There are many good things about shacking up with my mum for a bit. She cooks me things, lends me her car now and again and drops me at the station in the morning. However, this will never become a long-term arrangement: factors that have contributed to this statement are as follows;

• It’s Saturday. She comes up the stairs and stands at the end of my bed.
  “It’s a quarter past nine,” she says.
  “And?” I mutter from my pillow, “Is that what you came up to tell me? I have a clock.”
  What she means when she stands there spouting the time at me is that she wants me to walk to the shop with her to get the paper. Luckily, I can interperet motherspeak.
• Down at the Black Rock shops. We go into the French bakery. My mother, as part of her new, post-retirement life, is learning to parlez vous Francais.
  “Bonjour!” she carols at the girl behind the counter.
  My fifteen year old self awakes with a spasm.
  “Mum, only the bakery is French, not the people that work here. Hello?”
  “I know that, but I have to practice.”
  “No, I don’t think you do.”
  “Un pain au chocolat sil vous plait,” she carols again, at the girl, who is about as French as I am.
  “I’m learning french,” my mother tells her, conspiratorily.
  The girl hands her the croissant, slightly glassy eyed.
  “Merci bien!”
  We leave the shop to the tune of my head slowly shaking…
• Later on we headed over to what most normal people could, without threat of an understatement, describe as Hell. A place (I dare not speak its name) that is a collection of factory outlets of well known clothes shops. Out in Moorabbin. On a Saturday morning. Pure mayhem. My mother, desperate to buy me a birthday present, trailed behind me. As time wore on, her sighs came closer together. Particularly when she discovered that I would not choose a purse that has a zipper for access to coins. Then I pierced my thumb with a zipper in Garfunkle, and bled freely throughout the change room (extra points for the downlights though - it was less gritty realism, and more soft focus art house style). Another shop, called ‘Charcoal’ actually had some very nice stuff - my mother bought a scarf.
  “This will be perfect for my belly dancing scarf,” she said, tying it around her waist. She then proceeded to belly dance at me in the middle of the shop, while asking “Is it long enough? What do you think?” I stuffed tortured fifteen year old self back in the box, and said I liked it, thinking that it didn’t really matter. To look at us you would never know we were related.
• We left Hell, her with one purchase, me with none. This is what happens when she takes me shopping.
• After the first half of Sunday passed by, obliterated by my hangover (never mix champagne and beer, I have done it for you) I slowly came out of my nauseous little shell. I texted my mother, who had gone to the supermarket, to grab me some razors and a tin of Baxters Vegetable Soup. When she returned, in my first bit of humanoid behaviour of the day, I said, with some false optimism,
  “Did you get my text message?”
  “No.”
  My hangover returned with a vengance.
  “Can I ask you something? Do you carry your mobile phone for a reason, or is it just some kind of non-ergonomic time piece?”
  The sigh.
• However, it turned out that she had some killer home made pumpkin soup, so we both scoffed that down. After a walk around the shops (still questing for that birthday present) we came home and I had a recovery nap, dreaming of the tuna casserole that I knew was going to be for dinner.
• I prised myself out of bed, and went like a puppy to the dining table. I ate some tuna casserole. I added pepper, parmesan, a bit of salt.
  “How is it?” asked my mother.
  I chose my words with care. “It’s, um, good! I like it!”
  “Good.”
  “But…”
  “But what?”
  “Well, it could be a bit more, sort of, tuna-ish?”
  My mother’s mouth dropped open, and she looked at our dinner plates, aghast.
  “Oh my god. I forgot to put the tuna in!”
  “Oh my god! What the hell are we eating then?”
  “Mushroom soup casserole.”
  My turn to sigh.So close. And yet, sooooo far.