Sally-Part 18. GEMMA'S A GEORDIE !

If you walked into my mother 'Sally's' five bedroomed house you would be pushed to find anywhere to sit. It was crammed with stuff, mostly from charity shops, delighted to offload so much dead-peoples' rubbish into the stolen Sainsbury's shopping trolley that mum could be seen pushing along Woodgrange Road.

Bless her she didn't know it was stolen because when my young son Julian asked her why she had two of them in her back garden she answered, " Oh darling! They're so cheap, only a pound each!

 No two pieces of china quite matched. No opportunity to buy a set of  "Franklin Mint Limited Edition Investment Opportunity" ever missed. Sets and sets of thimbles, dolls, Spitfire commemorative plates, 1:180 scale models of steam trains, coins, Toby mugs, etc.etc. etc. Rooms full of neighbour's stored furniture..."Just until they move darling". Nothing ever thrown away.

So as time passed and our children grew and took up activities that needed lifts, our visits south became less frequent. Irregular visits always started in the same way. We'd arrive at about midnight to find Sally burning something for us to eat on a stove as much covered in detritis as the rest of the house.

We would be determined to be nice to her and put up with her non-stop endless drivel. From morning to night, whether sitting on our bed first thing, without her teeth in, showing Shirley hundreds of photos of long-dead relatives or at 2am, still with no teeth and me snoring, Shirley in the last stages of mental exhaustion listening to tales of the long-dead relatives and how my mother's toilet habits had changed in the previous fifty years...year by year! ".....and I simply can't eat peas darling because they give me wind".......Ahhhhhhhhh!

And that brings me smoothly to my beautiful and intelligent daughter Gemma, who, and I'm not bragging, after graduating from Durham with a degree in Physics with Astronomy, got her first job at her first interview with a highly prestigious firm of management consultants at a very high salary and was based in London when I called to say that I would be down to see my mother and perhaps see her as well. So we agreed to meet at an Italian restaurant in The Strand where she would treat Sally and me to dinner.

 " MUMMY ! DO THESE THINGS PULL OFF ? " !

Well Gemma, of course, is a Geordie and like her mother Shirley, who isn't, very strong willed, both of them doing the ordering when we eat out, which I always thought was a man's job but apparently in these marvellous times of female equality, is not.

"Now Grammar, youse can haves wot youse wants soes wot deeyee fancy?"
"Oh darling, you choose."
"Well doyouse fancy a risotoewer like?"
" Oh darling that sounds wonderful!"

I don't think that either understood a word the other said but daren't admit it!

"Well howseaboot a risottoewer peasarnoewer?"

A * Peasarnoewer* was written *Paysanno* obviously meaning *peasant or rustic*
"Oh yes darling, that really does sound good!"

 But I detected a slight worry in her voice.

So when the greasily charming waiter slimed over with his pencil thin moustache quivering suggestively and an eyebrow raised arrogantly and ignoring me, obviously intent on seduction of one of the ladies..... well, my mother perhaps with that cheeky little grin of hers..... but Gemma?... and standing with his crotch slightly too close to the ladies' eyeline drooled, "Chello beautiful ladies ander wotter canner eyer getter you? "

 After ordering my Scampi and Chips which is all I ever eat out and which they didn't do, Gemma told me to choose a "Cheeeyarba'ar" and  then chose something "Pargeeemeeearmeee",  I think it was, for herself before ordering a " Risottoewer Peasarnoewer"  for mum who, as the waiter wrote the order said, in her poshest voice and loudly enough for all around to hear, "Oh Phwaiter darling! Could you hoeld the peas as they give me awful wind"

The room fell into stunned silence! Other diners stared mid-mouthful into their flavourless gnocchi, wondering A) whether they had just heard what they had thought that they had heard and  B) Why had they ordered such a disgusting meal when they already knew how awful gnocchi was! New lover's-to-be, on their first date couldn't meet each other's gaze! Sally had killed their romance stone dead!

The poor man stumbled away muttering in a strangely cockneyed Italian, "Holder der peas, holder der peas! Waduz she meaner, holder der peas?"