This one's for you Mum!

My mum and I don’t live in the same city, so whenever we meet up we usually go out somewhere for lunch so that we can have a good chat and catch up on each other’s lives. Now as I’ve gotten older our relationship has changed into much more of a friendship, and so when we are ladies doing lunch we usually have a right old laugh!

One of our favourite places to go is Chilli’s in Cambridge. Every time we go we always say that we won’t order too much and will just share a main of fajitas and a pudding, but when we get there and look through the menu we always end up with at least one starter, two mains and several sides because we seem to share a genetic trait for having larger eyes than bellies.

One such day we were in Chilli’s and had ordered enough food for at least six people, and after sharing a couple of stories we were feeling very giggly indeed. When the waiter brought over the bill Mum reached over for her bag to retrieve her purse. She looked into her bag, and looked over to me with a look of total amazement on her face,
“Oh no! I’ve forgotten my purse!” she said.
“Yeah right Mum,” I replied, “I’m not falling for that one!”
“No really love, I honestly don’t have it!” She burst into giggles at this point as she viewed the mixed look of horror, disbelief and naughty amusement on my face. “Do you have any money on you?” she asked.
“No Mum, I haven’t got any cash, and there isn’t any money in my account so we can’t use my card!” I said.

You see, the thing is, my Mum and I have never been in this kind of position before, so we quickly tried to haggle out the details of which one of us would be washing the pots and which one would be drying them, or whether or not we should just try and make a run for it. However, the look of horror on Mum’s face only served to send me into hysterical giggling fits, and my hysterical giggling fits only threw Mum into equally hysterical giggling fits.

For some reason, Mum decided it would be a good idea to try using my bank card to pay for the meal, even though there wasn’t any money in my account. She had some vague notion that Lloyds TSB wouldn’t mind giving me an unauthorised overdraft for no apparent reason. So when the waiter came over with his card-gadget-thingy-me-bob I handed over my bank card whilst trying desperately hard to conceal the huge grin on my face. The waiter seemed quite amused at the cackling hyenas he was taking payment from until the card-gadget-thingy-me-bob said the card was declined.

“I’m sorry Miss but there seems to be a problem. Would you like me to try again?” He asked with one cynical eyebrow raised.
I looked over at Mum choking back her laughs, and with a sudden guffaw of my own I squeaked out, “Yes please!”

He did not look impressed as the card-gadget-thingy-me-bob came back declined again. At this point Mum had to admit defeat as I almost slid under the table with the weight of my amusement, and she asked the waiter if she could please speak to the manager. It was at this point I suddenly realised that if I made a run for it, I only had to out-run Mum in order to get away…

However, before I could make my Indiana Jones style escape the manager came over, and amidst a deluge of apologies (and a small amount of flirting I might add) Mum explained the situation. The manager was a total diamond about the whole thing, and suggested Mum ring her husband to ask him to retrieve her purse from the back of the chair in the dining room and read out her card number over the phone. He even offered to lend us some cash so we could go out to the cinema!

Whenever I think about that day I still get a huge grin on my face!