, I'm sorry, excuse me... PARDONNNAAA! PERDONNNAA! PARDON... A... "

Excellent.

Finally, Mother spots me as she bursts back out of the poor girl's changing cubicle. She bounds her way over to me as I try quickly to shuffle back inside my door but Mother has already attracted the attention of the store and now, as she trots over towards me, everyone knows that she is my responsibility and I have mistakenly let her loose.

xoxo

Language barriers are of minor importance (Part 2)

A few more language barriers that are still too high for Mother to conquer. This time, Mother tries her hand at French. Believe it or not, I actually had high hopes for the French, considering when I test Mother on her Spanish, she frequently comes out with the correct word in French (such as voiture, etc). We were having drinks with a group of Belgians who spoke only French and the party grew as the night went on, meaning even more confusion for me (and more exciting challenges for Mother). Personally, I was struggling as, even after taking French A-Level, my brain only holds the capacity for one foreign language at one time and therefore I ended up speaking Spanish to them or just hand motions and nodding and laughing when I thought it was appropriate. Mother took on the French challenge with great enthusiasm as she insists that French people, food, clothes, language etc is the best. 

Adopting the same method as usual, Mother simply created her own language by putting on an extremely-strong French accent but still using the English language. 

Examples include;

"Oui, oui, hahaha, how boo-tee-fuhl!"

"my job, urrh, oooh, welllllll, oui, urhhhh, oooorh, oui, si, uh, is like, poo-blik .... relah-theon-é-."

"can I get you another ... " *resorts to hand gesturing 'drink'*

"ahhh, je t'aime Pah-reee!" (from my fading school memories, I'm pretty sure she just told someone "I love you")

*N.B. the throaty French rolled-'R' thing was a favourite for Mother and she readily used it on every possible word she could*

So, we may very well have another evening with this group and I very much doubt that, by the time we do, the Belgian's won't have learnt any English and Mother won't have learnt any French. 

xoxo

Language barriers are of minor importance (Part 1)

The rate at which Mother is picking up the Spanish language has been concerning me for a while. Friends here are also alarmed when I tell them that, despite having been in Spain for 2 and a 1/2 years, she still pretty much only knows the words for 'shoes' and 'orange'. The other day we had a typical example of how Mother communicates to foreign people. As Mother was stepping out of the pool after her morning swim (N.B. this is not to say she swims every morning...) she witnessed two young boys playing by the steps. Engage Super-Stephanie Mode.

"Hola! HOLA! HOLAAAAA!"

The two children stop playing immediately and stare up at the lady standing at the side of the pool.

"Are you Spanish? Spanish? Español??"

At this point, the young Spanish man in the pool lightly gets Mother's attention to inform her that they are neither Spanish nor English. Mother gratefully acknowledges the man and his help, however proceeds to speak in a very interesting combination of accents.

"Darling! Your head ... " 

*Mother smacks her hand against her own head to indicate that if these young boys continue to play close to the metal handrails it will definitely cause a fatal accident* 

"Dah-leeng, dahr-LING! Por favor! No, no you must move away..." *waves hands like a hula girl, indicating the children need to swim away from the handrails* 

"because... your head... boom, bang!"

 *another great gesture of head-smacking-onto-rail-blood-everywhere-event*

"You undah-stand? Is very dangerous, oof!".... "Where is your madre?"

At this point Mother looks frantically around and her eyes land on a gentleman of about 45, laying on a sun lounger, reading a magazine about cars. She has identified the problem. These boys have been left under the charge of a man. In my opinion, this is just as useful as leaving your child under the protection of a radish. The man peers over his magazine, as Mother's behaviour (outcry) has attracted the attention of the entire pool community at this point. As she is heading away from the pool, the man laughs and says;

"yes, I know - they do that ten times a day, haha!" 

- Of which Mother replies, under her breath; 

"what's going to happen on the eleventh?!"

xoxo

Memory Lane (1)

Very often I will have vivid flashbacks to my childhood, of which some revolve around Mother's behaviour. You may have been under the impression that somehow Mother has developed her unique sense of self in the past few years, however this is untrue. It concerns me that you are not as well educated as you could be, regarding Mother and therefore I would like to include little trips down memory lane throughout this blog. I do hope you enjoy them and then, possibly, contact your own parents and thank them for their more customary existence. 

