The Untold London Story

"But I didn't tell them about you and the London bobby," I assured B.A.

"You should," said B.A. "It's a good story."

So now I'm going to tell you the story about Benedict Ambrose and the London Bobby, not only because it's a good story but because it is illustrative of one of the great realities of married life, which is that sometimes your spouse will drive you nuts.

Naturally, though, I will have to preface this with a hymn to the greatness of B.A. so you don't get the idea that I'm oppressed or downtrodden. When I calculated that our London jaunt cost us approximately 678 squid, he didn't get mad or huffy. He just said, "That's all right, darling. It was a WONDERFUL fortnight."

"Ha, ha, ha," I said sourly as he snickered away, but I was vastly comforted that he thought the high price of our weekend amusing and not some horrific fault that I will never, ever atone for and that I will have to hear about it until Kingdom Come. Some husbands are like that. Not mine, thank heavens.

Whenever possible, B.A. will choose to joke rather than complain. The one exception is when some real injustice has been done by one person to another. However, when it comes to the weather, economic circumstance, airport layovers, illness, etc., they are just more fodder for jokes. And puns. B.A. loves puns. If he ever falls silent, it is because he is working out a pun, and no matter how bad it is, he will lob it at all hearers.

Female hearers are wont to say, "Oh, that's terrible. How can you stand it, Seraphic?" And I smile in a pale, long-suffering way although sometimes the puns are so good I write them down and embarrass B.A. with them years later. And if I make a pun, everyone around says it's on account of being married to B.A., so he gets the blame.

The loud and frequent throat-clearing is much more annoying, but I reflect that if I am ever a widow, I would give my remaining teeth to hear that characteristic khhhhhhuuuuhhhh again.

And then there is the television commentary, which reaches fever pitch when we watch "Master Chef". B.A., who taught philosophy at the university level for many years, sits before the television making positive statements for which he has no evidence whatsoever.

Contestant (presents dish to Greg, quivers): I hope you enjoy it.

B.A.: Oh, it's going to be awful. It's tough. It's stringy. It's completely under seasoned.

Greg (tastes dish): Cor blimey, mate. That is absolutely DELICIOUS! It's tender. It's juicy. And the seasoning! Perfection!

In short, B.A. makes a lot of noise. The noise increases according to emotional circumstances, but particularly when B.A. is excited and happy. And this is why--revelation!--I get so cranky when we travel together. When I am in a new place, especially where English is not the first language, I need quiet to adjust, think, locate the exits, summon the remnants of my foreign languages, and write down any instructions I have managed to wring from officials in my pidgin French/Italian/Polish.

B.A., on the other hand, needs to talk. "We need to go there! Oh! No, we don't. And we need to buy this ticket! Wait! No, we don't." What makes it worse is that after making two incorrect statements, thus dashing my faith in his judgement, he is right the third time, which makes me feel like a disloyal, unreasonable ass.

B.A. will also read me the inscriptions on plinths. The English inscriptions. I believe many husbands do this, and surely it is not because they believe their wives have suddenly been struck illiterate. It could be their joy and excitement. As when watching "Master Chef."

I suppose there have been times (Italy) when I have wished a policeman to rescue me from B.A.'s torrent of happy, instructive chatter, but Saturday afternoon was not one of them. We had just had a splendid meal at Ognisko (my choice) and we were on our way to sell my book (my childhood dream). The sun was shining; it was delightfully warm; Hyde Park was to our left; stately embassies were to our right. B.A. may have been talking; I do not recall. I was wrapped in a blissful post-prandial cardigan of joy.

Then we spotted a crowd of demonstrators, mostly of Middle Eastern appearance, to our left, across the street. And we noted a number of policemen on our side of the street. The demonstrators were apparently aiming their protest at one of the embassies to our right.

"They're protesting Iraq," said B.A. "No, Lebanon. Syria."

We squinted at the plaque beside the door of the embassy as we passed.

"Syria!" shouted B.A., oblivious to my contradictory murmurs. "That's it! That must be the Syrian embassy!"

"Excuse me, sir," said a London bobby, turning. "That's the Libyan embassy."

