Children eat free

What does matter is that it was close to pistols at dawn.

A uniform with a clipboard, badge and electronic machine, which I suppose he has to record how long we park, decided to flex his officious muscles.

‘You can’t park in the mother and child section!’ ‘Oh yes I can’.

‘I see no child’.

‘It’s me and my mother is here to prove it. She may be in her 80s and forgets who I am sometimes, but she is definitely my birth mother’.

He wasn’t amused, but I loved every minute of it.

When you reach a certain age, winding people up who think they have any kind of authority becomes a hobby and a delight.

Complaining is no longer an inconvenience but as rewarding as watching your favourite team battling to score the winner or fighting the elements to go one under par or even get a hole in one.

Time doesn’t matter to someone like me, in fact I could easily take a pack of sandwiches and a flask in case the adventure takes longer than expected.

My accoster insisted I was deliberately misunderstanding the words mother and child.

I insisted he was deliberately misunderstanding the words ‘push off and stick your clip board where the sun don’t shine’.

It’s the same when mother and I visit restaurants, which advertise ‘Kids eat free’.

‘We cannot serve a meal to you because it is obvious you are not a child’.

They absolutely hate it when I have a tantrum, stamp my feet and have a hissy fit, insisting I am a child.

‘I am a child and I have my mother here to prove it, so put your tongue in and bring the chips out or I will do something very childish and I’m not wearing a nappy’.

Another great one is when children ride on transport free providing they sit on their mother’s knee.

Clearly I couldn’t expect a bus driver to swallow that one, after all how could I bounce up and down on mother’s knee.

A horse would buckle under my weight. I have found a way round it however. You know how old people shrink when they reach ultra maturity?

My mother has gone really small. How clever am I? I tucked her up in a pram, wrapped and hid her face with a giant pack of Pampers and sneaked her on without paying.

But this confirms I’m definitely losing it. As I sat there with passengers making comments about my ugly baby I suddenly remembered we both have pensioner bus passes.

Then we have the phenomenon of the ‘two eat for the price of one’.

This is blatant discrimination. A Nomates often eats alone so inevitably has to pay more per meal than a couple.

See, Ms Nomates has her uses. Put that pie down woman!

It’s a joke. Oh no, not the cucumber!

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