....

Around the age of ... 10 (I think) Mother dated a guy (we'll call him M). I never got attached to the various gentlemen (or, on occasion, teenage boys) she associated herself with. However, M just so happened to be the father of my best friend during primary school - to the delight of my friend and I. Obviously we were practically sisters at this point. Even more exciting was that we had all planned a vacation to stay in my Auntie and Uncle's villa in Spain. My friend (we'll call her G) and I spent every single break time at school for the months preceding the holiday acting out activities we had planned to do on the trip. Right down to the outfits we would choose.

Now, here we reach the box labelled 'Things my friends could do but I couldn't'. Not in a sob-story, medical condition way. Not in a passive-aggressive way either.

Being a 90's kid, I recall those white baseball-style t-shirts; the ones with the bubblegum girl printed on the front, with the 3/4 length sleeves in red or blue or pink etc. (I have tried searching for this style of pre-teen fashion statement but to no avail. To help you; think back to chunky sneakers, elastic fake-tattoo chokers, roll-on body glitter, stick on earrings etc).

I had wanted one of these shirts for about three years. 'G' had about five (and piles of roll-on body glitter. She also had her ears already pierced and was basically 2 cool 4 skl). I begged Mother to buy me one of these tops but, every year, I was put back in my place with these words;

"No! I've told you, those are not for you, darling. They are common! They are for the common girls at school! You are NOT common and I do not buy your clothes from Tammy Girl!! Tiffany's mother may well want her daughter to look like that but I do NOT! Look at your cardigan, darling! Do you think that was from the high street? It most certainly was NOT. That's lilac cashmere, don't you know? It's from Monsoon! It was very expensive darling. Those sequined slippers you're wearing were imported from Thailand so if you think I'm going to let you wear some hideous tomboy polyester rubbish then you've got another think coming.  We'll go to Harvey Nichols this weekend and find you something nice from Kenzo."

So, there we have it. A 90's kid - very much able to submerge myself into the era only by trying on all of G's clothes at sleepovers.

xoxo

Mother's QOTD

*scene: At a bar watching the band set up on stage.*

Me: "I see you two, you and the drummer, you know"

Mother: "what? what?"

Me: "I can see you two making eyes at each other!"

Mother: *fluster* "Those were his eyes, not mine!"

Questionable fashion choices extend beyond Mother.

Amongst many other delights, Barcelona holds the great benefit of being a 'city by the sea'. This means that you could, if you wanted to, have a light breakfast outside Gaudi's house before walking to one of the many shopping streets - aligned with Chanel and Prada - for lunch with friends, followed by a stroll through the rustic 'Borne' quarter to reach the Barceloneta beaches for a swim and a spot of volleyball pre-cocktail hour! Possibilities are endless, apparently.

Mother and I had planned somewhat of a similar arrangement for our final day, however Mother had left the hotel sporting an outfit only appropriate for the lunchtime events. Diamante pumps and the dress she wore to the formal wedding we attended a few months ago. I recall the packing process back at home the night before;

"Mummy, do you have space in your case for my shoes? I'm wearing my trainers and taking one pair of heels and one pair of flats.... but I have no room for them"

(The ever-growing dissimilarities between Mother and I - I do not pack lightly)

"Of course, darling!  Look! I'm only taking two dresses!" *points to the 2 silk garments laid out on her bed* "And I'm wearing this one on the train" *holds up a tight-fitting, silky, floral-yet-winter-appropriate dress*

"Right, okay - what about shoes? Have you packed your sneakers?"

"Pardon? Darling, what on earth would I need those for? I'm wearing my diamante pumps - obviously! They go with everything!"

- N.B. They do not go with everything. They go with everything Mother has packed.

"Underwear?"

"Oh yes. I better pop that in."

As you may presume, I did attempt to re-pack her some suitable attire but was told off.