B.A. was momentarily struck dumb.

"Oh," he managed to say. "Thank you very much, officer."

Afterwards, B.A. told Polish Pretend Son this story three times, and Polish Pretend Son enjoyed each telling.

B.A. loves jokes so much, he relishes even the ones against himself. Which is why, thank heavens, I will get away with this post.

Update: "No!" said B.A., at home to get lunch. "I keel you! I keel you!"

Seven Quick Pancakes

1.

It is Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras in Western Christendom. I wonder how much of Christendom actually makes the pancakes, however. In Poland and Polonia the fun day is Tłusty Czwartek, Fat Thursday, which was last Thursday, when Poles have a good excuse to stuff themselves with pączki, i.e. jam-filled Polish doughnuts. This year I was determined to remember to celebrate Tłusty Czwartek, but then Hilary White converted me to Anti-Sugarism. That said, I shall be making blueberry pancakes for B.A. and me tonight and not stinting on the 100% Canadian maple syrup. As Carnival hijinks go, that strikes me as mild.

2.

I was going to make pancakes for breakfast but unfortunately I was in the grip of a terrible dream. In this dream, I had been hired to give Seraphic Singles lectures at a Catholic or Evangelical conference in Cuba or Bahamas or somewhere like that, but instead of giving the lectures, I had an affair. It had absolutely no glamour of evil, either. There was no deep conversation or shared jokes or high-minded speeches or sunsets. It was basically just being in bed with some skinny stranger while cranky conference organizers burst in the room from time to time to find out where I was and go through the trash for evidence of wrongdoing. They found a lot, for when I got home, my mother revealed that they had written to her, and she was not amused.

At this point the dream got even more confused because it seemed to me very unlikely that I would do such a wicked thing, or have the time to go to Cuba or the Bahamas during my Canadian trip. Although I vaguely remembered something like that, I was sure it must have been a dream. How to explain the letter, though? In great agitation of spirits, I checked my passport to see if it had any corroborative stamps. Hélas! My passport was a patchwork of wrong names and advertising!

From time to time I would half-wake up and notice B.A. snoring away beside me and feel sure that the dream was just a dream, but then I would fall back into it. Really, it never seemed to end. I kept rushing hither and thither trying to prove I had not gone to Cuba or the Bahamas. It was a great relief to wake up entirely and find B.A. buttoning up his shirt. However, when I told him of my ghastly dream, he said, "So that's why I got that letter from the Cuban Health Authority."

Hours later I realized that the skinny stranger was the British "Food TV" presenter who wasted an hour of our lives last night wandering around Los Angeles eating street food. Ugh.

Three.

My mother watches a lot of television, but as my parents have a big house, it is quite easy to escape the idiot box. The same is not true of the flat in the Historical House. My mother thinks the flat has the same square footage as her house, but it really does not have all the comfortable nooks and crannies. It also lacks the neighbourliness of several people all looking vaguely like me. The only other person around is B.A., so if I want the comfort of another human presence, I have to go back into the living room where he is watching brainless British telly. "It's not brainless," he is wont to say. "It's a documentary about the coast of Ireland."

4.

Although I can get sucked into "The Great British Bakeoff", I would be perfectly happy if the only channel we got was ITV Three, so I could watch "Poirot", "Endeavour" and "Lewis." Although "UK Border Police" was diverting, watching illegal migrants climb out windows and run like the wind struck me as cruel.

5.

The trad part of the Catholic blogosphere is going nuts because the young, plump bishop of Fort Worth, Texas has tried to solve the problems of a local Catholic college by banning its use of the Extraordinary Form. It is striking that the man was made bishop at age 47, and now he is internationally infamous, too. Nobody gave him the memo that bishops can't ban the Extraordinary Form. Nor did it occur to him (or whoever actually wrote his letter) that suggesting that the Mass of the Ages, which dates long before the Council of Trent, and nourished generations of Christians, including almost all the known saints, is bad for your soul is best left to anti-Catholic tracts.

