Oh! Darling

My mum has a really challenging job working with troubled teenagers in care. The way the care system in this country is managed is criminally messed up and as a result it's often difficult for people in the profession to make a difference. The kids my mum works with have really bad behavioural problems and they can often be abusive towards her and her colleagues. She's called terrible names on a daily basis and has been physically attacked. Despite this, she says the worst part of her job is dealing with the ineffective managers, whose priorities are all out of joint. Frankly, they sound like downright bullies, and clueless ones at that. That's why I love it when my mum tells me a story like the one she did yesterday about a shopping trip she made with one of her kids, D.

I know for a fact that D. is no angel and can be a nasty so and so when he wants to be, but in this story the dude sounds wicked. After a meeting in town, D. asked if he could pop into Dawsons, a music shop. My mum agreed and so they made their way there. D. informed her that he was well known in the shop and that they were expecting him to bring his grandmother in; for the purposes of this visit, she would be his grandmother. They also believed he was interested in buying a grand piano. So, D. plays every piano in the shop for the next hour or so and has all the staff fussing over him, until my mum announces: "Darling, I think we should go away and think about it. It is a lot of money, and I have a meeting I need to get to." D. replies, "Okay darling," sweeps his scarf over his shoulder, takes my mum's arm and sashays out of the shop. Then he goes to a jewellery store and pretends he wants to buy a diamond ring worth over a grand. How fun would shopping with him be?

D. also possesses excellent manners, opening doors for others and letting them pass through first, and walking my mum to her car every night. Once, when my mum was on the phone to my sister, he said: "Oh, I must speak with her," and they made fictional plans to go to dinner. He also once made my mum sit though a cabaret act he had devised.

Genius.