So, back to the trip. As we leave the hotel we get caught in a light shower. We did actually purchase ponchos but Mother refused to wear hers. Instead, she spends the next twenty minutes extraordinarily frustrated that the tiny puddles are destroying her trusty beige diamante pumps.

"Darling, shall we sit down and have a spritzer?"

"Urm... no. We've only walked down this street, we've got a while to go. It's also 11am. So perhaps you can hold on?"

Mother huffs and declares that she most definitely cannot wait any longer, she is having a breakdown over her now-papier-mâché shoes.  As we find ourselves a nice spot for a morning snack (me) and wine (Mother), the skies brighten and the sun beams down. Mother sticks her leg out into the rush of oncoming tourists in a grand attempt to speed the process of drying her water-marked suede pumps. A combination of the wine and the sun puts Mother in a better mood as we continue our leisurely journey down towards the beach.

Mother looks a little worse for wear as we find ourselves approaching the beach.

"I think we ought to sit down again, I'm starving! Let's find ourselves a nice-" 

Mother breaks off as her eyes land upon a tall, dark and handsome Spanish waiter smiling at her, offering a menu "Never mind! I've found just the place!"

I, myself, am continuously hungry. Even if I had just shovelled a Thanksgiving dinner down me, I'd probably still accept more food. I suggest to Mother that we stroll along the promenade just to have a little 'restaurant-browse', however somehow we still end up at Mother's first choice.

"I want nachos, darling. Do they have nachos? I definitely fancy nachos. They better have nachos! Isn't that a regular thing on menu's here, darling? Check for mummy, do they have nachos on the menu here? Ask that nice waiter over there...  he's coming over, darling! Quick, or you'll miss him! Ask him to bring mummy some nachos! Do you want nachos too, darling? You want nachos as well, we'll have two... or do you want to share?"

"I don't want nachos but thank you for the offer. Also, they don't have them. They had them at all the places we passed though. Why don't you open your menu and see what you fancy?"

Mother's face drops in the same way it does every time she chooses her meal before looking at the menu. Also, the same way it drops when she heavily designs a dress in her head, sets out to a few shops to find this specific dress and returns home unsuccessful.

Instead of opening her menu, Mother orders a large piña colada and then decides to fork around my food. Fifteen minutes later, we're strolling along the promenade again, watching the beach activities and being offered Segway rides (tempting - for me, not so much for Mother).

"I'm hungry. I haven't had my nachos yet."

"I see. No, you haven't. Do you really need them now? It'll be dinner time soon."

"YES I NEED THEM! I NEED MY NACHOS!  I WANT MY NACHOS! Do you think they have them over there??? What about over there?? What about in that ice cream parlour, will they give me some nachos?"

The beach is full of exciting eateries, big and small, that provide nachos. I advise Mother of this and we peer at the people in these places. Specifically those who appear to have nachos in front of them.

"Oh GOD!?! The cheese on those! That's not real cheese!! It's FAKE cheese, darling! I don't want that?! It's SQUEEZY-CHEESE!!! It's powdered cheese?! I can't put myself through that, darling. I can't. I cannot. I want real cheese on my nachos, preferably stilton but I'll settle for cheddar. I'm not fussy, darling."

I can tell this is not going to be a quick fuel-stop. We are now on a nacho-hunt. Which sounds easy, I know. However, now, we are looking for 'real-cheese-topped nachos' - lest you forget. Making it significantly more challenging.

A little while later, still unsuccessful with finding suitable nachos, I glance over at the beach. Admiring the low sun glinting on the ocean my eyes land upon a gentleman sunbathing. Not in his prime, he resembled an animal of sorts. I don't want to say 'beached-whale' but he certainly wasn't a majestic  merman.   I notice, past his rather round tummy, he appears to be wearing nude Speedo's. How amusing!  He also appears to have taken a little picnic with him as I spot a croquettes potato placed just at his crotch and... oh. That is not a croquettes potato. And those are not Speedo's. Mother has followed my gaze and I now sense that the Great Nacho Search is instantly called off.

xoxo