I have no stake in Fisher-More College, except for any readers there (hello!), but I understand that the bishop's real concern was not about the Extraordinary Form but about the college president's increasingly strident critique of the Second Vatican Council. How happy I will be when we have Trent II, so we have another Council to fight about. All my life people older than me have been banging on about Vatican II like it was Catholic Woodstock. Vatican II was actually quite dull compared to other Councils: the bihops, periti and guests never had to suspend talks and flee because war had broken out, and nobody punched anyone else. My friend Aelianus loves the Council of Florence best; currently I have a soft spot for dear old Trent. At least people obeyed the liturgical reforms of Trent. Very few people seem to have read the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. "Look, giant puppets!" "No, it says Gregorian Chant." "Puppets!" "No, look. Sound it out. G-r-e-g-o-r-i-a-n ch-a-n-t." "Puppets!"

6.

Only once have I walked out of Mass thanks to the musical stylings of the soi-distant ministers of music. That really amazes me when I think back to what I have sat through in my time. Long electric guitar solos in the middle of the Gloria. Outrageously loud amplification in a German seminary chapel. A parish choir singing the atheist "We Rise Again in the Faces of Our Children" during Communion. No, what did it for me was a Filipino folk band in Toronto. The place was packed with stolid-faced white folk, and the only one smiling was the elderly priest, who did a little dance behind the altar as the happy band banged and strummed, tootled and wailed through microphones. I forget if I lasted to the Gloria, or if it was the Kyrie that inspired my retreat. As my heels hurriedly clicked-clicked to the blessed quiet of the street, all eyes to the left and right followed me enviously down the aisle.

7.

I once told a flame that what I liked best in music was the silence between the notes. He was most impressed and said I was ready for jazz, which is the sort of thing flames say. Men love to instruct women on just about anything: shooting pool, shooting baskets, Wittgenstein. Use this knowledge for good.

What I like very much in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is the extraordinary hush it fosters in a congregation. At the 11 o'clock at Holy Family Church in Toronto, you can hear the flutter of the Mass booklets and the gentle thumps of the kneelers going down. Sure, sometimes a baby has to wail a bit. but he is usually taken out if Mass has actually begun.

I am strongly of the opinion that we hear God in the silence between the notes. A world that hates silence is a world afraid to hear God.


***
Update: Mark J. Miller of Catholic World Report differs on the subject of bishops being able to squelch celebration of the EF. Still unanswered, however, is the question of how squelching it would in any way help the college president's or his students' souls.

Update 2: When I say "young, plump" bishop, please don't think I have it in for obese priests. As a matter of fact, I feel terrible for them, as I do for any priest who has an obvious health problem. We have developed an understanding and supports for priests who abuse alcohol, poor souls, but so far I haven't heard anyone address the problem of clerical obesity. My only uncle died at my age, and I am absolutely sure this was related to his weight, his eating habits and his Single state, poor man.

Going to Gdańsk

I leave for Gdańsk tomorrow, so of course I am pondering my death. I always ponder my death before I travel. Pondering your own death is a good, traditional Catholic thing to do. And it reminds you to update your will, as I did last week by ripping up a codicil.  I am a terrific will-changer. Nobody will ever want to murder me for a legacy.

In the event of death, I will not leave you orphaned, for there are a number of women tilling in the Single Solidarity field.  Some of them are readers, and prominent among you are the Orthogals. who blogister (my portmanteau of blog and minister, get it?) for Single women of the Eastern Christian persuasion, aka the GREEKS. There there's Christian Grace from The Evangelista. On a completely different, and not explicitly Catholic note, there's newcomer Postum Scriptum, who writes about all kinds of traddy and vintage stuff, like the lost art of letter-writing.

Then of course there are the Professional Writers for Singles who are farther afield and either taking money from the Catholic Dating Websites or are just better than me at marketing what I give for free. And I don't have a problem with that. Just because my conscience says "donations, speaker's fees and book sales only" doesn't mean that's what their consciences say. Occasionally my conscience does twinge a bit when I point to the balance of my student loan, but it just really refuses to get involved with Catholic Dating Websites. And, yes, I know they do some good.

