Edited by Neil Anderson, Saturday, 31 Dec 2011, 21:22
My mum, my dad and me were way too early for my wee brother's wedding. We had an hour to kill, so we found a café. I'd have rather gone to the pub, but that was pushing it, it was only ten o'clock.
There was a bit of a stoshie getting the coffees in, for me. Dad has never been socially comfortable and my mum is way too so, to the point of offence. Really I should have done the ordering, I didn't.
My mum ordered a latté and my dad an espresso. I thought that I might die. Seated all around us were burly guys in hi-vis jackets tucking into fried-stuff on rolls and reading the Sun. This didn't seem like the place...
The girl behind the counter didn't even blink, "shall I bring them over?" It must have been clear to her that we weren't going to be able to manage this ourselves.
I should point out at this point that we had obvious physical issues. My mum had finally completed her full-set[she's now broken both her shoulders and both her hips] and that my dad had just had his hands fixed surgically. Both were sporting, what can only be described as, comedy bandages. The couple that had only two working left hands between them and I shuffled over to a table.
After that I settled down a wee bit, until the tie incident.
Both dad and I were wearing sorta-suits, neither of us had ties on; me from choice, him because there was no way that he, without two-handed-help, could put one on. My mother produced the thing from her purse, the one that she had stored in my dad's pocket.
That's easy to write but wasn't so easy to do; it took some minutes and we attracted attention. The term bloody-footers crossed my mind. I was tempted to step in but didn't, the bitching between them was too enjoyable, and it seemed to be going down well with the room.
When the thing finally appeared it was down to me to attempt to put the bugger on the man. Ten minutes later it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to do this. I can barely put a tie on myself and doing it for my dad in front of a caféful of beaming workies...
The girl behind the counter and I shared a look: it was clear that she would have been able to help, in fact every bugger in the place probably could have done a better job than I did, but by that point I was too humiliated to ask.
I took our cups to the counter and said thanks. As we walked out the door everybody in the place said it back to me.
novel #3
My mum, my dad and me were way too early for my wee brother's wedding. We had an hour to kill, so we found a café. I'd have rather gone to the pub, but that was pushing it, it was only ten o'clock.
There was a bit of a stoshie getting the coffees in, for me. Dad has never been socially comfortable and my mum is way too so, to the point of offence. Really I should have done the ordering, I didn't.
My mum ordered a latté and my dad an espresso. I thought that I might die. Seated all around us were burly guys in hi-vis jackets tucking into fried-stuff on rolls and reading the Sun. This didn't seem like the place...
The girl behind the counter didn't even blink, "shall I bring them over?" It must have been clear to her that we weren't going to be able to manage this ourselves.
I should point out at this point that we had obvious physical issues. My mum had finally completed her full-set[she's now broken both her shoulders and both her hips] and that my dad had just had his hands fixed surgically. Both were sporting, what can only be described as, comedy bandages. The couple that had only two working left hands between them and I shuffled over to a table.
After that I settled down a wee bit, until the tie incident.
Both dad and I were wearing sorta-suits, neither of us had ties on; me from choice, him because there was no way that he, without two-handed-help, could put one on. My mother produced the thing from her purse, the one that she had stored in my dad's pocket.
That's easy to write but wasn't so easy to do; it took some minutes and we attracted attention. The term bloody-footers crossed my mind. I was tempted to step in but didn't, the bitching between them was too enjoyable, and it seemed to be going down well with the room.
When the thing finally appeared it was down to me to attempt to put the bugger on the man. Ten minutes later it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to do this. I can barely put a tie on myself and doing it for my dad in front of a caféful of beaming workies...
The girl behind the counter and I shared a look: it was clear that she would have been able to help, in fact every bugger in the place probably could have done a better job than I did, but by that point I was too humiliated to ask.
I took our cups to the counter and said thanks. As we walked out the door everybody in the place said it back to me.