My mobile phone sprang into its polyphonic splendour while I was driving along the M4 motorway last week. I didn’t want to risk a fine by answering it. My mother, in the passenger seat, dove straight into my bag and flip opened my phone. I screamed for her to just let the phone ring out.

Harlow?” said mummy dearest without notice to my panicked cries. “Now Polly drive at the road. She call later.”

My eyes wandered off the road and stared at her in horror momentarily. There are still moments of my life when I’m immature and bratty enough to feel ashamed of my mother’s broken English.

“Was it Pixie?” I asked after she hung up.

“No. It was a man. A man named Gay,” Mum answered, eyeing me suspiciously. “Who’s Gay?”

“Gray. G-R-A-Y.”

It was my friend Gray from uni, calling to confirm Friday night’s dinner plans with the Bear and Funk-Sole-Brother - events which in retrospect deserve their own blog post.

My mother has the habit of putting her own twist on my friends’ names: Felicity becomes Solicity, Resan (a masculine Kurdish version of Richard) turns into Roseanne, and Ricky spins into Licky.

“Why did you have to answer the phone? You said it all wrong. You sounded horrible.” I said cruelly. I drove in silence for the rest of the way home. I was not at my most dutiful-daughter-self.

As I watched her make wontons later that afternoon, I sheepishly tried to redeem myself.

“I'm a tightarse, mum. I didn't want to pay for the phone call back.”

Maybe mother knows best: she put extra shrimp roes in my wonton soup that evening. It's unclear if they were shrimp roes of forgiveness. We're not a very expressive nor transparent family.

I spent the night in melancholy reflection. While I float around with dreams of being a writer, it dawned on me that my parents will not be able to read anything that I write.

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