Which reminds me. Somehow my name has been attached to the idea of dating websites because I did a fellow freelancer a favour by answering questions about  internet dating and meeting B.A. online.  But I did not meet B.A. through a dating website; I met him through my blog. Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers: it's not that journalists lie, it's that whoever makes up the headlines and the captions doesn't know how to, or just doesn't have time to, read the actual article.

***
I had insomnia last night after watching the Sherlock episode, "A Scandal in Belgravia."  I don't often watch violent or suggestive stuff, and "A Scandal in Belgravia" was both.  Also, I have a deep loathing of sexually sophisticated people who try to take advantage of sexual innocents, so I did not enjoy watching Irene Adler's attempts on Sherlock's virtue. Sherlock is an arrogant twit, but he does not use his intellectual prowess to bamboozle people into bed. The farthest he goes is to flirt mildly with poor Molly in the morgue so that she will let him see the latest corpse or what have you.

The writers depict Sherlock and his brother Mycroft as cold fish without feeling, and seem to say coldness is why Sherlock, at least, is largely proof against sexual temptation. But as a matter of fact, Sherlock is intensely loyal and protective of the few people who are intensely loyal and protective of him. It's a great plot device: when the writers need us to feel pity and fear, they put Watson in danger of certain death and Sherlock's blue eyes positively blaze with rage. In contrast, Watson's angry, jealous girlfriends, with whom he presumably, to quote him, "gets off", are just figures of fun.

Despite themselves, the writers have hammered home the idea that in itself sex means nothing next to chaste, self-sacrificing love. Still, I don't think they would go so far as to extol Sherlock's chastity as normal and another example of his formidable powers of reasoning. But I would.

There is a quality of mercy in Sherlock. As blunt and thoughtless as he can be, and as capable of throwing baddies out the window, he takes pity on people when he realizes that they seem to love him. And this is most unlike the kind of  sociopath who punishes most those who seem to love him.

Because, to move from television to real life, there are indeed men who punish, rather than protect, those who love them because their victims love them. Perhaps there are women like that, too. But I have met at least two men like that. Their own mothers were afraid of them. And although only one of them actually said, "I enjoy making the people who love me suffer", the same was true of both.

These were not seedy gangsters. They did not have criminal records. These were mildly good-looking, charismatic, clever men with intellectual interests who attracted less intelligent but nicer men as loyal friends. Possibly one was much nicer when he was younger; the other was a sadist by 17, and by sadist I don't mean all that silly sexual game-playing so-called "sophisticated" people think so daring. I mean that even at seventeen he enjoyed making the people who loved him suffer agonies of mind and heart. I cannot for the life of me understand why, or if he could have been improved by psychiatric help.  I wonder what a priest would have said to him; I wonder how often parish priests in comfortable countries have to look squarely at evil and see a soul in palpable danger of hell.

I am quite sure that as painful as it is, it is much better to love someone like that and to suffer innocently than to be someone like that and make innocents suffer. So if these were to be my last ever written words, I would want to say, not "Look out for someone like that" but "Don't be someone like that." Satan, handsome, clever, attractive, arrogant Satan, makes a lousy role model.

A Man is Not a Substitute for All Women

Last night I watched a made-for-TV movie called Housewife, 49. It was sweet but predictable. A plump, ground-down middle-aged married woman with a grouchy carpenter husband is recruited in the early days of the Second World War to the Women's Volunteer Services, even though her husband tells her she won't fit in. And indeed at first she does not, because the other women are all madly middle-class, and one or two are snooty, but then the most patriotic social maven takes her under her wing, and our heroine feels she can ignore both her disapproving husband and the the norms of the class system.

So at 49 she begins to blossom and when the Germans bomb the Lake District and her grey-moustached husband admits, from the uncertain shelter of their Morrison (which turns out to be a big cage you set up in your house), that she is "everything" to him, she looks as bored and irritated as you can look when Jerry is dropping jolly big bombs on you.

In short, the happier Housewife, 49 gets, and the more she enjoys the company of her women friends, the more contemptuous she is of her husband. (I have to admit, I didn't much fancy him myself.) There's a sense that she is feeling rather a cut above him, now that... Hmm, now I see why he told her she wouldn't fit in. It might have been because he was afraid she would.

