Salad Days

There are days...like the day before yesterday...when the connection between Ma and I is unmistakable. We went to a Chinese buffet, and her first plate was an enormo-platter, a practical Vesuvius of rice with just a little curried goo and buggerall else. Apparently, when she was pregnant with me, all she'd eat was pasta, rice and dessert.

Thanks, Ma.

Likewise of course, my last plate of the night was an enormo-platter of what we here in the Welsh Valleys call half-and-half - half rice, half chips (fries if you really insist), with a kind of  curry sauce to delineate the boundary between carb and...erm...carb.

Like I said, thanks, Ma.

Then there are nights when I can't help but wonder whether I was actually born to this woman at all. Nights like last night. We all went out to the local Harvester, mainly, if we're being honest, because they have an unlimited salad bar.  Ma ordered her main - fish and chips - and then disappeared like a shot to the salad bar. After pronouncing that she'd chosen the wrong dressing, we all told her to go back and change it.
"Nono, I'll eat this lot, then I'll get more," she said. And she did. Geraint popped away from the table to answer a phonecall, and when he came back he peered at Ma's salad bowl.
"What are we on?" he asked.
I looked up. "Gotta finish your Main salad before you can move on to Dessert salad," I muttered.
"Ah," he nodded. "I wondered...See, when they dreamed up the 'unlimited' salad bar, I don't think they thought they'd ever come up against someone like you," he said, grinning at Ma as she munched her way through some unpalatable vegetation in a honey mustard dressing. 
"Certainly not in Merthyr, anyway," I added, looking around at the reassuring degree of Thursday night lardassery grazing at tables all around us. 
Ma shrugged, crunching on a piece of onion.

We eventually steered her out of the place, but not before she'd at least had her Dessert Salad. I think personally, she'd have stayed for Coffee and Cigars Salad, and possibly even Brandy Salad if we'd let her. The woman's addicted to raw vegetables, I swear.

Oddly enough, if you fast forward to right now, with me sitting at the kitchen table, Ma just made a round of coffees.
"Anyone want anything? Kit Kats? Cookies?"
"No, I'm fine, thankyou," said d. "How about you? D'you want something?...A small bowl of salad, maybe?"

Sadly, no-one understood why I just spat my coffee across the screen of the pet rock that is our iPad...