I don't think this sent a good message to the men of Britain, so I hope they didn't watch it. Frankly, I was quite relieved that Housewife didn't leave her husband. Almost completely demoralized, the poor old ex-king of his bombed working-class castle says he hopes she'll continue "to put up with" him. She says, "Well, why not? You have to put up with me." A very good point. All the same, it's quite clear that she doesn't realize that men are scarce and many a war widow wouldn't scoff at a nice carpenter with a home of his own, even if he had to pay alimony to his social-climbing frump of a first wife.

Oooh la la. That is not 1945 thinking! Is even Auntie Seraphic a product of post-1963 decadence? No doubt. Because divorce is just too easy these days, and therefore you must not be  contemptuous of your husband, if you have one and want to keep him. Possibly you can be rude occasionally if you apologize within a reasonable time frame. But you may not be contemptuous.

One way not to be contemptuous of your husband or, indeed, of any man whose company you enjoy, is not to think he is a substitute for all women friends. Demanding that your husband be both a man and a woman is really too much. You can remind him that you yourself are not a man and therefore should not be expected to deny your feminine genius (e.g. crying when there's something worth crying about), but you cannot expect him to be a genius at listening and commiserating the way women are. You can ask him to try, of course, but you cannot expect him to be just like your female friends.  

I think this follows for boyfriend and other men friends, too. And this is why it is such a good idea, among other reasons, not to neglect your female pals when you fall in love or "start a [romantic] relationship" with a man. You'll need them.

First Dates on Reality TV

Benedict Ambrose thought I would love the new British TV show called "First Dates" because it is about Single people. However, Channel 4 and I have different concepts of "Single." Channel 4 defines a "Single" as someone who is not "dating" anyone right now, and I define "Single" as anyone who is not married or, at very least, engaged.  An unmarried woman with a boyfriend who thinks she's in roughly the same situation as a married woman is fooling herself. Psychologically, there is nothing like marriage, which is why divorcing people go at least little nuts at first, as I know firsthand.

On "First Dates," the Singles chosen for the first episode met in a London restaurant for a meal before leaving together for wherever. Interestingly, they were matched for age and claaaaaass, but not for geography. Northern girl got put with Southern guy. Liverpool girl got put with Southern guy. Nineteen year old girl with sweet round face and polished vowels got put with 25 year old Something in the City with equally polished vowels. Sixty-eight year old widower who collects clocks joined sixty-eight year old widow who asked him if he had read Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, I ask you, what a question for a first date.

The idea of dating at 68 led to some discussion between Mr and Mrs McAmbrose, let me tell you. Frowning, B.A. said that at 68 he could not be bothered. Mrs B.A. said that she did not want to date 68 year old men ever, and if widowed at 68, she will hire rent boys. B.A. was shocked by such ladies' locker room talk and said Mrs B.A. so wouldn't. Mrs B.A. said she so would. But she inwardly reflected that this would be taking a big risk with her soul, even though she is banking on living until 86. Maybe she will run a boarding house for University of Edinburgh medical students instead, just like her great-great-grandmama.

Anyway, the 68 year old on the show was not put off by the question about Fifty Shades of Grey. He said he hadn't read it, but the ladies at his knitting group had told him about it. I bet they did, those cheeky knitters. Dear heavens, is that what the over-60 social scene is like? It's almost enough to make me want to play lady-in-waiting to the Order of Malta instead.

The two beautiful children with polished vowels got along quite well, as did the 68 year olds. It did not hurt my very soul to listen to their first date chatter. The soul-hurters were the middle-aged people, including the middle-aged woman of 24. Attention women of Britain: tanning, even fake tanning, AGES you. B.A. and I watched the middle-aged with rapt attention, saying married-people things like, "He can't possibly be younger than me; look at him."

We were desperately afraid for the Liverpudlian fielding sexy remarks from the 35 ("Is he really only 35?") year old DJ. The DJ said he is afraid he will end up being the old man at the end of whichever bar in Ibiza hitting on the young girls. As he has slept with over 250 women, he may already be that guy: he simply could not turn off the smooth. However, the Liverpudlian looked at him with equanimity, as if, although she cannot remember the capitals of European cities, she knows men like she knows her hair products. (I sometimes meet women like this, especially in salons. They never really saw the point of school, or books, but they look fantastic, they own their own homes and men appear when they whistle. There is a terrible lesson in this, which is probably Enjoy knowledge for its own sake.)

We felt awful for the pretty woman (well, I thought she was pretty) sitting across the table from a foul-mouthed ex-soldier. Heavens. Even Flashman usually knew better than to speak to a lady like that. The woman seemed to laugh it off, and even lied like a trouper (or, let's face it, your typical super-polite Englishwoman) to say she enjoyed her date, but it was quite clear she did not. I would have walked out. And if the ex-soldier were my son, I would have cried myself to sleep last night, that's how ashamed I would be. (NB My oldest brother is an ex-soldier and as far as I know he never, ever talks like that.) Of course, the love of the ex-soldier's life, who broke up with him, was a soldier, too, so maybe he thinks all women put up with that kind of talk now.

There were other pairs, but they are beginning to get confused in my memory. Needless to say, there were no religious people  (or religion never came up) or academics or, apart from one Chinese woman whose accent was played for laughs, foreigners, so I didn't feel I had terribly much in common with any of the daters. Most of all, I would never want a first date I was on to end up on telly, unless it involved  a good, sparky, philosophical debate that ended in a draw.

My last first date (as it turned out to be) would have made terrible telly, as it consisted of B.A. telling me all about various age-old Cath Soc scandals at the University of Aberdeen and me trying to keep my jet-lagged eyes open. Zzzzz.

Spiritual Mother of the Year?

Britain is not like Canada and the USA when it comes to multiculturalism. It is not embarrassed to have egregious stereotypes of Italians, complete with accents, in television ads, for example. A quick rule of thumb is that if "they" are white, you can say almost anything about "other people" on telly. This is why people who are distressed that the population of the UK (meaning London, Glasgow, Yorkshire and television) doesn't look as homogenous as it did in 1946 openly blame "Eastern Europeans." "Eastern Europe" is their PC code for Pakistan.

Britain is also not like Canada in that it is obsessed with American culture. For Canadians, American culture is just there, something to be used and abused and resisted insofar as it might completely wipe out Canadian culture. But British people, at least British people in television, cannot get enough American stuff. Some even celebrate American Thanksgiving, and I am not making that up.

Uniquely British attitudes towards multiculturalism and American culture are why, I think, there exists a television show called "Jewish Mother of the Year."

Jewish people make up a very tiny percentage of the British population, they or their ancestors emigrated before 1950, and they are not noticeably prominent in the British entertainment world. There does not exist in the UK the same obsession with "Who is Jewish?" as there is in Canada and the USA. I think the celebrity chef Nigella Lawson might be Jewish, but without looking it up, I can tell you at once she is much better known for her Italian ancestry.

Thus, something as potentially offensive as a show called "Jewish Mother of the Year" seems rather American to me, even as its naiveté seems very British.

Anyway, from what I have seen of this show so far, it appears to be a contest between at least six Englishwomen who are also Jews. Their challenge last night was to set up a pretty English Jewish girl with English Jewish bachelors she didn't already know. This was a very tricky challenge, we were told, because most English Jews know each other already. One bachelor joked that to set him up with a Jewish girl he didn't already know, the show would have to fly in a girl from a shtetl in Russia.

The Jewish mothers, working in teams of two, found three Jewish bachelors and convinced them to go on a date with the pretty Jewish girl. One was pale and handsome, one was dark and handsome, and one was bearded, ginger and--in my humble opinion--weedy. There is such a person as a handsome red-headed man, and speaking as a red-headed woman, this guy wasn't him.

One of his adopted Jewish mothers absolutely adored him, however, and later on the show, her teammate said she was surprised that she, as a religious woman, flirted with him so much. But I am ahead of myself.

The date scheme worked like this: The Jewish mothers got to prepare their Jewish bachelor for the date and spy on him and the pretty Jewish girl while they had dinner. They also could talk to him on a wire while he was on the date and tell him what to do.

What amazed me was that the dark and handsome one completely went along with all this. His adopted Jewish mothers had him down on a beautician's couch, plucking his eyebrows and dying his eyelashes. They snipped his chest hair. Their idea was to make him, already handsome, look just like a Handsome Prince. They told him to lie still, and he did.

On his date, he obediently put in his earpiece and listened as his spying adopted mothers told him what to say and to mirror the gestures the girl made, so as to make her feel closer to him. All that Tony Robbins stuff.

Meanwhile, it all worked. The girl thought he was really very attractive, except for being 24 when she is 29. Frankly, I could look beyond that for the sake of a guy who looks like that and does whatever he's told. If I were Single, I mean.

The bearded guy refused to wear his earpiece and thought he could just carry the day with his arrogant personality. He was wrong.

This is a very incomplete report because actually I was flipping between "Jewish Mother of the Year" (which, as a non-Jewish twenty-year resident of Bathurst-and-Finch, I found embarrassing) and the Scotland v Belgium World Cup qualifier (which, as a football fan and resident of Scotland, I also found embarrassing). But it is enough to inspire my own daydream of competing for Catholic Mother of Year, for which I would be currently disqualified for not being, you know, a mother.

The whole idea of being a Mother of the Year is rife with potential stereotyping. Unless you're St Gemma Giana Molla, what on earth would make one Catholic Mother better than another? You could measure on quantity--in which case any woman with fewer than five children--shouldn't bother trying to qualify, but how on earth would you measure quality? Urgh. Don't send me suggestions!

Still, the idea of spying on my son, either real or adopted, for a reality show, when he is on a date is simply comic gold.

Seraphique: And now, my son, you must wear this earpiece.

Fils de Seraphique: Mother, as much as I love and respect you, I will not.

Seraphique: My son, I will speak plainly. Due to some miraculous convergence of DNA, you are far more beautiful than either your father or myself. You have one aunt's beautiful nose. You have another aunt's beautiful eyes. You have your grandfather's stature. You have your father's waist--well, the one he had when he was your age--and yet you have your uncle's shoulders. All this will take you far. But, my son, you do not know how to speak to women.

Fils de Seraphique: Of course I know how to speak to women. I'm speaking to you right now.

Seraphique: That remark, my son, reveals how little you know. Tell me, my child, whom do you consult about that frightening automobile you insist upon driving despite my fragile nerves?

Fils de Seraphique: Hans down at the garage.

Seraphique: Yes, and whom do you consult about the state of your immortal soul?

Fils de Seraphique: Father MacDonald at St Columba's.

Seraphique: Yes, and whom do you consult about the state of the lungs I woefully suspect you pollute with the occasional cigar?

Fils de Seraphique: Doctor Whatist at the NHS, but I fail to see...

Seraphique (interrupting): And why? Because you respect their authority, their years of study and experience. And I am, my son, an expert on the feminine psyche of the Single Catholic Woman Today. I have spoken to her, read her thoughts, written to her, prayed for her, laughed with her, wept with her, occasionally fought with her. Indeed, I have have been her again and again as I have put myself in her place or reflected upon that long stretch of time in which I occupied that place myself. Although I have neither the technical skill of a Hans, nor the spiritual authority of a Father MacDonald, nor the long years of training of a Doctor Whatsit---

Fils de Seraphique (interrupting): All right! All right! I'll wear the stupid earpiece.

Seraphique: Oh, hurrah!

Fils de Seraphique: But I draw the line at dying my eyelashes.

Seraphique (deeply disappointed): Hmm....


By the way, I thought there would be a terrible rumpus when one of the Jewish mothers was accused of flirting too much with her adopted Jewish bachelor "son." If you want to make a respectable married religious woman hit the roof, get other respectable married religious women to start tsk-tsking at her about some mostly imaginary, very mild sexual misdeed. I cannot imagine why there were not shrieks, gasps and tears, unless its because the other Jewish mothers didn't seem that traddie and/or religious.